Ex-Bangladeshi PM Sheikh Hasina Accused in Garment Worker Death
Former Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina and 24 others have been named in a murder case filed in Dhaka on Tuesday over the death of a garment worker who was fatally shot earlier this month during the student protests over quotas in government jobs.
Sohel Rana, according to a complaint submitted by the deceased’s brother in the court of Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Sultan Sohag Uddin, was killed in front of Adabor Police Station on Aug. 5 on the orders of the accused.
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“The police, Awami League, Chhatra League, Jubo League and Swechasebak League and other criminals and conflicts implementing the dictator’s agenda began to fire indiscriminately,” the complaint, as obtained by BDNews24, said. “Several people, including the victim, were killed and many were injured in the shootings at the spot. The victim, Sohel Rana, was taken to Shaheed Suhrawardy Hospital, where a doctor declared him dead on arrival.”
Hasina aside, the case accuses Awami League general secretary Obaidul Quader, former Dhaka South City Corporation mayor Sheikh Fazle Noor Taposh, former home minister Md. Asaduzzaman Khan, Bangladesh Chhatra League general secretary Sheikh Wali Asif Inan and former minister of textiles and jute Jahangir Kabir Nanak, among others.
Nearly 650 people have been killed in the weeks-long demonstrations, which began peacefully but quickly spiraled into violence and serious human right violations in the hands of security forces, the United Nations Human Rights Office said in a preliminary assessment that it published last week.
“There are strong indications, warranting further independent investigation, that the security forces used unnecessary and disproportionate force in their response to the situation,” it said. “Alleged violations included extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrests and detention, enforced disappearances, torture and illtreatment, and severe restrictions on exercise of freedoms of expression and peaceful assembly.”
The protests, which evolved into a larger reckoning over shrinking democratic rights in the South Asian nation under Hasina’s Awami League, culminated in her sudden resignation and flight to India on the night of Aug. 5. Her government stepped down at the same time and has since been replaced by interim leadership helmed by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus. The Grameen Bank founder recently met with the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association, which is facing internal turmoil of its own, to urge the trade group to separate business from politics.
Roughly 400 of the deaths took place between July 16 to Aug. 5, the UN said, while another 250 were killed following a fresh wave of protests between Aug. 5-6. The number of reported killings in revenge attacks against members of Hasina’s party since that time still remains to be determined, it added.
While garment worker deaths as a result of the protests have likewise been difficult to quantify, workers’ rights group Garment Sramik Samhati said that at least five of them—Yesmin Chowdhury in Dhaka, Mohammad Rasel in Narayanganj, Mohammad Zaman Mia in Mymensingh, Shuva Shil in Savar and Zakir Hossain at Kapasia in Gazipur—took place in July.
Taslima Akhter, the organization’s president, has called for justice and compensation for the deaths, along with better pay, working conditions and freedom of association. She has also asked Yunus’s caretaker government to withdraw all “false and repressive” cases against garment workers who fought for a higher minimum wage last year.
Rana’s case brings the number of potential charges against the ousted premier to 15. On Tuesday, Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, secretary general of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, asked India to extradite Hasina to face trial, adding that her “fascist rule has weakened Bangladesh’s independence and hindered the country’s progress” for the past 15 years.