Bangladesh seeks return to rule of law after hundreds die in unrest
Students protesting to reform the quota system for government jobs in 2018. Rahat Chowdhury/Wikimedia Commons
Bangladesh is regaining its political and social footing after a month of protests, resignations and killings. Unrest began in early July and ended with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina fleeing the country at the start of August. According to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), nearly 650 people were killed during the unrest.
In June, a court ruled that a quota system that would reserve 30 per cent of government jobs for the descendants of those who fought for Bangladesh’s independence in 1971 should be reintroduced. The quota system was abolished in 2018, and its return sparked protests by students, who called for reforms.
The students claimed the quota system was biased toward loyalists belonging to the ruling Awami League political party. They demanded instead that 94 per cent of such jobs be awarded based on a merit system, rather than the 50 per cent proposed by the quota system. Awami League supporters took to the streets and clashed with the protestors, plunging the country into chaos.
The government instructed armed police to intervene, leading to student protests being fired upon, despite the right to assemble and to participate in public meetings and processions peacefully being enshrined in the country’s constitution.
[The unrest] stopped being about the quota and even though a few days later the government conceded to the initial demands and accepted the reforms, it was too late
Saqeb Mahbub
Professional Wellbeing Commission Liaison Officer, IBA Asia Pacific Regional Forum
‘That was when the adults joined the students’, says Saqeb Mahbub, Professional Wellbeing Commission Liaison Officer on the IBA Asia Pacific Regional Forum and a partner at Mahbub & Company law firm in Dhaka. ‘It stopped being about the quota and even though a few days later the government conceded to the initial demands and accepted the reforms, it was too late.’
The student protestors then shifted their demands and called for cabinet and Supreme Court resignations, a public apology from then-Prime Minister Hasina and trials for those members of the police alleged to have killed protestors.
As the fighting intensified, Hasina fled the country on 5 August. Muhammad Yunus, joint winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006, has now been installed as Chief Adviser of Bangladesh in the interim, while personnel in other notable positions, such as the Chief Justice, the Inspector General of Bangladesh Police and the Governor of Bangladesh Bank have been replaced – a development many hope will signal a move towards democracy. ‘Now we are in a revolutionary government situation’, says Mahbub.
Since she came to power in 2009, Hasina had used the courts, the intelligence services and the police to suppress opposition, protestors and human rights activists, says Mubashar Hasan, a Bangladeshi political analyst. Over 2,500 people are thought to have been extrajudicially killed between 2009 and 2022, according to research by Bangladeshi human rights defenders, collated by the Australia-based Capital Punishment Justice Project. Meanwhile, in January the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party claimed that over 20,000 of its members had been arrested in the prior months, though this figure was disputed by Hasina’s government. The cybersecurity law passed in autumn 2023 only served to further silence dissent, says Ali Riaz, a Bangladeshi political scientist and author. The law, he explains, created a ‘culture of fear’.
As a result, the civil liberties monitor CIVICUS downgraded Bangladesh’s civic space rating to ‘closed’ in December 2023. ‘For many years, law enforcement officials in Bangladesh have been allowed to deploy both force and firearms against protesters without any form of accountability’, says Josef Benedict, a researcher covering the Asia Pacific region at CIVICUS.
The OHCHR has prepared a preliminary overview of key human rights violations and concerns observed in connection with recent events in Bangladesh, which was published in mid-August. The OHCHR has declared that there are ‘strong indications, warranting further independent investigation, that the security forces used unnecessary and disproportionate force in their response to the situation’. Benedict says that ‘the use of force by the Bangladeshi police against protesters is similar to patterns we see in countries around the world that are repressive and where human rights and the rule of law are not protected’.
The UN Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials state that any use of force must be guided by the principles of legality, necessity, proportionality and accountability and that non-violent means must be used before resorting to physical force and firearms. ‘They may use force and firearms only if other means remain ineffective or without any promise of achieving the intended result’, says Benedict. He adds that law enforcement officials are only allowed to put life at risk if it’s for the purpose of saving or protecting another life.
That unrest is managed by the authorities according to such principles is particularly crucial as, according to the Global Protest Tracker, new protests began in 83 countries and global peacefulness declined for the 15th consecutive year in 2023. Meanwhile, in the context of what it terms an unprecedented ‘super-cycle’ of elections, business insurer Allianz Commercial highlighted in a recent report that ‘security is a concern in many territories, not only from the threat of localised unrest but because of the wider-reaching consequences of electoral outcomes on foreign policy, trade relations, and supply chains’.
Amnesty International has launched a global campaign to protect the right to protest and demand accountability when that right is breached. Its researcher on military, security and policing issues, Patrick Wilcken, has reminded all states that they have a duty ‘to respect, protect and facilitate’ the right to protest.
With new leaders at the helm, the hope is that calm will be restored within Bangladesh and that reform of the country’s security forces and judiciary will make the country more democratic. In a public statement in August, Yunus said that Hasina’s ‘dictatorship’ had ‘destroyed every institution of the country’ and that he would work to promote national reconciliation. ‘To say Bangladesh is at a crossroads is an understatement’, says Riaz. The next step, he believes, will be to overhaul the judicial system to safeguard the rule of law.
For Mahbub, lawyers and the government should work with the public to re-develop a culture of constitutionalism in Bangladesh. Meanwhile, Hasan calls on lawyers to help Bangladeshi activists in holding those who have threatened their human rights to account. ‘They should make sure laws are properly followed and things are done by the book’, he says. ‘They need to organise themselves to uphold the rule of law.’