Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia Director, Human Rights Watch
Many attending the vigil at London’s Trafalgar Square
following the Dhaka attack were more than a little red-eyed with despair. All
of us who had worked in the country watched the grim hostage crisis play out in
a city so familiar, at a restaurant many of us had frequented. By the time
security forces stormed in—killing most of the gunmen—21 hostages and two
police officers were dead.
At the gathering, most talked about Faraz Hossain, a young
Bangladeshi man who the attackers allegedly offered freedom. He chose not to
leave because they had refused to release his two friends, non-Bangladeshi
women. People spoke of the choices young people make, contrasting Faraz with
the attackers, also men in their twenties, who too belonged to affluent
Bangladeshi families. They chose instead to carry out a massacre.
Though there is no evidence at this point that the Islamic
State was involved in ordering or assisting in this latest massacre, the
organization has claimed responsibility for the attack. ISIL is always happy to
embrace those who say they carried out such senseless acts of violence on its
behalf. The Bangladeshi government denies any links to ISIL, however. “They are
members of the Jamaeytul Mujahdeen Bangladesh,” or JMB, home minister
Asaduzzaman Khan has stated, referring to a domestic militant group. “They have
no connections with the [Islamic State].”
Unfortunately, many in Bangladesh and abroad find it just as
hard to have faith in government assertions. Bangladesh has been locked in a
bitter dispute between the ruling Awami League party and two opposition groups,
the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and the Jamaat-e-Islami. Violence has
broken out at opposition street protests, while the government responded with
arrests, enforced disappearances, and extrajudicial killings.
Prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s government has been in denial
about the possibility of international involvement in attacks over the past two
years on bloggers, secularists, academics, and members of the LGBTQ community,
among others, apparently unwilling to envision any threat other than that from
the political opposition.
This blinkered approach has meant that the government has
simply stood by as assaults by Islamist groups escalate, from machete attacks
on bloggers to the latest hostage situation. It led officials to effectively
blame the victims by recommending that writers engage in self-censorship in
order to avoid offending extremist Muslims. The attacks became more frequent in
recent months, with religious minorities targeted, as well as gay-rights
activists.
Until the wife of a police officer was killed, the
government did little to investigate the attacks or to identify and prosecute
the perpetrators. Under international pressure following the killing of two
gay-rights activists, the government randomly arrested over 15,000 people, many
of them suspected supporters of the opposition, particularly
madrassa-affiliated members of Jamaat’s student wing. Several of them were
members of the JMB, the authorities said, a group which has been banned for
more than a decade and yet is now suspected by the government to be behind the Dhaka
attack.
A few of the attackers who were caught after allegedly
committing the machete attacks mysteriously died while in the custody of
security forces. Bangladeshi security forces are notorious for extrajudicial
executions popularly known as “crossfire killings,” which they falsely claim
are carried out in self-defense when security forces return the alleged suspect
to the scene of the crime. Even senior members of the police admit these
executions are routine, yet they have persisted under Awami League and BNP
governments alike, leading to a vicious circle between the government of the
day and opponents.
It is into this space that organized violence has grown and
spread.
At the vigil, people wondered if the truth would ever come
out. Who organized these killings? How did the killers become radicalized? And
how will it end? Will the country’s political leaders finally unite to address
the threat of violent crime by fundamentalists that afflicts people across
party lines?
What is needed now is responsible, rights-respecting
governance, proper investigations, and an end to political mudslinging. Do
Sheikh Hasina and Bangladesh’s other leaders have the political courage to put
their country and people ahead of their personal and party self-interest? Thus
far, the indications are not encouraging.
Governments with strong ties to Bangladesh—and especially
those with a history of bilateral cooperation and technical trainings,
including to security forces—need to speak up now. The United States, the
United Kingdom, and India, to start. It is time encourage the Bangladeshi
government to adopt human rights-respecting strategies to address these
terrible attacks, and to prevent future ones.
Time is running out. On July 8, three people were killed at
a Bangladesh checkpoint when gunmen carrying bombs tried to attack a gathering
to mark the Muslim Eid holiday.
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