Human Rights Watch (HRW) has welcomed the formal filing of charges in Bangladesh against 28 individuals accused of enforced disappearances, secret detentions, and torture.
The New York–based human rights organisation on Thursday stated in a report, ‘it was a long time coming’, shortly after the International Crimes Tribunal issued arrest warrants for former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, her Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan, and several current and former military officers.
HRW also noted that human rights abuses are still persisting in Bangladesh, adding that concerns remain about ensuring fair trial standards and the use of the death penalty.
The report, written by Meenakshi Ganguly, HRW’s deputy director for Asia, is titled ‘In Bangladesh a Step toward Justice’. At the beginning of the piece, she refers back to an earlier 2017 HRW report that documented secret detentions and disappearances in Bangladesh.
At the time, then–Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan dismissed the findings as “smear campaign”, claiming that most of the “disappeared were criminals evading arrests, loan dodgers, or adulterers.”
Meenakshi Ganguly said at the time Asaduzzaman had agreed to investigate at her insistence, but the investigation never happened.
The HRW report stated that during its time in office from 2009 to 2024, the Sheikh Hasina administration, of which Asaduzzaman Khan was a key member, became increasingly authoritarian. HRW’s work on extrajudicial killings, torture, and suppression of speech was met with denials or false promises.
The repression persisted until August 2024, the report mentioned adding, when the Hasina government was toppled following three weeks of enraged protests in which 1,400 people were killed. Hasina, Asaduzzaman, and several senior officials fled the country.
An interim government, led by Muhammad Yunus, a Nobel peace laureate, came in promising reforms. It established a Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances, which received at least 1,850 complaints, and found that over 300 victims were presumed killed in custody. The commission recently released a documentary “Unfolding the Truth” describing its findings, including horrifying accounts of cruelty, added the report.
The interim government has decided to prosecute enforced disappearance cases through the International Crimes Tribunal. After two cases were formally filed, the tribunal on Thursday issued arrest warrants against 28 individuals, including Sheikh Hasina, Asaduzzaman Khan, and several current and former army officers.
The HRW report mentioned that among those in court when the charges were announced were people whose cases they had documented. One is Mir Ahmad Bin Quasem Armaan, who had chillingly written to them just days before his disappearance in 2016 that he was “worried” about his own safety. He was held for eight years in a secret military intelligence detention site, and was released after the Hasina government was deposed.
Meenakshi wrote in the report, “Over those years, his wife would call me, desperate for news – the plight of so many families of the disappeared who keep waiting for miracles. Armaan recently told me he is well and had written a book.”
The report ends with Meenakshi writing, “As human rights workers, we too wait for such miracles. Yet, too often, human rights abuses persist. The accused will be prosecuted by the Bangladesh International Crimes Tribunal, but concerns remain about ensuring fair trial standards and the use of the death penalty."
