Draft disappearance law may leave security officers vulnerable, rights experts warn

The proposed law on enforced disappearances could ultimately leave the very security officers it seeks to protect vulnerable to prosecution, a former member of the country’s disappearance inquiry commission has warned, arguing that restricting independent investigations will neither erase evidence nor guarantee immunity when political power changes.

Dr Nabila Idris, a former member of the National Human Rights Commission and the Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances, said the proposed legislation was part of a broader pattern of curtailing independent scrutiny of the security forces.

“We see the government moving in the same direction: the independent power to investigate security forces is repeatedly being curtailed,” she said. “If you see the same thing happening in all three bills, you are compelled to question what is behind this.”

Idris was speaking at a roundtable in Dhaka on Tuesday organised by the National Citizens Party’s Reform Implementation Committee on the draft National Human Rights Commission Act, 2026 and the draft Prevention of Enforced Disappearance Act, 2026.

The discussion brought together lawyers, academics, rights activists and political figures to assess whether the proposed laws reflect the institutional reforms expected after the July-August 2024 uprising.

Idris said the issue was particularly serious given the record of Bangladesh’s law enforcement agencies over the past 15 to 17 years, questioning why investigative powers were being restricted when security forces had been implicated in some of the country’s gravest human rights violations.

One argument, she said, was that the laws were being designed to protect law-enforcement personnel involved in sensitive operations. Such operations could involve important state interests, according to that reasoning, and officers taking part should not face difficulties or unfair treatment because of their role.

Idris challenged that argument, citing the history of crossfire killings.

Crossfire began during the previous BNP-Jamaat government, she said. For years, members of the forces effectively operated with an assurance that if they committed a crime, a judicial inquiry would follow and the matter would be legitimised, with little expectation that anyone would come to arrest them.

That assurance did not ultimately protect them, Idris said, pointing to the killing of Ekram, in which arrests were eventually made years after the practice of crossfire began.

“So this idea that simply stopping investigations will protect them is not true,” she said.

Idris also rejected the assumption that evidence of enforced disappearances necessarily vanishes with time.

She described a case in which investigators initially had little more than the recollection of a person who said that, about 12 years earlier, he had been taken on an operation during which several people were shot dead.

The witness could not remember the exact date. He did, however, remember that an officer had been posted out of his battalion the following day.

Investigators obtained the officer’s posting order, which provided them with a date. They then searched for bodies recovered along the relevant route during the following week and eventually found witnesses and unidentified bodies linked to the case.

“A small piece of information, a small clue, can allow you to uncover a great deal,” Idris said.

Delaying or limiting investigations, she argued, would therefore not necessarily shield officers from future prosecution. Instead, officers serving the current government could become particularly vulnerable once political power changes.

Idris said legitimate security concerns could be addressed without sacrificing independent investigations.

Other countries, she said, have mechanisms for dealing with sensitive operations without eliminating independent oversight, including specialised courts or procedures involving personnel with the necessary security clearance. Such arrangements allow sensitive cases to be handled by authorised bodies while keeping the process within the law.

Bangladesh could establish a similar mechanism rather than creating a legal grey area around law-enforcement operations, she said.

“If you ultimately want to resolve this problem, do not weaken these laws. Keep the power of independent investigation,” Idris said. “If you want to address the special cases, enact a separate law that creates special safeguards. That is how you can genuinely protect law enforcement officers.”

The concern over independent investigations was echoed by Barrister Tanim Hossain Shams, a former member of the Judicial Reform Commission.

Shams said the core purpose of a disappearance law should be deterrence — making law-enforcement personnel believe that committing an enforced disappearance carries a genuine possibility of investigation and accountability.

Under the proposed framework, however, a family whose member had disappeared would not be able to approach an independent commission or court, he said. Instead, it would have to approach a law-enforcement agency that might itself have been connected to the disappearance.

“If someone becomes a victim of enforced disappearance, their family cannot go to any commission. They cannot go to any independent court,” Shams said. “They have to go to a law enforcement agency that may itself have been connected to that disappearance.”

Shams said the ordinance enacted by the interim government had provided for complaints of enforced disappearance to be investigated by a commission, with the National Human Rights Commission given that responsibility.

“But no such commission mechanism has been included here,” he said. “Instead, you have to go to the police.”

“If this draft becomes law, having that law and not having it will amount to the same thing,” he added.

Photographer, writer and human rights activist Shahidul Alam said the ability to discuss such issues openly was itself a major change after the fall of Sheikh Hasina’s government.

“We are able to speak like this today — that itself is a huge thing, and we must not forget it,” he said, warning that people had expected a different Bangladesh after the fall of authoritarian rule.

Alam called for independent investigations by the Human Rights Commission into allegations involving security forces, as well as an independent process for selecting commissioners. He urged the government to fix weaknesses in the proposed disappearance law and demonstrate through its actions, rather than words, that it had moved away from the past.

Political scientist and analyst Prof Dilara Chowdhury said changing political parties or leaders alone would not produce the transformation people expected without a corresponding change in political culture.

“If we do not change the political culture, the desired change will not come simply by changing political parties or political leadership,” she said.

She warned that institutions such as the Human Rights Commission and bodies dealing with enforced disappearances and policing would not be able to perform their intended functions if they were weakened or politicised.

The question of institutional independence was also central to the remarks of senior Supreme Court advocate Dr Sharif Bhuiyan, a former member of the Constitution Reform Commission.

“We need institutions such as the Human Rights Commission because, through them, we want to hold the government accountable,” he said. “And for that reason, the most important thing is that these institutions must be independent.”

Bhuiyan said the commission’s independence would depend heavily on how its members were appointed. If the government controlled the appointment process, he argued, the commission would struggle to hold that same government accountable.

He also criticised the government for failing to follow through on commitments made before the election and during the July Charter process to strengthen independent institutions.

“You said before the election that you would amend Article 116, make the Supreme Court independent and make the Human Rights Commission independent,” he said. “But you are not honouring a single one of those commitments.”

NCP member-secretary and parliament member Akhtar Hossain said the government had scrapped the previous ordinances on the promise that stronger laws would replace them, only to move in the opposite direction.

“The government said it would bring better laws, but instead it has taken a step in the opposite direction,” he said.

Hossain also criticised provisions under which families could face punishment for making complaints deemed false, arguing that such a provision could deter families of the disappeared from coming forward.

“We want a fair system in Bangladesh. We want accountability,” he said.

AB Party general secretary Barrister Mohammad Asaduzzaman Bhuiyan Fuad placed the debate in a broader context, arguing that Bangladesh’s problem was not only political but cultural.

“This is a national crisis and a cultural crisis. It is more a cultural crisis than a political crisis,” he said, arguing that changing political parties or leaders alone would not be enough without changing the country’s political culture.

Speakers at the roundtable broadly called for the draft laws to be revised before enactment, particularly to preserve independent investigative powers and ensure that institutions tasked with holding the state accountable are themselves insulated from political and security-force influence.

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