Saad Hammadi is the policy and advocacy manager at the Balsillie School of International Affairs.
The deaths and violence that have followed the student uprising in Bangladesh last week, carried out by or with the support of the state apparatus, demand an international inquiry. Proponents of international human rights, including Canada, must rise to this urgent moment and do what is necessary. Not doing so would bury their humanity and moral conscience – which, unfortunately, many nations have chosen to do with other states that have committed such violations.
Bangladeshis have been left traumatized by the lethal shots fired at students, who are in so many ways the lifeblood of the country. Nearly 200 people have been killed and thousands more injured, according to news reports, and many have been tortured and taken into unlawful detention. Authorities enforced a near-total communications blackout by taking internet networks down; government ministers claimed that the disruption came from miscreants burning down fibre-optic cables, but , the country’s largest private telecom operator, disclosed that “the local authorities ordered the shutdown.” The government also deployed the armed forces while imposing a curfew, and even gave a shoot-on-sight order to the security forces, claiming they were a necessary response to tackle violence.
This all could have been avoided, had the government showed empathy and been responsive to the students’ concerns about the return of a job-quota system, initially scrapped in 2018, that has created a political class and hierarchy in the country by reserving as many as 30 per cent of public-service jobs for descendants of the veterans of Bangladesh’s 1971 war for independence. But the uprising reflects more than just resentment about a recruitment system; it is the outcome of years of frustration against tyrannical rule that has given rise to youth unemployment, high inflation, corruption and injustice. The authorities owe an explanation about how a student protest that has been peaceful for the most part escalated into violence.
Indeed, what transpired during the communication disruption was an escalation of brute force. Video evidence verified by Amnesty International reveals that the police carried a student’s body on top of an armoured personnel carrier and dumped it on the road; the man was later confirmed dead. Nahid Islam, a Dhaka University student and one of the protest’s main organizers, says he was picked up by security forces, tortured, and left unconscious on the street. The country’s police shot to death a student who bravely stood in front of them, stretching his arms wide open without posing any harm; his killing has become a heroic representation of the students’ call for justice. The authorities cannot be allowed to get away with carrying out extrajudicial executions in any circumstances, including the audacity of doing so brazenly in broad daylight.
An important step forward would be for Canada to press for an international commission of inquiry, established by the United Nations Human Rights Council, to investigate these violations. Canada is well-placed to work with other countries, including within the Commonwealth, to demand that there be accountability for what is transpiring in Bangladesh – and it is vital to do so now, before things spiral even further out of control.
What is happening there cannot be dismissed as the internal affairs of a sovereign country. This madness is the reflection of the cruel Pandora’s box that the international community has opened by consistently undermining vital international laws and mechanisms intended to rigorously prevent or respond to grave human rights violations. The lack of consequences for plausible genocide in Gaza, or for the widespread war crimes associated with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, has given authoritarian regimes free rein to unleash the full force of repression if that is what they decide it takes to maintain power.
Parliamentarians in countries that champion human rights have a responsibility to call out rights-violating governments and hold them accountable. The Canada-Bangladesh Parliamentary Friendship Group – a body that was formed to foster and strengthen Canada’s relationship with Bangladesh – could do just that. In January, the group lauded Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina for winning her fifth term in office, despite global concerns about fairness in that election. The group must now take note of Bangladesh’s serious human-rights failures – not just this past week, but over the past decade.
It would be a disgrace for states to let the horrific history of crimes against humanity play out again and again. Measures penalizing human-rights violations should be non-negotiable. Instead, we continue to live in a world in which those with more economic and political capital appear to enjoy impunity. As a believer in the global jurisdiction for universal human rights, I wish that some states will prove my grim assessment wrong and do the right thing.