New Delhi: Bangladesh will pursue its charges of crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court (ICC) against former prime minister Sheikh Hasina over the “massacre” that took place during the student-led protests earlier this year, which ultimately brought down her Awami League government, as well as “thousands of cases of enforced disappearances during her nearly 16 years of long stay in power”.
A statement to this effect was put up on Facebook Thursday by the interim government’s chief adviser, Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus.
Yunus had raised the issue of investigating Hasina’s alleged crimes with ICC Prosecutor Karim A.A. Khan during a meeting between the two Wednesday. Khan, who is on a visit to Bangladesh as part of his office’s probe into crimes committed against the Rohingyas, called on Yunus in Dhaka.
The Bangladesh government’s readout further said: “The ICC prosecutor has said they would like to extend cooperation to the International Crimes Tribunal, the Bangladesh court, which has issued an arrest warrant against Sheikh Hasina and members of her political party.”
Meanwhile, on the Rohingya matter, Khan said his office would file an application for a warrant against Min Aung Hlaing, the acting president of Myanmar, for crimes against humanity in connection with the expulsion and persecution the community between August and December 2017. The investigation began in 2022, when Khan met Hasina, who was then prime minister.
Hasina was ousted on 5 August, after two months of student-led protests over a controversial government quota system that favoured family members of veterans from the 1971 Liberation War, led by Hasina’s father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. This system, detractors said, would strengthen Hasina’s hold over the government cadre.
The 30 percent quota, instituted after the formation of Bangladesh, had initially been scrapped by Hasina’s government in 2018 following an outcry. But in June, the Bangladesh High Court brought it back, which triggered raging protests across the country. Hasina’s attempts to suppress the protests with force, coupled with wide-scale dissatisfaction with her regime, catapulted the unrest to a ferocious call for her eviction.
According to the interim government, at least 753 Bangladeshis lost their lives due to the actions of Hasina’s government during the July-August clashes.
The government has also filed a number of cases against Hasina and senior Awami League leaders at the country’s International Crimes Tribunal (ICT), which was originally set up by Hasina in 2009 to investigate and prosecute those suspected of acts of genocide during the 1971 war.
The ICT issued an arrest warrant for Hasina on 17 October.
Bangladesh is the only South Asian country that has ratified the Rome Statute and, therefore, is a party to the ICC. Dhaka signed the treaty in 1999 and deposited its instrument of ratification in 2010, when Hasina was prime minister.
(Edited by Tikli Basu)
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