Former Bangladesh prime minister Sheikh Hasina and her government tried to cling on to power using systematic, deadly violence against protesters that could amount to “crimes against humanity”, the UN has said.
The UN team said “an official policy to attack and violently repress anti-government protesters” had been directed by political leaders and senior security officials.
Hasina, who had been in office for 15 years, fled by helicopter to India shortly before crowds stormed her residence last August.
The unrest began as student-led protests against quotas in civil service jobs and escalated into a countrywide movement to oust Hasina and her Awami League Party following a deadly police crackdown. Thousands more were injured in the worst violence Bangladesh has seen since its war of independence in 1971.
The UN investigators’ findings show the then government, including Sheikh Hasina, “were aware of and involved in very serious offences”, UN human rights chief Volker Türk told a news conference in Geneva.
“Among our key findings, there are reasonable grounds to believe that officials of the former government, its security and intelligence apparatus, together with violent elements associated with the former ruling party, committed serious and systematic human rights violations,” Mr Türk said.
The UN investigators documented the shooting at point-blank range of some protesters, the deliberate maiming of others, arbitrary arrests and torture.
Children, too, were targeted – the report estimates up to 13% of the 1,400 people killed between between 1 July and 15 August were children.
“The brutal response was a calculated and well-co-ordinated strategy by the former government to hold onto power in the face of mass opposition,” Mr Türk said.
He said the evidence gathered by his office painted “a disturbing picture of rampant state violence and targeted killings”.
“There are reasonable grounds to believe hundreds of extrajudicial killings, extensive arbitrary arrests and detentions, and torture, were carried out with the knowledge, co-ordination and direction of the political leadership and senior security officials as part of a strategy to suppress the protests.”
