Hefazat-e-Islam claimed to have given a list of people allegedly killed during the government crackdown on May 5 and 6 to rights body Odhikar, whose General Secretary Adilur Rahman Khan was arrested for publishing a list of 61 victims, which the government says was a distortion of facts.
However, the Chittagong-based Islamist umbrella platform members contradicted themselves on the number of victims that they gave to Odhikar. Meanwhile, Odhikar’s founder member and research wing supervisor, Saira Rahman Khan, denied Hefazat being the source of their fact-finding report.
Hefazat’s Dhaka committee’s assistant press secretary, Mufti Altaf Hossain, claimed, “We provided the list of 61 people killed during the law enforcers operation on May 5 and 6 that Odhikar published. We will publish the full list soon.”
However, Hefazat’s central joint secretary general and Islami Oikkhyo Jote secretary general, Mufti Fayez Ullah, did not go that far and claimed, “We gave them some names. But Odhikar also found out some names of our activists who were killed during the operation by themselves.”
The June 10 report by Odhikar titled “Assembly of Hefazat-e-Islam Bangladesh and Human Rights Violations” had claimed that their fact-finding team found the 61 names.
Saira, however, brushed aside Hefazat’s claim. “Why would we ask Hefazat to provide us the list? We did not receive any names from that organisation. We made the report based on our fact-finding groups’ research in which they went to every possible place a group is supposed to work.”
“Our team works in the same manner in cases of single death or where the toll is in hundreds irrespective of race, class, caste, ethnicity or religion.”
Meanwhile, of the five rights bodies, Odhikar claimed through a press release on August 16 to have sent their list for ensuring safety of the victims’ families, only two confirmed receipt, Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC). Two others, Amnesty International and the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial summary or arbitrary executions, are yet to confirm or deny receipt.
The only national organisation on the list, Ain O Salish Kendra (ASK), denied getting any such list from Odhikar.
Executive Director of ASK, Sultana Kamal, expressing her annoyance over repeated phone calls from the media regarding the issue, said that she has wasted “enough time” over this matter. “I did not receive any such document.”
However, only a day earlier, Sultana said that she found out about ASK being on the sending list of Odhikar through queries by reporters over phone. “[Odhikar] neither contacted us before sending it nor did they call to inform later on. And, since they sent the list during holidays, we will not be able to confirm whether we got it or not until Sunday.”
South Asia director of HRW, Meenakshi Ganguly, said their lawyer had received the list and they would decide on what has to be done to protect families of the victims from harassment after consultation with Odhikar.
AHRC Hong Kong wing’s programme officer, Md Ashrafuzzaman, responded via mail to the Dhaka Tribune’s query confirming their receipt of the list of 61 alleged victims. The mail also states, “Our Human Rights Defenders based in Bangladesh are keeping eyes on the victims’ families.”
Odhikar claimed in the press release that police were threatening families of some of the victims not to speak about the deaths and they sent out the list to rights bodies “in order to hold a fair and just investigation, without further intimidating and threatening the victim families.”
It also claimed that their list was compromised as law enforcers seized five computers including three laptops during the August 11 raid in their office.
A day before the raid, the plainclothes policemen picked up Adilur for suspicious activity at night without any arrest warrant from near his Gulshan residence. He was charged with distorting information in accordance to the Information and Communication Technology Act 2006.