Govt failed its responsibility to return missing persons to their families: Jamaat

Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami said today the government has failed to fulfil its responsibility to return missing persons to their families.

"The government and its law-enforcement forces have completely failed in fulfilling their state responsibility to return missing persons to their families. Despite repeated requests by the relatives of the missing persons to return them to their families, the government has not been cooperating," the party's acting Amir Professor Mujibur Rahman said in a statement on the occasion "International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances" on Wednesday (30 August).

"According to the information of various national and international human rights organizations and agencies, in the last 14 and a half years during the reign of the current ruling government, 645 people of various classes and professions, including political leaders, students, businessmen, have been abducted by people in plain clothes posing as members of the law and order forces," the Jammat leader added.

He said families of missing and abducted persons are living in fear.

"Law enforcement forces are still harassing many people by going to their homes. Many relatives, including parents and wives of missing persons, are sick with grief due to the pain of losing their relatives. Repeated appeals to the government to return the missing persons to their families have yielded no results," he further said. 

Citing data from the Asian Human Rights Commission, Mujibur Rahman said 153 people are still missing, having gone missing at various times over the past 13 years.

"A total of 623 people have gone missing in Bangladesh from 2009 to 2022. The bodies of 84 of them have been recovered. 383 were shown to have returned alive or were subsequently arrested. No information is known about the three. I express deep concern for the missing persons and sincere condolences to their relatives," he said. 

The acting Jamaat chief also said foreign countries are concerned about the disappearances.

"Currently there is no human rights in the country. Everything has been taken away, including the right to live, the right to free expression, the democratic right, and the right to vote. I appeal to the countrymen to raise their voices in protest against all the undemocratic activities, disappearances, murders and persecutions of this fascist government," he said.