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Sheikh Hasina’s crackdown on protests that introduced down her authorities in Bangladesh final yr was marked by systematic assaults and lethal violence and probably constituted “crimes towards humanity”, the UN mentioned.
The Workplace of the United Nations Excessive Commissioner for Human Rights mentioned in a brand new report the brutal response to the protests was a “calculated and well-coordinated technique” by the Hasina authorities to cling on to energy.
It estimated that just about 1,400 individuals have been killed and hundreds injured within the protests between 1 July and 15 August. Ms Hasina fled to India on a army helicopter after the protesters stormed her residence in Dhaka and her Awami League occasion’s authorities collapsed.
The protests began as a motion, led by college students, towards public sector job quotas however shortly morphed right into a nationwide rebellion towards Ms Hasina, who had dominated the nation since 2009.
The previous prime minister and her authorities have since confronted allegations of arbitrarily arresting, torturing, killing and disappearing protesters.
“There are affordable grounds to imagine lots of of extrajudicial killings, intensive arbitrary arrests and detentions, and torture, have been carried out with the data, coordination and course of the political management and senior safety officers as a part of technique to suppress the protests,” UN human rights chief Volker Turk informed a information convention in Geneva.
“The testimonies and proof we gathered paint a disturbing image of rampant state violence and focused killings which might be amongst probably the most severe violations of human rights, and which can additionally represent worldwide crimes.”
The report mentioned the safety forces below Ms Hasina’s authorities have been concerned in intentionally and impermissibly killing or maiming protesters.
It cited the instance of Abu Sayed, a protester who was filmed through the agitation shouting “shoot me” at police together with his arms unfold. Forensic evaluation revealed that he was shot with shotguns loaded with pallets from shut vary, amounting to “deliberate extrajudicial killing by the police”.
“It is a very brutal learn,” Mr Turk mentioned of the brand new report, “78% of the over 1,000 individuals killed was by firing – army rifles, shotguns with pellets.”
Many protesters, he added, suffered “horrific” accidents.
The report got here out of a UN fact-finding mission that visited Bangladesh on the invitation of the interim authorities led by Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus.
The interim authorities in a press release expressed “deep remorse” on the UN report and reiterated its dedication “to prosecute all perpetrators of violence”.
