OHCHR suggests probes into extrajudicial killings, suspending officials accused of rights violations

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has recommended conducting fair investigations into extrajudicial killings during the July uprising in Bangladesh and suspending officials facing credible allegations of serious human rights violations.

“Ensure effective, fair, impartial and comprehensive processes to investigate and prosecute extrajudicial killings, torture and other ill-treatment, enforced disappearance and sexual and gender-based violence, including cases that predate the 2024 quota protests, and cases of revenge violence,” the UN agency suggests in its recent fact-finding report.

The Office of the OHCHR released its Fact-Finding Report titled ‘Human Rights Violations and Abuses related to the Protests of July and August 2024 in Bangladesh’ on February 12 last.

The OHCHR also suggests ensuring that perpetrators are held accountable according to law, and consistent with international standards, including where individuals in positions of command and leadership are suspected of criminal responsibility, and that victims have access to effective remedies and reparation.

It stresses the need for compiling and preserving relevant evidence, including official orders and other internal documents and forensic evidence, on priority basis, and taking disciplinary and criminal justice measures against officials and others who seek to destroy or hide evidence.

“Pending enactment of a comprehensive law on witness protection, take urgent measures to establish a victim and witness protection programme independent of existing security forces and initiate strict disciplinary measures and criminal investigations in case of witness intimidation,” the UN fact-finding report reads.

The OHCHR has asked the Bangladesh authorities to reform the legal framework to clarify and ensure that crimes involving serious human rights violations committed against civilians are prosecuted before the regular courts.

“Suspend officials facing credible allegations of serious human rights violations, including at the command and leadership level, pending completion of full, independent, and impartial investigation and, as appropriate, prosecution,” according to the report.

The UN agency recommends initiating an inclusive nationwide dialogue and consultation to develop a holistic and context-specific transitional justice model that embeds the fair and effective pursuit of criminal justice, especially for the most responsible perpetrators, in a wider victim-centred process that also redresses deeper legacies of serious human rights violations with the goals of prevention of recurrence, enhancing social cohesion, and fostering of national healing, including through truth-seeking, reparation, memorialisation, vetting of the security sector and instituting other guarantees of non-recurrence.

It proposed advancing and further mobilising resources for a victim-centred reparation process to independently and impartially assess claims and provide compensation, medical treatment and other forms of support on an equitable and transparent basis.

“Establish an independent public prosecution service staffed with professional fulltime personnel with integrity, appropriate training and qualifications, and ensure safeguards against appointments based on partiality, including political party affiliation or prejudice.”

The OHCHR advocates for ensuring that public prosecutors are able to perform their functions without intimidation, harassment or improper interference.

It also suggest ensure the independence and impartiality of the judiciary at the institutional and individual level, in law and in practice, by ensuring that a genuinely independent mechanism is responsible for the recruitment, suspension, removal and discipline of judges; protecting judges against intimidation and harassment; preventing inappropriate or unwarranted interference including politically motivated interference and corruption; and ensuring adequate remuneration and guaranteed tenure until retirement or expiration of judges’ term of office.

“Undertake appropriate training, including in human rights, so that magistrates can diligently and independently carry out their oversight functions, in particular in relation to arrest and detention and use of force by the security forces,” the report says.

It proposes providing the justice sector with the funding and staff necessary to reassume a genuine oversight over law enforcement operations, including arrests, searches, seizures and surveillance measures, while institutionally protecting it from political interference by government or political party officials.

The UN human rights office calls for continuing to provide support and resources to the National Commission on Enforced Disappearances and publish and diligently follow-up on its findings and recommendations.

It also asked the authorities concerned to reveal and close all clandestine places of detention operated by intelligence, paramilitary, police or military forces, and investigate and prosecute identified perpetrators of enforced disappearance, torture and other crimes committed in such places.

The UN report underscores taking further steps to address the continuing due process and fair trial concerns related to Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal, and its retention of the death penalty. (BSS)