DHAKA: Bangladeshi indigenous rights activist Michael Chakma says his captors woke him earlier this month in the dark, small cell where he was being held and threw him into a car, handcuffed and blindfolded.
“I thought they were going to kill me,” he said. But instead, they released him.
It was five years, Chakma said. Reuterssince he was kidnapped by gunmen outside a bank near the capital, Dhaka. Since then, he said, the outside world did not know where he was or whether he was alive.
He was interrogated about his opposition to then-Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and beaten for weeks, he said, but then left alone in one of what he said were “hundreds” of sunlight-free cells at an undisclosed detention center.
Hasina had ruled the South Asian nation of 200 million people for the past 15 years, marked by arrests of opposition leaders, a crackdown on free speech and suppression of dissent, and resigned this month in the face of deadly student-led protests that killed hundreds of people.
Investigations into how hundreds of people were “disappeared” – and some executed – during his rule are a priority for the interim government led by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus.
Human Rights Watch said in a 2021 report that, according to Bangladeshi human rights groups, nearly 600 people have been forcibly “disappeared” by security forces since 2009.
There were 86 cases of forced disappearances, in which the fate of the victims is unknown. Others were released, appeared to be detained or were found dead, he said.
The rights group and activists say the victims were held in different detention centres across the country and any involvement by the military, paramilitaries or police could pose a challenge to the interim government's investigations.
Spokesmen for the Bangladesh military and police did not respond to requests for comment.
Hasina, who lives in an undisclosed location near the Indian capital New Delhi, could not be reached for comment. Her son Sajeeb Wazed, who lives in the United States and has spoken on her behalf, did not respond to questions about the allegations.
The government has formed a five-member commission, headed by a former Supreme Court judge, to investigate the disappearances.
“There are concerns that the perpetrators may try to cover up their crimes,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “As a first step, security forces should release all those missing or, if they were killed in custody, provide answers to the families.”
