UN team in Bangladesh to discuss modalities of human rights probe

By Ruma Paul

DHAKA (Reuters) – A United Nations team will meet Bangladesh’s interim government and other stakeholders from Thursday to discuss the process to investigate alleged human rights violations during the recent deadly violence in the South Asian country, officials said.

About 300 people, many of them university and college students, were killed during protests that began in July with students agitating against quotas in government jobs before the events spiralled into demonstrations to oust long-serving former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

An interim government, headed by Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, was sworn in after Hasina fled the country and flew to New Delhi following the students-led uprising.

The U.N. office in Bangladesh said in a media advisory that the team from the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights will be visiting Dhaka from Sept. 22-29.

“The purpose of this visit is to understand their priorities for assistance in promoting human rights,” said the media advisory, adding that Bangladesh’s interim government had requested the U.N. to probe the killings during the protests.

“It is important to note that this visit is not an investigation, but rather it will focus on discussing the process for investigating human rights violations in light of the recent violence and unrest.”

Rory Mungoven, chief of the Asia Pacific region at the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, was leading the U.N. team, which met Foreign Secretary Masud Bin Momen on Thursday, according to two Bangladesh foreign ministry officials.

U.N. human rights chief, Volker Turk, made a phone call to Yunus last week and said a U.N.-led investigation will be launched “very soon” to probe the killing of the protesters, Yunus’ office said.

A separate fact-finding team will be dispatched to Dhaka in coming weeks to conduct the investigation once details are finalised, the U.N. added.

(Writing by Sudipto Ganguly; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta)