Quarterly Human Rights Monitoring Report on Bangladesh

Reporting Period: July – September 2019

This report is based on the human rights situation in Bangladesh from July to September 2019. The human rights situation continued to remain grave during the reporting period. The Awami League government, which came to power without the people’s vote, has systematically transformed several important state institutions into subservient institutions and introduced a culture of fear in the country through authoritarian rule. Incidents of violence against women, extrajudicial killings and public lynching have drastically increased in the last three months. It has been alleged that members of law enforcement agencies have committed extrajudicial killings without lawful arrest or investigation and ignoring due process of law.

Extrajudicial killings have become widespread since the government launched a nationwide ‘anti-narcotics operation’ from 15 May 2018. Many allegedly innocent people are being harassed in the name of this operation. Acts of extortion, by intimidating people in ‘crossfire’ or tagging them in criminal cases and incidents of orchestrated ‘gunfight’, are occurring. In addition, there have been allegations of extrajudicial killings to spare the main culprit associated with the incident. Members of these forces have increasingly been using law enforcement to suppress political opponents.

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