Families of enforced disappearance victims gather at Shaheed Minar, demand their return

They call for former prime minister Sheikh Hasina, her security advisor Tarique Ahmed Siddique, Maj Gen Ziaul Hasan and those behind the ‘Ayna Ghor’ to be brought to trial

The families of enforced disappearance victims during the 15-year reign of Sheikh Hasina have gathered at the Central Shaheed Minar to demand their return.

They demanded they be returned soon. They have also demanded that former prime minister Sheikh Hasina, her security advisor Maj Gen (Rtd) Tarique Ahmed Siddique, Maj Gen Ziaul Hasan and others who were behind the formation of the ‘Ayna Ghor’ detention centre be brought to trial.

They formed a human chain at 11am on Friday to observe the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances at the Central Shaheed Minar. The families participated in the human chain carrying the photos of their disappeared loved ones. Many of them broke into tears while speaking. Sorrow filled the air as they bemoaned the loss of their loved ones.

Ismail Hossain Baten disappeared from a business organisation adjacent to Mirpur Shah Ali Shrine on Jun 19, 2019.

With an emotion-stricken voice, Anisha Islam, his daughter, said she had stood on roads carrying her father’s photo many times during the last five years. “My younger brother used to wait every night for our father’s return,” she said.

"It is said that the country has attained independence for a second time. I want my father back in this independent country. I want to answer the queries of my brother. I want everyone to know what happened to my father.”

Anisha said that she at least wanted to know if her father was alive or dead. ”You can visit the graves of those who died. But we’re such destitute people that we don’t even know if our father is alive or dead.”

"I can’t have my father sign any of my school documents. I can’t even write ‘late’ in front of his name.”

Ishraq Ahmed, 20, went missing from near the Star Kabab restaurant in Dhanmondi on Aug 25, 2017. He was a student at McGill University in Canada and went missing while on holiday in Dhaka.

Ishraq’s father Jamal Uddin Ahmed said he went to file a general diary to the Dhanmondi Police Station at 10pm when his son went missing. The Rapid Action Battalion then came to his house at 10:30pm. Later he went to meet RAB-2 officer Major Ataur. The next day, RAB visited his house again and took away his son’s laptop. They returned the laptop after a month but never returned his son, Jamal Uddin said.

“We’ve been waiting for the last eight years and ran here and there, but I never got my son back. I urge the new government to bring my son home. We’re still waiting.”

Pallabi Chhatra Dal General Secretary Tariqul Islam Tara went missing in 2012.

His son was abducted due to a ‘political vengeance’, said Tara’s father Nurul Islam at Shaheed Minar. He could not stage any protest during the rule of Hasina government. He spoke at the National Press Club one day and some people tried to pick him up twice, said Nurul Islam, but they could not take him as locals used a megaphone to claim that ‘robbers were attacking the neighbourhood’.

“I’m helpless after losing my child. I demand the new government send my son back to me unscathed.”

A group of people claiming to be intelligence agents in plainclothes picked up Chowdhury Alam, Ward No. 20 commissioner elect on Jun 24, 2010, from Dhaka’s Farmgate area.

Mahfuza Akter Mukta, Alam’s daughter, said the family went crazy after their father went missing. “Even then, we take to the streets hoping to get my father back. I don’t believe there can be [incidents of] enforced disappearance in an independent country,” she said.

“As many as 650 people became victims of enforced disappearance over the last fourteen and a half years. Now we have a new hope. We urge the new government to send back our loved ones to us.”

Michael Chakma, an organiser of the United People's Democratic Front, UPDF, a regional political party based in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, went missing on Apr 9, 2019.

He was picked from Dhaka’s Shyamoli by police in plainclothes. For more than five years, Michael was detained in a secret detention centre known as ‘Ayna Ghor’.

After the fall of Sheikh Hasina, he was blindfolded and left beside a Chattogram road on Aug 6.

He was detained for five years and three months, Michael said at Shaheed Minar. “I was disconnected from the world outside. I couldn’t see the sunlight or feel the air. I know how it feels. I had to live inside that prison, only breathing its air. It was not alive but almost like the living dead. I can feel the plight of the families whose loved ones were abducted.”

"There was no democracy in the last 15 years during the rule of Sheikh Hasina. There were no human rights, no security for the people. There should be fair trials and justice for all the enforced disappearances and killings in the last 15 years of the Hasina government.”

Nagarik Oikya President Mahmudur Rahman Manna expressed his solidarity with the families and said they should remember the past while building the present. “One can’t imagine how inhuman the police were during the last government’s rule. I was detained for 23 hours and jailed for two months. I have seen many incidents during that time. If I write about it, it can turn into a large book.”

"Mayer Daak and many others prepared lists of people who were victims of enforced disappearance. I believe 95 percent of it is correct, but can’t be certain if 100 percent is correct.”

He said many people were killed in July during the anti-government movement. The number could be more than a thousand, he said. “We want justice for their murders. We have to reach those victims, the government should reach out to them too. The humanitarian Bangladesh we dream of must include everyone,” he said.