148 were killed in one day on July 19.
During the government job quota reform movement, 148 people were killed in one day on July 19, 2024. Of the 148, 54 were shot in the head or neck. Most were under the age of 40. The number of casualties was so high that a hospital in Dhaka literally ran out of gauze and bandages. Dhaka became like a war zone. This information has emerged in a report titled ‘Bloodshed in Bangladesh’ by two organizations, the International Truth and Justice Project (ITJP) and the TechGlobal Institute (TGI).
The report was released by the ITJP and TGI at the Abdul Karim Sahitya Bisharad Auditorium of the Bangla Academy on Wednesday. The two organizations went to the field to collect evidence a few days after the fall of the Sheikh Hasina government and interviewed families and eyewitnesses.
Along with the report, the ITJP and TGI and the Outsider Movie Company have released two documentaries. It reconstructs what happened by piecing together video evidence of police brutality from social media. In one, police brutally killed a large number of young protesters in Jatrabari. In another, a young man named Mohammad Hridoy was caught by police in Gazipur on August 5 and shot dead at close range.
The 60-page report reveals the horrific torture inflicted on the families of the victims. They wandered around the hospital morgue with bloodied feet, searching for their children who had been shot by the police. Families of the injured or martyred would receive phone calls from strangers, informing them that their children or siblings had been shot. Then came heartbreaking scenes of people running from one hospital to another in the chaos or surviving to reach safety with serious injuries.
Despite the intense trauma, the grieving families had to face the hostility of those in power. They also faced risks and difficulties in obtaining death certificates and autopsy reports to bury their loved ones. The funeral was shrouded in fear and panic, with some families burying in secret before dawn to avoid any disruption, so as not to disturb local Awami League workers.
The report said that the security forces did not adopt any non-violent methods to control the crowd or issue any warnings to them. The police did not provide any assistance in treating the injured, and in fact, treatment was often obstructed.
Legal advisor Asif Nazrul, chief prosecutor of the International Crimes Tribunal Tajul Islam, Shaheed Hridoy’s sister Jasmine and Shaheed Muntasir Rahman Alif’s father Gaziur Rahman, photographer Shahidul Alam, journalist David Bergman, ITJP executive director Yasmin Suka and Tech Global Institute executive director Sabhanaz Rashid Dia spoke at the event.
Hridoy’s sister Jasmine said, “My brother was hiding in a place to save his life from the police chase during the August 5 joyous procession and the police shot him.” In the video you can see how they caught my brother and shot him. They took the body. They didn’t return the body. Where did they hide the body, where did they hide the body? I can’t talk about it, I’m not educated. There are big lawyers here who are brutally killing my brother, I want justice for my brother’s murder. At one point, Jasmine broke down in tears and said, “I haven’t gotten justice for my brother in five-six months, I haven’t gotten any help from the government.” She called on everyone present in a tearful voice to find her brother’s remains.
Shaheed Muntasir’s father Gaziur Rahman said, “In all the incidents that have happened so far, I don’t see anyone being arrested anywhere except Jatrabari. So what’s going on? It’s been 5-6 months since the Police Helmet Force arrested anyone in my case. If they don’t get justice, what will happen to us? We have all become their targets.”
Legal Advisor Asif Nazrul said, whenever we see scenes of torture, it seems that we have no right to live if justice cannot be ensured. Our prosecution investigation team is working. I promise that we will ensure justice. The biggest responsibility of this government is to ensure justice for the murders in the July coup. We must ensure that our trial is different from the trial of the fascist Hasina. He said, we are also tortured like you – I will be happy if the trial is held tomorrow. But we have to maintain the process.
Chief Prosecutor Tajul Islam said, besides identifying the cruelty they (people of the Awami League government) showed, it is important to find out why the law enforcement agencies have become so cruel? Why did the state go to this stage, on whose orders did they do this? We are also working on this. He said, if the source of the missing orders for the murders is known, the responsibility of the higher command can be fixed. “We respect the process of seeking speedy justice for the families of the martyrs. However, we request patience for the investigation of the judicial process,” he said.
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