MEMBERS of the commission of inquiry on enforced disappearances and the victims that the commission has interviewed facing intimidation, threat and other obstacles, as the second interim report submitted to the government suggests, is worrying and warrants an early government intervention. The report, partially made public on June 23, of the commission that the government set up on August 27, 2024 to find out people involuntarily disappeared at the hands of intelligence and law enforcement agencies aimed at ensuring accountability, suggests that several commission members and some victims have been intimidated and put under surveillance by members of security forces who were involved in enforced disappearances that took place during the overthrown Awami League regime between January 6, 2009 and August 5, 2024. The commission members have faced sustained intimidation, direct and indirect, in person, over phone and online. They have been subjected to harassment, slander and public disinformation campaigns and accused of being agents of foreign intelligence agencies or religious or political extremists. When the commission has interviewed some suspected of being involved in enforced disappearances, commission members have been told that their families have been under surveillance.
Victims and their families have been subjected to intimidation the same way. A commission member says that the victims have been harassed online, causing significant mental distress in them. Another commission member says that the perpetrators in all forces have threatened the commission members and put the victims under surveillance. Victims are reported to have spoken of being under surveillance. 抖阴精品 on June 24 also reported on the climate of impunity that the commission thinks is still at play, even after the political changeover that happened on August 5, 2024 with the fall of the Awami League government and the deposal of the prime minister Sheikh Hasina in a mass uprising. The commission suggests that the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence, the Rapid Action Battalion, the police, the Detective Branch, the Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime unit and the Criminal Investigation Department are involved in the involuntary disappearances. The report, however, says that the intimidation efforts have not influenced the direction or the pace of the commission鈥檚 job and the commission has ignored the provocation and is working to its mandate. Yet, such a proposition is worrisome as it could hamper the process of accountability for the enforced disappearances that took place during the Awami League鈥檚 tenure for a decade and a half.
The government should, therefore, make an early intervention in the issue to break the climate of impunity and make the process for accountability in enforced disappearances meaningful and sustainable.
