Bangladesh is at a pivotal crossroads. The caretaker government of Muhammad Yunus has pledged to hold elections by the end of the year, but a simple return to the ballot box won’t be enough. Without urgent reforms to the country’s justice and security sectors, the country risks backsliding into the same cycle of repression where state-sponsored enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, and other repressive tactics remain the norm.
This warning is not ours alone.
A recently published U.N. Fact-Finding Mission report on Bangladesh stressed that only “significant longer-term reforms” will root out “entrenched root causes” that have given rise to widespread abuses. Bangladesh’s security forces, operating under the “coordination and direction of the political leadership and senior security sector officials,” were responsible for killing an estimated 1,400 people in a brutal crackdown on student-led protests between July and August last year. This was not random violence; it was a deliberate crackdown on dissent, made possible by the longstanding impunity of security forces and political leaders.
Historically, Bangladesh’s two dominant political parties, the Awami League (AL) and Bangladesh National Party (BNP), have played an unruly game of pass-the-parcel with political power. Each transition followed a destructive pattern of retribution against political opponents, institutional capture, and political violence by state security forces. Both the AL and BNP have used illegal detentions, enforced disappearances, and summary killings by the security forces when in power. Through their actions, successive governments have hollowed out key institutions.
Last year’s “Monsoon Revolution,” which ousted Sheikh Hasina from a more than decade-long grip on power, was unlike past mass protests, typically driven by one or other of the two main political parties. Instead, these protests were led by a decentralized and mostly politically non-aligned student movement and civil society demanding a decisive break from Bangladesh’s history of political nepotism, repression, and retribution. Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, who was appointed to lead an interim government to steer the country through this transition, must now break this cycle of violence.
Following the uprising, Fortify Rights conducted a two-month investigation, interviewing 44 survivors, eyewitnesses, and others with information on the crackdowns in Chattogram, Cox’s Bazar, and Dhaka. We documented unlawful killings and violence against peaceful protesters by police, Border Guard Bangladesh, and the Awami League’s student and youth wings, and shared our findings with the U.N. Fact-Finding Mission.
Despite the public outcry for reforms to the security sector, the army has attempted to avoid oversight and accountability by obstructing independent investigations of detention sites and destroying evidence of enforced disappearances. Alarmingly, an independent commission set up after the revolution and tasked with investigating past enforced disappearances discovered fresh structural modifications and paint at key detention sites, pointing to clear attempts at burying evidence. Without immediate course correction from the Yunus administration, those responsible for past abuses will remain untouchable. Behind the scenes, the army remains a powerful force resisting accountability and security sector reforms, begging the question of who is really in charge in Bangladesh.
With elections on the horizon, the interim government should take decisive action. It must act swiftly to preserve and collect important evidence and initiate criminal proceedings against officials involved in enforced disappearances, killings, and other violations committed during last year’s Monsoon Revolution, as well as those committed during the repressive rule of Sheikh Hasina’s regime. It should also heed the U.N. Fact-Finding Mission’s recommendations to establish a witness protection program — without it, perpetrators in the security forces will find it easy “to intimidate victims and key witnesses,” further undermining justice.
For Bangladesh to move forward, there must be a sea change in the country’s approach to policing. During its crackdown, survivors and witnesses told Fortify Rights how the police used rifles and shotguns loaded with birdshot pellets against unarmed protesters, clear violations against international human rights standards that prohibit the use of excessive force. The U.N. Fact-Finding Mission has called for an immediate ban on these lethal firearms and to “disband” the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), a unit long implicated in extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances both during Hasina’s rule and the preceding BNP rule. Bangladesh’s own Police Reform Commission has echoed this need for change through a thorough “re-evaluation” of RAB’s role.
For Bangladesh to enjoy the rule of law, justice must be pursued impartially, not selectively. Holding security forces accountable for past abuses is only part of the equation. The interim government must now confront perpetrators of violence on all sides of the political spectrum.
Earlier last month, thousands of protesters, including students, vandalized and set fire to Dhanmondi 32, the former residence-turned-museum of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Bangladesh’s assassinated founding leader and Hasina’s father.
This attack against a symbol of Hasina’s rule was sparked by a speech she delivered from exile in India, where she urged supporters to resist Yunus’ interim government. While such actions demonstrate public anger toward the former ruling party, mob violence cannot come at the expense of the rule of law.
At the same time, the government’s response to political instability must be measured and just. Recently, the government launched “Operation Devil Hunt,” a sweeping crackdown against what officials euphemistically referred to as “evil forces” who “destabilize the country.” At the time of writing, more than 11,000 have been arrested and detained, many affiliated with the AL. The lack of due process risks turning the operation into yet another politically motivated purge rather than a legitimate effort to uphold justice.
If justice becomes just another tool for political score-settling rather than an impartial process, Bangladesh is condemned to repeating its past. The country is at a critical juncture. Without urgent reforms to its security and justice sectors before the next elections, the very institutions that enabled past repression will remain intact, ready to serve whoever comes next.
The interim government must act decisively to dismantle these entrenched structures of impunity—otherwise, this transition will be nothing more than a pause before the cycle of political violence begins anew.