Rights violations: Home ministry snubs two-thirds of NHRC enquiry requests

Nearly two-thirds of the enquiry requests made by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) to the home ministry regarding cases of human rights violations by law enforcement agencies have gone unheeded.

The commission now seeks the power to investigate the disciplined forces itself and has proposed that the law be amended to that end.

The founding law of the organisation, National Human Rights Commission Act-2009, restricts the commission from investigating any disciplined forces, including police and Rab.

The law only allows the NHRC to request reports and information from the home ministry, or recommend that the ministry conduct investigations.

Since 2012, the NHRC had made 122 such requests to the home ministry for reports, of which only 44 were adequately responded to, shows the commission's annual report.

In 24 cases, the NHRC had did not find the responses to be acceptable and returned the reports asking for reassessment.

"The commission is waiting for reports in 71 cases. Out of them, the commission has urged multiple times in the case of 27 complaints, but has not received any form of response," said the report.  

"We want section 18 of the NHRC act, which restricts the commission, to be done away with. We have proposed an amendment to the law. The commission should be able to investigate any and all for human rights violations," NHRC Chairman Kamal Uddin Ahmed told The Daily Star.

"The state does not shelter anyone who does wrong."

He went on to say that while the disciplined forces have their own investigation mechanisms, the NHRC can focus particularly on whether human rights violations have taken place. 

"This will not harm anyone in the forces, but rather help identify wrongdoers."

The annual report shows that over the past year, the NHRC questioned the home ministry about 53 cases of human rights violations, in which accusations arose against the law enforcement agencies, and 33 of those are yet to be responded to. In about half of these incidents, the rights body had conducted suo motu (voluntary) interventions.

They noted that in six cases of custodial deaths and five cases of extrajudicial killings picked up from the media, there were no records of legal cases being filed.

This legal shortcoming has been one of the reasons why Bangladesh's NHRC is considered a "Category B" organisation by the Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions (GANHRI).

All the national human rights institutions of the world are assessed by GANHRI on how compliant they are with the Paris Principles, which are the international benchmark for national human rights institutions.

Category A is given to fully compliant institutions.

In addition to section 18, the NHRC also seeks to institute regulations concerning enquiry, investigation and settlements. It also regularises the posts at the commission and allows its staffers government pensions.