Up to 1,400 killed in Bangladesh protests crackdown - UN

DHAKA, Bangladesh

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said on Wednesday that officials from Bangladesh's former government systematically committed serious human rights violations as they tried to suppress protests that ultimately toppled Sheikh Hasina's government last year. 

Protesters stormed Hasina's palace in Dhaka on August 5, after she had fled the country

Presenting results from a fact-finding mission, Turk also told reporters in Geneva that crimes against humanity may have been carried out.

The report included testimony from senior Bangladesh officials and other evidence showing an official policy to attack and violently repress anti-government protesters and sympathizers. 

"It's a very brutal read; 78% of the over 1,000 people killed was by firing — military rifles, shotguns with pellets," Turk told Reuters news agency when asked for some of the worst examples from the report. Others suffered "horrific," life-changing injuries, he said.

"Top echelons of the previous government were aware and were involved in the commission of very serious violations, including enforced disappearances, arbitrary detentions and suppression of the protests through violence," he told reporters in Switzerland.

Citing "various credible sources," the report estimated that up to 1,400 people might have been killed in the crackdown.

Hasina was in power from 1996 to 2001 and from 2009 to August 5, 2024. Her father, the country's founding president after independence from Pakistan, was assassinated in 1975. 

The protests began as a student-led movement against public sector job quotas but quickly morphed into a broader, nationwide uprising that forced her to resign and flee to India as the unrest peaked in early August.

The new government in Dhaka, led by Muhammad Yunus, has asked Delhi to extradite her. She is being investigated on suspicion of crimes against humanity, genocide, murder, corruption, and money laundering. 

Hasina and her Awami League party deny any wrongdoing. New Delhi, with close and longstanding ties to the Hasina family deemed friendly to Bangladesh's minority Hindu population, is yet to respond the extradition request. Hasina has shown little sign of remorse and little intent to take a back seat in exile. 

Bangladesh's new government has been struggling to contain protests by Hasina supporters recently, making many arrests itself.

The interim government in Dhaka expressed "deep regret" at the findings of the UN report on Wednesday, and said it planned "to prosecute all perpetrators of violence." 

"I call on everyone working inside these institutions to side with justice, the law, and the people of Bangladesh in holding to account their own peers and others who have broken the law and violated the human and civil rights of their fellow citizens," Nobel laureate Yunus said in a statement issued after the report's release.

The UN fact-finding mission visited Bangladesh at the behest of Yunus' administration. 

The report also said more than 11,700 people were detained during the crackdown. 

It estimated that between 12-13% of those killed were minors. 

In some cases, "security forces engaged in summary executions by deliberately shooting unarmed protesters at point blank range," it said.