Odhikar Report 2006 Published by Odhikar House No. 65 (2nd Floor), Block-E Road No. 17/A, Banani Dhaka-1213, Bangladesh Tel: 880 2 9888587, Fax: 880 2 9886208 E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.odhikar.org Supported by Academy for Educational Development (AED) Eureka House No. 10 A Road No. 25 A, Banani Dhaka-1213, Bangladesh Tel: 880 2 9894016 Fax: 880 2 9894016 (Ext. 106) Website: www.aed-bd.org Cover Design Md. Sazzad Hussain Copyright c Odhikar Any material published in this report may be reproduced with acknowledgement to Odhikar Table of content Chapter 1 : AED and Odhikar: Four Years of Partnership 7 Chapter 2 : Civil and Political Rights in Bangladesh 11 Chapter 3 : Monitoring the Behaviour of 21 Law Enforcement Agencies Chapter 4 : Documentation and Fact Finding on 35 Human Rights Violations Chapter 5 : Human Rights Advocacy: The Media Roundtables 39 and a Regional Discussion Meeting Chapter 6 : Successful Outcomes of the Project 49 ANNEXTURE Annex-i Fact finding reports 2006 53 Annex-ii Keynote paper for Roundtable Meeting on 171 ‘Police Behaviour in Crowd Management’ Annex-iii Papers presented at the Regional Discussion Meeting 181 on Security and Law: South Asian perspective Annex-iv Newspaper clippings 215 Acknowledgement The Academy for Educational Development had supported Odhikar's work for four years - the last year being an extension to help the organisation complete its activities, carry out follow-up missions of noteworthy incidents of human rights violations and improve its fact finding skills. Odhikar would like to thank the AED for extending its project for another year, where time could also be spent in evaluating the work of the previous years. The organisation would also like to thank the few police officers that willing went out of their way to provided the thana monitors with information. We need all law enforcement officers to be like them! Odhikar would also like to thank the victims and witness of incidents of human rights violations who gave their time to recall incidents at fact-finding interviews. During investigation of incidents of human rights violations, Odhikar had to work with human rights activists, local NGOs, local government bodies, local influential people, journalists, political leaders, and medical professionals. In most of the cases, they were very co-operative and provided information sought for and comments requested for. The Organisation thanks them for their cooperation and time. Chapter-1 AED and Odhikar: Four Years of Partnership dhikar is perhaps the first organisation in Bangladesh that in its quest to collect first hand information and accurate data on violations, decided to monitor the police stations in a Osystematic manner. As a human rights organisation, it has been, amongst other activities, recording human rights violations and conducting fact-finding and research activities since 1996. For obvious reasons, its attention was more on violations carried out by the police, which, as the State’s main law enforcement agency, is often perceived to be the principal violator of civil and political rights. Abuses perpetrated by police constitute a key component and much of Odhikar’s work therefore involves investigating incidents of alleged police brutality, torture in custody and other acts of violation. As a result, Odhikar is now acknowledged as one of the few sources of information in Bangladesh on violations of civil and political rights and, in particular, violations by the law enforcing agencies. Information and statistics collected and maintained by the organisation are regularly used by national and international media, the diplomatic community located in Bangladesh, regional and international human rights organisations, international and regional institutions including the European Commission, European Parliament, and UNDP etc. Odhikar’s research reports on subjects relating to the police, criminal justice administration, and human rights violations by law enforcing agencies and remedies under current municipal laws, inform a wide variety of groups and individuals, including judges, lawyers, university students, policy makers and national and international NGOs. It was this context that the Academy for Educational Development, as a part of its Human Rights Advocacy Project with USAID funds, embarked on a 3 year project (15/11/2002 to 14/11/2005) to investigate research and publish human rights violations in 2002. Under the project, Odhikar had to monitor 12 police stations in and around the Dhaka Metropolitan area and compile information on incidents of abuse and quality of services provided by the police to arrested persons and service seekers. In addition, the project required further fact-finding investigations, publication of legal and archival research and the conducting of advocacy programmes. The idea was also to contribute to the enforcement of civil and political rights, enshrined in the Constitution and other international human rights instruments. Report 2007 7 Realising the successful outcomes of the 3-year project – which included the founding of the South Asian Network against Torture and Impunity, or SANTI and some revolutionary changes in police stations in Dhaka - AED decided to extend its funding to Odhikar for another year (January – December 2006). Odhikar raises awareness through the media, the printing and distribution of annual reports and at planned discussion meetings and these are also the medium by which the information obtained on its fact finding missions are disseminated and discussed. From year 2003 to 2006, as part of the AED funded projects, Odhikar organized three very successful South Asian regional discussion meetings on pressing issues of human rights violations perpetrated by law enforcement agencies in the police stations and outside. Project Goals The goal of the project from 2003 to 2006, was to highlight the violation of civil and political rights through investigation and research and to monitor the activities of law enforcing agents in order to help contribute to the movement for good governance. Specific Objectives • Investigate the human rights abuses perpetrated by law enforcing agencies, including the abuse of specific laws, torture in remand and other forms of verbal and physical abuse, as reported in several leading newspapers and through Odhikar’s local networks and human rights defenders. • Monitoring 4 police stations (Thana) every year, which includes 6 police stations previously monitored, as a follow-up program, with regard to the use of Section 54 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, Section 86/100 of the Dhaka Metropolitan Police Ordinance (a law similar to S.54) and the Special Powers Act of 1974. • Arranging a discussion meeting every project year in order to highlight the findings of the investigations and create an awareness of the abuses for the policy makers and implementers. The meetings will invite representatives from concerned government agencies and ministries, members of parliament, major political parties, the media and members of civil society, including other human rights organizations. Five prominent human rights activists and advocates from south and south-east Asia will be invited to participate in this meeting in order to formulate a comparative study of such police abuse in the region. There will be a separate topic for discussion every year, related to the project activities. Outcomes planned from the objectives • First hand detailed fact-finding report • Improvement in the behavior of police towards arrested persons. • Awareness raising and advocacy to initiate change and to highlight police abuse and cr ate pressure groups to advocate for a better police system. During the first project year (2003), from the activities it carried out, especially from fact finding and police station monitoring missions, Odhikar learnt that although the police were violating human rights, there were extremely few cases where legal action had actually been taken against the police in this regard. Thus the police were enjoying some sort of impunity, despite violating 8 Report 2007 human rights. While they should be held accountable and punished for such violations they remain out of reach from the ‘long hand of the law’. For this reason, in 2003, the theme “Breaking the Chain of Impunity: Human Rights Intervention in South Asia” was chosen for a project-based regional discussion meeting. The discussants and participants condemned the vicious circle of politics, crime and corruption, which makes ordinary people victims of police abuse and agreed that victims did not resort to the court and offences perpetrated against them went unpunished because of several factors, including, in many cases, ignorance of law, poor economic condition of ordinary people and fear of reprisal. The participants from the other South Asian countries opined that impunity persisted in the region mainly due to government’s intention to cling to power for a long period of time, thus abusing state power. Absence of the independence of judiciary and virtually non-functioning parliaments were also identified as causes of impunity to human rights violations. The theme for the 2004 project-based regional discussion meeting was Criminal Responsibility for Torture: South Asian Perspective in which prominent human rights activists from South Asian countries spoke of having similar problems regarding abuses of power by law enforcement agencies, enabling them to commit torture and other crimes. Odhikar felt that continued monitoring