UN report on Bangladesh’s 2024 protests ‘highly inaccurate’: Former PM Sheikh Hasina’s lawyer

London: Former Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s legal counsel has written to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk, raising serious concerns about the UN Fact-Finding Report published on February 12 last year regarding Bangladesh 2024 protests, calling the findings “highly inaccurate”.

In his letter addressed to Turk, Steven Powles said that it had also emerged from official records of the former Muhammad Yunus-led interim government that the UN report titled ‘Human Rights Violations and Abuses related to the Protests of July and August 2024 in Bangladesh’, contained inaccuracies, particularly its conclusion that 1,400 protesters were killed during the unrest.

He further accused the interim government of circulating “false and inflammatory information” to justify the violent overthrow of the Hasina-led Awami League government.

Powles cited the official gazette of the interim government, which documented that the number of casualties was closer to 834, or close to half the figure recorded in the UN report. He argued that even the figure of 834 cannot be relied on because of the “political motivations” of the interim government.

“It is of serious concern that a UN report has arrived at a conclusion that diverges so far from the truth. It puts into question the credibility of the fact-finding process and sets a disturbing precedent for the use of such erroneous findings for incitement and legitimisation of political violence. Accordingly, it is respectfully requested that your Office issue a correction and public retraction to set the record straight,” the letter stated.

According to Powles, the extent to which the OHCHR fact-finding mission to Bangladesh was under the influence of the interim government raises questions about the “impartiality and independence” of the UN report – given the circumstances where the political opponents of Hasina evidently played a dominant role in facilitating the process.

“A further concern, as acknowledged by the Report itself, is the temporal time frame of the fact-finding process, limited to alleged abuses between ‘1 July and 15 August 2024’. This plainly prevented the OHCHR from investigating ongoing abuses committed by the interim government itself – including widespread violence against elected members of the Awami League and religious minorities – while echoing the false accusations that allowed it to usurp power through unconstitutional means,” the letter added.

Highlighting what he described as “obvious and significant error” in the number of reported casualties in the UN report, Powles urged that OHCHR to issue a public retraction and correction regarding the claim that 1,400 protestors were killed, stressing the need to preserve the integrity of the fact-finding process.

He said that such a step is necessary to ensure that the UN does not become an “instrument for perpetuating a false narrative” by “misrepresenting the true picture” of what actually happened in Bangladesh during the July-August 2024 protests.

IANS