Picture above – protest in Lalmonirhat, August 2024
General risks from political instability
Evidence cited in the CPIN
- According to the Crisis Group report from November 2024, which is cited at 9.2.5, many civilians are at risk of arbitrary arrest for the settling of political rivalries:1
- “Under Bangladeshi law, police have an obligation to accept criminal complaints from members of the public, and there are few limits on who can be named in these complaints. For serious offences, police can arrest the accused without a warrant – a power that has been widely misused in the past, particularly to target the political opposition. Hundreds of people connected to Hasina’s administration, including ministers and parliamentarians, have already been arrested on alleged links to the July-August violence, despite often not being present when the alleged incidents occurred. Judges hearing the cases have remanded most of them to custody. As of late September, more than 200 cases of murder and attempted murder had been filed against Hasina alone; many senior officials from her administration are facing similar charges.”
- “The process is open to abuse, and allegations have surfaced that it is being used to settle political scores well beyond the elite. Some complaints list hundreds of defendants, many of them unidentified. In one case, a lawyer who had criticised the interim government on Facebook was named in a murder complaint filed with police, despite the complainant apparently having no idea who he is; the complaint was reportedly prepared with the help of lawyers from the BNP and Jamaat. ‘Lots of people named in these cases have no connection to the incident’, said a legal expert involved in the process. ‘It’s causing fear and anxiety. … People think they are going to be arrested any minute’. While these cases are widely seen as flawed, the interim government has no power to block them without first abrogating legal rights and practices that were established during the colonial period and have become ingrained.”
- According to an article from News 18 cited in 11.4.5 of the CPIN, there are increasing tensions between different elements within the government, with the Students Against Discrimination movement perceiving the alleged opportunism of the BNP and Jamaat-e-Islami as a “betrayal”. This implies future unrest and instability when …
1 ‘A New Era in Bangladesh? The First Hundred Days of Reform’, International Crisis Group, 14 November 2024. https://www.crisisgroup.org/asia/south-asia/bangladesh/344-new-era-bangladesh-first-hundred-days-reform?utm_source=mailchimp&utm_medium=email
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