by Taj Hashmi 28 August 2022
“Least likely” is the answer to the question above. I believe Michelle Bachelet, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees’ recent visit to Bangladesh will lead to a positive zero on Bangladesh’s flagrant violations of human rights, dignity, and freedom over the past 14 years. Ms. Bachelet’s use of the phrase “wide allegations” in her press conference in Dhaka before her departure predicts the outcome of the toothless commission report. She implied that there had been “wide allegations” about gross human rights violations — including enforced disappearances by law enforcers in the country — by human rights activists and various people she had met in Bangladesh during her short trip to the country this month; and that the Bangladesh government denied any violations of human rights by law enforcers. In other words, she wasn’t sure what the truth was. However, she urged the Government to form a neutral inquiry commission to investigate the allegations. Then again, asking the illegitimate, brutal fascist regime in Bangladesh to appoint a neutral inquiry commission is a good joke in this dull moment.
In mid-August 2022, Michelle Bachelet arrived in Dhaka to investigate allegations of gross human rights violations in Bangladesh. Hundreds of human rights organizations, members of civil society, intellectuals, and others have issued statements and published credible reports on this important issue. For the past decade and a half, the country has seen enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, and even torture of dissidents, criminals, and even suspects. The US Treasury Department’s imposition of sanctions on more than half a dozen senior military and police officers by the Magnitsky Act on 10 December 2021, may be mentioned in this context. Under the Act, the US Government is authorized to freeze the assets of sanctioned individuals and prevent them from entering the country. Consequently, there was speculation among Bangladeshis at home and abroad that the US wouldn’t issue a visa to Benazir Ahmed, the Bangladeshi police chief sanctioned by the US, to attend a police summit in New York under the aegis of the United Nations. However, this hope has been dashed partially as the US has granted the police chief a restricted visa for a couple of days.
Meanwhile, Ms. Bachelet spent a few days meeting a cross-section of people, government officials, and ministers, including Prime Minister Hasina, as well as visiting Rohingya refugee camps in Chattogram to meet representatives of a million Rohingya refugees living in refugee camps in the country since September 2017. This visit and the US sanctions against senior law enforcing officers in Bangladesh aroused extravagant expectations among human rights activists, laymen, and a large spectrum of the hoi polloi in the country who want the overthrow of the unelected brutal Hasina Regime. As a result, many believe UN restrictions against Bangladeshi law enforcers in peace-keeping operations around the world will be imposed in retaliation.
On the last day of her stay in Bangladesh, on 17 August, the UN Human Rights Commission issued a media statement on High Commissioner Michelle Bachelet’s recent official visit to Bangladesh, which dispelled the high expectations of people who want external forces, including the United Nations, to take retaliatory measures against the Hasina Regime. There was no direct criticism of the Hasina Regime as a violator of human rights in the media statement or press release. In the mildest possible terms, it criticized the Regime. Such as “… successive UN human rights reports have documented a narrowing of civic space, increased surveillance, intimidation and reprisals often leading to self-censorship. Laws and policies over-regulating NGOs and broadly restricting the freedom of expression make it difficult – and sometimes risky – for them to function effectively”. The Media statement urged the Government to hear the voices of women, religious minorities, indigenous and young people. It urged the Government to ratify the International Convention for the Protection of all Persons from Enforced Disappearance.
Hasina’s Government is only slightly criticized for “enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killing, torture, many of which have been attributed to the Rapid Action Battalion, and the lack of accountability for such violations.” The statement mentions Ms. Bachelet’s raising her “deep concern about these serious allegations with Government ministers and highlighted the need for an impartial, independent and transparent investigation into these allegations accompanied by security sector reform”. The statement doesn’t mention any retaliatory move against the Government, and simply assured it that the UN High Commission for Human Rights “is ready to provide advice on how such a body could be designed in line with international standards”.
Furthermore, since Michelle Bachelet’s media statement didn’t specify any retaliatory actions against the Hasina Government for being an accomplice to human rights violations in Bangladesh, such as extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, and torture, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’s statement at the UN Security Council on 28 August 2022 on human rights violations in the world didn’t even mention Bangladesh as a major violator of human rights. He simply singled out Myanmar as the largest violator of human rights in the world.
In the above backdrop, it appears that Bangladeshi politicians, human rights activists, and the overwhelming majority of people across the board who want to remove the autocratic, unelected Hasina Regime have no choice but to rely on their strength and wherewithal to take well-coordinated and united action to achieve their goal. As the dictum goes, “God helps those who help themselves”. To help Bangladesh get rid of the corrupt and ruthless fascist regime, the US, UN, or other extraneous forces/elements may go up to a certain level, but not beyond that.
The author is a historian-cum-cultural anthropologist, Taj Hashmi, Ph.D., FRAS, and is a retired professor of Security Studies at the APCSS, US. He has written several books and hundreds of journal articles, and newspaper op-eds. As an analyst of current affairs, and a human rights activist he regularly appears on talk shows about Bangladesh, South Asia, and World affairs. His latest book, Fifty Years of Bangladesh, 1971-2021: Crises of Culture, Development, Governance, and Identity, was published by Palgrave-Macmillan in May 2022.