A now abandoned prison in the capital city of Dhaka. Inside the black steel gates, there are small windowless cells, barely larger than a coffin. There is also another, slightly larger room with a chair with metal bands and a motor underneath, reports Sky News, which has visited the prison. According to former prisoners, they were tortured, bound and spun around at high speed during interrogations in the prison.
Indigenous activist Michael Chakma was forced into a car in 2019. He was taken to a secret detention center where he was interrogated, among other things, about his critical stance towards Sheikh Hasina and her Awami Party.
He was imprisoned for over five years and describes, among other things, how a prison guard threatened him with electric shocks and death if he did not cooperate. His relatives, who did not know what had happened to him, gave up hope and held a funeral. After Sheikh Hasina was ousted in August last year, Michael Chakma was taken out into a forest and was then free.
I saw the world again, he says to Sky News and wipes away tears.
He still suffers from panic attacks and nightmares.
"Concrete evidence"
According to Chief Prosecutor Tajul Islam at the Bangladeshi court ICT, there is concrete evidence that former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina herself directly ordered abductions.
During her second term in power, between 2009 and 2024, she set up secret prisons to crack down on political opponents, according to investigators. According to estimates, there may be up to 800 prisons that, according to prosecutors, were run by the country's various security and elite forces.
In August, the new government set up a committee to investigate enforced disappearances. So far, 1,700 reports have been received, but investigators believe there may be up to 3,500 victims.
"Strategy"
In violent crackdowns on student-led protests against Sheikh Hasina's regime last year, around 1,400 people were killed, according to the UN. In a report, signs of large-scale abuse are documented.
"There are reasonable grounds to believe that hundreds of extrajudicial killings, widespread arbitrary arrests and detentions, and torture were committed with the knowledge, coordination, and leadership of the political leadership and higher security officials as part of a strategy to suppress the protests," said UN human rights chief Volker Türk in a press release when the report was published in February.
In early August, Sheikh Hasina fled to India, where she is now in exile.
Bangladesh gained independence from Pakistan in 1971, after a bloody liberation war. The country is one of the most populous in the world with 163 million inhabitants.
The original constitution from 1972 guarantees human rights and freedoms, including religious freedom. It stated that the country is based on four pillars: nationalism, secularism, democracy, and socialism. Both democracy and the secular state were undermined in the 1970s. General elections were reintroduced in 1991, and according to a five-year-old constitutional amendment, the four fundamental principles still apply.
The government that was ousted in August restricted the opposition's and regime-critical media's opportunities to operate, mainly through harassment and by exploiting the legal system.
