THE country’s new government may have won power promising to end political violence, but six months after Prime Minister Tarique Rahman took office, the killings continue.
Rahman, who leads the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), pledged during February’s elections to end the state-backed violence that marked Sheikh Hasina’s rule before her ouster in the 2024 revolution.
Rights groups say political rivalries, weak law enforcement and a culture of impunity are driving continued violence after the elections brought Bangladesh’s first elected government to power since the uprising.
Prominent rights organisation Ain o Salish Kendra (ASK) recorded at least 66 politically related killings, along with 61 deaths in police custody, 11 extrajudicial killings and other alleged human rights abuses over the last six months.
“Deaths in jail and police custody appear to be rising,” ASK senior official Abu Ahmed Faijul Kabir said.
The government disputes that. It insists the situation is improving and argues that the increase in reported killings reflects historic cases because surviving relatives only now feel secure enough to report them to police.
“After the current government assumed office, we are in a historically-improved position on most indicators,” Home Minister Salahuddin Ahmed told parliament in late June.
Others tell a different story.
In June, 17-year-old Mohammed Suman joined a rally held by Hasina’s Awami League.
The rally was banned – Hasina is a convicted fugitive hiding in neighbouring India and facing a death sentence in absentia – and Suman vanished.
Three days later, police recovered the teenager’s rotting corpse from the Turag River in Dhaka, along with two other bodies.
Suman’s family said they pieced together what happened from friends, who said police and a mob broke up a flash Awami League rally, forcing them to flee by boat across the river.
Police have denied accusations of brutality and said that there was “no incident” of killing.
“If the government wants to remain popular, it should ensure the rule of law -- regardless of the identity of the perpetrators,” said Muhammad Sazzad Hossain Siddiqui, a professor of peace and conflict studies at the University of Dhaka.
Siddiqui said periods of political transition typically trigger violence from two groups -- those seeking to reclaim lucrative illicit income streams from rivals and those competing for local dominance.
When such violence goes unchecked or perpetrators act with impunity, he said, the cycle of bloodshed becomes self-perpetuating.
“That is exactly what we are witnessing now,” he said. — AFP
