The United Nations Human Rights Office has reported several instances where people wounded in street protests during last year’s July-August uprising faced obstructions in receiving immediate medical care.
The UN's fact-finding report, released earlier this month, said that where law enforcement officials expect to use force or where violence is considered likely, authorities must also ensure the availability of adequate medical facilities.
"Assistance and medical aid must be rendered to injured or affected persons at the earliest possible moment, irrespective of whether the force used against the person was lawful," the OHCHR (Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights) said.
However, the report mentioned that the responsibility of medical care was "mostly left to other protesters and concerned local citizens, including many rickshaw drivers, to provide basic first aid and transport the injured to hospitals."
"These violations by omission on the part of the security forces are likely to have led to preventable deaths among the injured," OHCHR said.
Referring to victim and eyewitness accounts, corroborated by videos and photos, the report said that instead of extending assistance for immediate medical care, police went so far as to deliberately obstruct efforts to provide timely aid.
The report cited the case of Shykh Aashhabul Yamin, who was killed in Savar on the outskirts of the capital on July 18.
He was "repeatedly shot" by police as he climbed onto a blue police armored personnel carrier (APC).
Additionally, on July 19, a helicopter dropped tear gas shells in front of a hospital, driving away people trying to access medical care.
On the same day, tear gas was fired into a garage that police knew was being used as an ad hoc medical treatment center for injured protesters.
On August 4, police shot and injured a 17-year-old boy in the Farmgate area.
Officers then placed the wounded boy on a rickshaw and ordered the driver to take him away.
"However, other police officers blocked the rickshaw from accessing nearby hospitals. One officer ordered the driver to throw the injured man into a drain, but eventually relented and let him pass. By the time the victim was finally admitted to a hospital, he had died," the report read.
The OHCHR noted that Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) reported ensuring medical care for 32 injured protesters of its own accord.
However, OHCHR said that "this would seem to be an exception" to the overall pattern documented.
The report found evidence that police and other security forces regularly failed to administer first aid, organize emergency transport, or provide assistance to injured protesters and bystanders, including victims of their own unlawful shootings.
On August 5, as police indiscriminately shot at protesters around Jatrabari police station, they apprehended a local man aiding the injured.
Officers told him he would be shot four times as punishment for helping their "enemies" and forced him to say where he wanted to be shot.
"The man pleaded for mercy, but one officer still shot him once in the leg at point-blank range. The officers then dragged the bleeding man into a gutter and left him there," the report said.
The fact-finding report also highlighted that the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI), National Security Intelligence (NSI), police’s Detective Branch, and other agencies obstructed medical care by mounting extensive operations to survey hospitals, identify patients with gunshot injuries, interrogate medical staff and injured patients, and fingerprint them.
"In an apparent effort to identify protesters and to conceal evidence of the extent of violence by security forces, they also confiscated medical records and CCTV footage from many hospitals without due process," the report read.
The OHCHR said that medical staff were pressured not to treat injured protesters with necessary care and not to provide proper medical documentation recording injuries and their causes.
Testimonies received by the OHCHR indicated that the obstruction was undertaken based on orders given at higher levels.
"The existence of such orders is also indicated by similar types of obstruction involving different security and intelligence forces occurring in a range of hospitals in Dhaka and other parts of the country," the report mentioned.
According to the report, in some cases, families also faced delays in burying loved ones who had died in the violence, as police neither conducted autopsies themselves nor allowed families to collect the bodies without an autopsy.
