Amnesty International Secretary General Agnès Callamard has strongly condemned Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s refusal to uphold international human rights obligations, despite repeated calls from global organisations.

In an open letter issued on Tuesday, Callamard highlighted the recent deadly crackdown on student protests, emphasizing the broader context of increasing intolerance and suppression of dissent in Bangladesh. She criticized the use of repressive legislation, such as the Digital Security Act 2018 and the nearly identical Cyber Security Act 2023, to target dissent and criticism of the government, including by journalists, human rights defenders, and activists.

Several INGOs, including Amnesty International, and UN bodies, such as the OHCHR and UN Special Procedures, have called for the government to respect, protect, and fulfill the rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly, and to adopt a rights-respecting approach in the policing of protests.

“Despite these calls, Bangladesh has repeatedly shown an unwillingness to uphold its international human rights obligations and has failed to take any meaningful action to end the violence,” Callamard stated.

Expressing grave concern over the recent violent crackdowns on the ongoing ‘Bangla-Blockade’ quota-reform protests, she urged Hasina to take urgent and concrete action to end the violence and ensure justice and accountability for the deaths of over 200 people during the protests.

Callamard pointed out that the death figure provided by the government is far from the real number, making it one of the deadliest crackdowns on protests in Bangladesh’s history. She noted the extensive deployment of the Bangladesh Police, Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), Border Guards Bangladesh (BGB), and the Bangladesh Military to quell the protests. “The high death toll is a shocking indictment of the absolute intolerance shown by the Bangladeshi authorities to protest and dissent. The unlawful use of force, including lethal force, against protesters shows the authorities’ callous disregard for the right to life and an abject failure by law enforcement officials to uphold their obligations under domestic and international human rights law,” she said.

Amnesty International has monitored and documented the grave human rights violations committed by the authorities during the policing of protests over the past 10 days. On two separate occasions, Amnesty International verified evidence confirming the unlawful use of lethal and less-lethal weapons against student protesters amid six days of communication restrictions. “Our findings point to unlawful use of birdshot against student protesters, dangerous use of tear gas in enclosed student spaces, and unrestrained use of lethal firearms, such as AK-pattern assault rifles, by security forces,” Callamard reported.

She also highlighted the violence unleashed by the Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL), the student wing of the ruling party, first against unarmed and peaceful student protesters at the University of Dhaka and then against students receiving medical treatment at the Dhaka Medical College Hospital.

At midnight on Friday, July 19, 2024, police in Bangladesh were granted “shoot-on-sight” orders, and a nationwide curfew was imposed. “The arbitrary imposition of a total shutdown of the internet across the country, a blanket ban on protests in Dhaka followed by a shoot-on-sight curfew across the country marked an unprecedented clampdown on the rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly. Such blanket restrictions violated Bangladesh’s international obligations as a state party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,” Callamard said.

“The blanket shutdowns impacted people’s safety, security, mobility, and livelihoods while creating instability and panic, further undermining their trust in authorities. Such bans also restrict organizations from conducting human rights monitoring at precisely the time when people are most at risk.”