Rights organisation Mother’s call (Mayer Dak), a network of families of victims of enforced disappearances, on Tuesday reiterated its call for an independent commission to hold an impartial and credible investigation of enforced disappearances of their loved ones marking the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances. On December 21, 2010, the United Nations General Assembly officially proclaimed August 30 as the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances. The day was first observed in Bangladesh in 2011.
Every year on this day the families of victims hold a rally in the capital demanding formation of an independent body to investigate the incidents of disappearances and bring back the victims. But their call for justice does not reach the people in power. The questions that always haunt them are how are their loved ones? Are they alive? Are they being tortured? They have been spending agonising weeks, months and years, holding out hope against all odds. Most of the survivors who come back home after being released from their forced captivity stay away from the public eye, never revealing where they were or who took them.
The United Nation Human Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, during her recent visit to Bangladesh, supported the demand of the victim families and urged the government to acknowledge such rights violation, mostly attributed to the law enforcement and security agencies, and laid emphasis on the need for an impartial, independent and transparent investigation of such incidents accompanied by judicial reforms.
Meanwhile, the Hong Kong-based Asian Human Rights Commission has reported that at least 605 people fell victims of enforced disappearance after they were allegedly picked up by law enforcers in 2009-2021. Among them, 81 were found dead. Multiple eyewitnesses said the law enforcement agencies had picked them up, but the families got no cooperation when they asked for information on the victims. Families were not even able to file a general diary. The children of the victims holding photographs of their father forcibly disappeared for six or eight years or even more, are reminders of an abhorrent practice that has only contributed to a growing culture of fear and a weakening public trust in the government.
Despite calls from national and international rights organisations, the government maintains that the law enforcement agencies are not involved in any rights abuse. Thus families of the victims say that getting justice in the existing legal system is almost impossible. Thus a credible and independent commission must be formed to investigate the cases of enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings and torture in undisclosed places. This is the wrong path. And it must be stopped in Bangladesh.
