The Rights and Risk Analysis Group (RRAG) has called on the Global Alliance of the National Human Rights Institutions (GANHRI) to take immediate action to suspend the membership of the National Human Rights Commission of Bangladesh. This urgent plea comes in the wake of the forced resignation of all members of the Commission on November 7, 2024, effectively dissolving the body.
On November 5, 2024, Bangladesh’s National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) released its monthly report for October 2024.
The report detailed a significant increase in various crimes, including mob beatings, rapes, and political harassment. In light of these alarming developments, all members of the NHRC, including Chairman Kamal Uddin Ahmed and five other commissioners, submitted their resignations to the President of Bangladesh.
“Reporting facts has become an offence for the members of the NHRC of Bangladesh and the Interim Government of Bangladesh created an absolutely untenable situation wherein all members of the NHRC were forced to resign. This also means that no independent members of the Commission can be appointed in the future. This action of the Interim government is unprecedented and akin to dissolution of the Independent Human Rights Commission of Afghanistan by the Taliban regime in Afghanistan,” claimed Suhas Chakma, Director of the RRAG.
“The absence of any possibility to appoint any independent members of the NHRC of Bangladesh can also be assessed from the fact that on 10 August 2024, a mob surrounded the Supreme Court of Bangladesh and Chief Justice Obaidul Hassan and five other senior judges of the Supreme Court had to resign,” he said.
Chakma further said, “On 16 October, 12 judges of the High Court were removed from discharging judicial functions after several hundred students under the banner of Anti-Discrimination Student Movement besieged the HC premises seeking their removal. If the judges are not safe under the Interim Government of Bangladesh, there cannot be any safety for the members of the NHRC of Bangladesh.”
The Rights and Risk Analysis Group said that the forced resignation of the NHRC members of Bangladesh implies that victims of human rights violations including women, children, indigenous peoples and religious minorities, have been left to the mercy of the ruling mob without any institutional protection.
The RRAG urged the GANHRI to take decisive action to address this unprecedented situation and suspend the membership of the NHRC of Bangladesh.
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This call follows the actions taken by GANHRI in the past, such as suspending the memberships of the Independent Human Rights Commission of Afghanistan in July 2022 and the Human Rights Commissions of Myanmar, Niger, and the High Commissioner for Human Rights of the Russian Federation in July 2023.
