Shawdesh desk :

High command of Bangladesh Police directed police officers on the ground to shoot on protesters observing CCTV footage during the student-led mass uprising that ousted the Awami League government on August 5 and killed over 834 and injured several thousand.

‘They were ordering someone to shoot in a video game,’ said that report revealed on Monday quoting the police.

The top officials included home minister minister Asaduzzaman Khan, inspector general of police Chowdhury Abdullah Al-Mamun and Dhaka metropolitan police commissioner Habibur Rahman and the deputy commissioners.

Multiple police officers indicated that they believed that directives to use excessive force during the uprising came from political leadership.

The interim government of Bangladesh embarked upon much-needed institutional change and accountability, but recent cases of arbitrary arrests and reprisal violence underscore the need for long-term systemic reforms, said the international non-governmental organisation for human rights.

The 50-page report title ‘After the Monsoon Revolution: A Roadmap to Lasting Security Sector Reform in Bangladesh,’ offers recommendations for systemic reform on separation of powers and ensuring political neutrality across institutions, including the civil service, police, military, and the judiciary.

The recommended for disbanding the Rapid Action Battalion to not only deter future abuses, but also to send a strong message that security forces will no longer be a tool for successive governments to carry out repression.

Since the formation of the RAB in 2004, when the Bangladesh Nationalist Party was in power, the force was allowed to operate with impunity, acting like an in-house death squad.

Headquartered in the New York, the HRW asked the authority to end enforced disappearances and incommunicado detention.

It said that during Sheikh Hasina regime over 1,600 cases of enforced disappearance have been recorded by the new commission of inquiry, with the commission estimating that the number could ultimately be over 3,500.

HRW asked the government to act on the recommendations of the national commission of inquiry, including disbanding the RAB. Instruct security forces to identify secret detention sites, and to not destroy evidence.

It also asked government to publish a list of all recognized places of detention and empower the National Human Rights Commission to carry out unfettered and unannounced access, and to speak confidentially with any individual in the facility.

‘The law ministry should prohibit “enforced disappearance” as a distinct crime under Bangladesh law,’ the release stated.

HRW said that, over the last 15 years, the security forces served as a core component of Sheikh Hasina’s repressive apparatus, systematically targeting members of the opposition, critics, journalists, and human rights activists with trumped up cases, torture, extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrests, and enforced disappearances.