According to the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights’ Fact-Finding Report, military rifles and shotguns loaded with deadly metal pellets killed the majority of the 1,400 people who perished during the July uprising.
Today, ‘Human Rights Violations and Abuses linked to the Protests of July and August 2024 in Bangladesh’ was published as a Fact-Finding Report.
The report states: “OHCHR finds that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the former Government and its security and intelligence apparatus, together with violent elements associated with the Awami League, systematically engaged in serious human rights violations, including hundreds of extrajudicial killings, other use of force violations involving serious injuries to thousands of protesters, extensive arbitrary arrest and detention, and torture and other forms of ill-treatment.”
According to the study, OHCHR also has good basis to assume that senior security sector personnel and political leadership knew about, coordinated, and directed these breaches.
According to the report, OHCHR estimates that up to 1,400 people may have died during the demonstrations, with military rifles and shotguns filled with deadly metal pellets—commonly employed by Bangladesh’s security forces—killing the great majority of those slain.
It shows thousands more suffered severe, often life-altering injuries. More than 11,700 people were arrested and detained according to Police and RAB. Reported fatality figures indicate that around 12-13 percent of those killed were children.
“Police and other security forces also subjected children to targeted killings, deliberate maiming, arbitrary arrest, detention in inhumane conditions, torture and other forms of ill-treatment.”
Having been at the forefront of the early protests in particular, women and girls were also attacked by security forces and Awami League supporters. They were specifically subjected to sexual and gender-based violence, including gender-based physical violence, threats of rape and, in some documented cases, sexual assault perpetrated by Awami League supporters, according the report.
The report further states, “Based on first-hand testimonies from victims and witnesses and image and videos analysis, OHCHR could ascertain that, as protests expanded, a broad array of armed Awami League supporters acted jointly, or in close coordination, with the Police against protesters, using extensive, unlawful violence supporting the Government’s efforts to suppress the protests.”
In many operations, it says, armed Awami League supporters lined up along with the police or sheltered behind police lines, before launching attacks timed to support the Police’s own efforts to disperse violently the protests. “Awami League supporters also stopped and searched people, apprehended protesters and handed them over to the police in an organized, seemingly prearranged fashion.”
The report also notes that the Bangladesh Police gave OHCHR the names and roles of 95 police officers, Awami League members, or Awami League-affiliated organizations that the police believe supplied weapons to citizens for use in violent attacks during the protests. These individuals included 10 members of parliament at the time, 14 local Awami League leaders, 16 Jubo League leaders, 16 Chhatra League leaders, and 7 police officers.
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