One of the darkest crimes committed by the Hasina regime has been enforced disappearance. According to human rights organizations, more than 600 people have been disappeared since the Awami League government led by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina came to power in 2009. Few have returned to tell the tale, among them Hummam Quader Chowdhury, and Sukharanjan Bali. Hummam, abducted in 2016, was released after less than a year in March 2017, his family supposedly paying a huge sum of money to authorities for his release. Sukharanjan Bali, a key defence witness in the case of Delwar Hossain Sayeedi, was abducted by plainclothed police on 5 November 2012 from the gate of Supreme Court before he could testify, and surfaced many months later, suffering in Kolkata's Dumdum prison.
Nobody knows the whereabouts of those who have been abducted, even whether they are alive or dead. But one thing is certain, Sheikh Hasina and her cohorts are behind these enforced disappearances. According to a close associate of Hasina, a number of different state agencies are involved in the dozens of people picked up and secretly detained including the paramilitary organisation, Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), the detective branch of the police, the counter-terrorism unit, the special branch and DGFI. In atleast the case of one detainee, Mir Ahmad Bin Quasem, he was abducted on direct orders of Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Hasina is said to have given Bangladesh's military intelligence agency Directorate General of Forces Intelligence(DGFI) “clearance” to illegally pick up Mir Ahmad, as part of the government's widening crackdown on the country's opposition in 2016.
On August 14, Netra News revealed that Bangladesh officials were allegedly holding and torturing victims of enforced disappearance at a secret detention site called Aynaghar (house of mirrors). It is thought that the military detention centre in the heart of the army cantonment inside Dhaka had detained victims of disappearances including Mir Ahmad Bin Quasem Arman and Abdullahil Aman Azmi. Authorities in Bangladesh often deny the involvement of state agencies in enforced disappearances, and Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal has even told Al Jazeera, “Those who are missing are mostly hiding by themselves,” adding that police have already solved many of the disappeared cases. However, as report, after report, after damning report has concluded, the Bangladeshi government is the sole perpetrator of such enforced disappearances. As per a Human Rights Watch report in 2021, based on over 115 interviews conducted between July 2020 and March 2021 with victims, their family members, and witnesses to enforced disappearances, atleast 86 victims of disappearance still remain missing.
As the tyrant falls, we demand that these victims be immediately released from the secret detention camps of Sheikh Hasina. We also demand that the perpetrators of these human rights abuses, members of RAB, DGFI and the army, as well as Sheikh Hasina herself, face justice for their crimes against humanity.
আয়নাঘর মুক্ত করেন!
Free the prisoners of Aynaghar!
Free victims of #EnforcedDisappearance in #Bangladesh NOW!
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