The present interim government headed by Prof. Muhammad Yunus has taken the monumental step to sign the instrument of accession to the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearances. The historic move came only a day before the observance of the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances. Bangladesh has signed the UN treaty in the backdrop of the brutal manner in which the Sheikh Hasina's government tried to put down student-people uprising that has resulted in the deaths of at least 1,000 people and some 400 people losing their eyesight in one or both eyes. Bangladeshis are only now waking up to the fact that the past regime had used all instruments and institutions available to it including the courts and law enforcement agencies to conduct an illegal war on its people, in the form of enforced disappearances and this has been going on since at least 2010.
The horror stories have begun to emerge as dozens of people have chosen to break the silence of fear and come out in the open. Every day, people are being interviewed on television and other media where they recount how they were picked up without any reason, produced in kangaroo courts and sentenced to disappear in secret prisons for a life of illegal detention and torture. The idea of signing this instrument is to make it increasingly difficult for any future elected government to break the law so easily and perhaps usher in a more humane system of governance where people's rights are not so easily trampled on.
It is the demand of a people to be able to live in a society governed by laws and where human rights stand for something. That is why this signing is being hailed as a historic occasion. For more than a decade the families of those who disappeared have been advocating for news of their loved ones. And now that some of the victims have come out of their illegal incarceration, the demand for an impartial commission to investigate these cases of enforced disappearances is growing stronger. It is a valid demand, for it is a demand for justice. It was not only members of the political opposition who went missing. As the years went by, people were picked up on mere suspicion of belonging to opposition, for holding views that were contrary to the official line or as victims of irking powerful political or business groups. The country had descended into a barbaric state where no one was really safe. The lack of accountability came due to the concentration of overwhelming power in the hands of a few and these people had become judge, jury and sometimes, executioner.
The signing of this convention is certainly a step in the right direction. Now the search for the truth can begin in earnest. Family members and loved ones have been waiting in vain for years and they need closure. Those individuals who served time in secret detention facilities have been humiliated, degraded and deprived of basic rights as human beings and the perpetrators must be brought to justice, no matter how high goes the responsibility. What, however, seems urgent now is the formation of a commission of enquiry so that the task of finding the truth could begin.
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