About a year ago, a leading business leader told me a story about another business tycoon and once-powerful adviser to ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. He is now in prison, facing a number of cases ranging from money laundering to crimes against humanity, and this is the second time he has returned to prison. So, the story goes that when Hasina formed the government in 2009, she asked the said adviser what job he would like to have. To her utter disbelief, he apparently asked for a position that would allow him to oversee prison reform. Since prisons fall under the Ministry of Home Affairs, there was virtually no chance she would agree. She asked him why he wanted responsibility for prisons.
The adviser, I was told, explained that when he was imprisoned during 2007-08, he had been lodged in one of the condemned cells at the Old Dhaka Central Jail. One night, while offering Tahajjud prayer, he went into prostration and felt something cold beneath his forehead. A chilling sensation ran through him. Thinking it was a snake, he cried out at the top of his voice. Prison guards rushed in, switched on the light, and discovered that it was a shrew. He then realised how desperate the need for prison reform was, and pledged that whenever he had the opportunity, he would take initiatives to improve living conditions in prisons.
He did not get the home ministry, but his influence extended across the government. Yet, not much has changed in Dhaka Central Jail, other than its relocation to a new and larger facility with increased security. He has now been back in prison for more than a year and a half. There is no way of knowing whether he ever thought his leader’s regime would outlast his lifetime and that he could, therefore, afford to leave prison reform for someone else. Whatever the reason, his story offers a painful reminder that the political cost of failing to utilise an opportunity to protect an individual’s rights can be extremely high.
The recent passage of two rights bills—the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) Bill, 2026 and the Enforced Disappearance Prevention and Redress Bill, 2026—offers another reminder of how easily politicians forget, and are forgotten, regardless of the suffering they may once have endured.
The government claims that the two bills are far stronger than similar laws in any other country in the subcontinent. But the language and provisions introduced in them suggest that they are, in important respects, weaker than the relevant ordinances enacted by the interim administration. When the BNP government scrapped these ordinances, it pledged to replace them with stronger laws. The benchmark, however, was not supposed to be merely regional; the interim government’s ordinances were more closely aligned with international standards.
The scrapped NHRC ordinance largely met the criteria of the Paris Principles—the global minimum standards that national human rights institutions must meet to be considered credible, legitimate, and effective—as endorsed by the United Nations General Assembly in 1993. Under the Paris Principles, such an institution should be able to submit opinions, recommendations, proposals, and reports on human rights matters “through the exercise of its power to hear a matter without higher referral.” The repealed ordinance empowered the NHRC to investigate allegations of enforced disappearance. But the newly passed law takes that authority away. Under this law, the government is required to investigate such allegations, with the investigation to be carried out by an official of the rank of sub-inspector.
Recall the harrowing experience of current Home Minister Salahuddin Ahmed, who was once picked up, held for weeks in an Aynaghar (clandestine detention centre), and ultimately renditioned to another country. His family filed a complaint, only for the investigation to be assigned to a police sub-inspector. How can anyone forget the ridicule, disbelief, and outrageous suggestions made by ministers in the previous government when similar allegations of enforced disappearances and secret detentions were raised against it?
The current government now thinks it alright that if a complaint involves allegations against a law enforcement agency, the investigation will be conducted by another agency or by an inter-agency team. Given the special mandates and superior authority enjoyed by some security agencies, however, this provision appears not only inherently ineffective but also potentially capable of becoming a mechanism for whitewashing abuses.
We should also recall the statement made on April 9 by Law Minister Md Asaduzzaman during the debate on repealing the National Human Rights Commission Ordinance, 2025—and restoring the National Human Rights Commission Act, 2009—when he described Section 16 of the ordinance as “problematic”. The section had laid down special arrest procedures and accountability measures for public officials and members of law enforcement agencies. The only plausible explanation for removing these powers from NHRC is an intention to shield state actors from accountability rather than protect citizens from abuses and violations of their rights. This is a troubling example of how bureaucracy prevails regardless of political transitions.
It is true that the passage of the Enforced Disappearance Prevention and Redress Bill, 2026 fulfils a core requirement of the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance by criminalising enforced disappearance as a standalone offence for the first time. But it falls far short of the state’s obligation to ensure independent investigations into allegations of the crime. The appointment process for NHRC’s chief and members also now risks politicisation. Under the new law, the selection committee will be headed by the Speaker. The repealed ordinance, by contrast, stipulated that the committee would be headed by a judge of the Appellate Division nominated by the Chief Justice.
The bitter experience of a politicised NHRC is instructive here. Its record during the rise of authoritarianism should not be forgotten. Instead of defending people’s right to protest and freedom of expression, the NHRC at one point appeared to dance to the tune of the then-ruling Awami League, describing violence arising from political disputes as “terrorist activities” aimed at the state. A review by Ain o Salish Kendra (ASK) of the NHRC’s first decade also raised serious questions about its role; it showed how the then NHRC declared the much-disputed and discredited 2018 national election “free, fair and participatory,” even as people died in election-related clashes.
We had an opportunity to elevate the status of our NHRC, which previously received a B status in an assessment by the Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions (GANHRI) because of its partial compliance with the Paris Principles. The new legislation was an opportunity to correct those shortcomings and build an institution capable of standing independently between the state and citizens. Instead, the changes risk reproducing the very weaknesses that allowed the NHRC to fail when it mattered most.
If the BNP government truly wanted a stronger human rights institution, the question should not have been how much authority could be taken away from NHRC, but how much independence and power could be given to it. On that measure, the outcome of this new legislation is unlikely to deliver the elevation Bangladesh had an opportunity to achieve.
Kamal Ahmed is consulting editor at The Daily Star. He led the Media Reform Commission under the interim government. His X handle is @ahmedka1.
Views expressed in this article are the author's own.
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