As I seek justice for my father, I want a government that practices the reforms it preaches

Mamun Mia was in his garments shop, quietly working away with his shutters half-open, until a stray bullet pierced his chest. Liza Akhter, a 19-year-old domestic worker, perhaps thought her position on the balcony of a fourteenth floor flat would allow her to safely watch the chaos unfolding on the ground below – until indiscriminate firing ended her life. Siam was shot through the head on his way back home from what turned out to be his last ever shift at the bhaater hotel where he worked. He was only 17 years old.

They were only a few of the victims of the brutal and co-ordinated state-sponsored violence that the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UN OHCHR) estimates killed up to 1400 people during the July-August mass uprising. In the almost nine months since these innocent people were killed, there has been no progress in bringing their killers to justice. No investigation reports have been submitted by the police, and no charges have been framed against their suspected killers. While cases have been filed, the poorly lodged FIRs contain a list of 50-200 accused, with no specific allegations against anyone. There are clear signs that they have been hastily compiled and contain conflicting information: in one of them, newspaper clippings submitted as “evidence” imply the killing didn’t even happen in the specified city, let alone the thana, while another contains a death certificate from an entirely different part of the country.

I know all this because my 78-year-old father, cultural activist and former Awami League MP Asaduzzaman Noor, is one of the names in the long lists of accused in these cases. On September 15th 2024, he was picked up from his home at around midnight, and for over seven months now, he has been imprisoned without charge, with no legal explanation on how he can be held responsible for these crimes – committed during the uprising, when he held neither executive nor leadership positions in the government. A common refrain insinuated by the corridors of power has been to bear this quietly, lest things become worse.

Over this period, I have watched my father become weaker and more frail by the day, be hospitalised with debilitating pain, and still be obstructed from getting bail. I have stood in court as opposition lawyers openly called for “Baker Bhai” – one of the iconic characters he played – to be hanged for Awami League’s crimes, the presumption of innocence until proven otherwise completely absent from the proceedings. I have been berated for daring to suggest that anyone affiliated with Awami League could ever be entitled to such a thing as due process. 

I am not so blinded by the injustice of my father’s incarceration that I cannot fathom the anger towards the former regime, especially from the students who saw so many of their compatriots killed, and from opposition groups who saw their leaders imprisoned for years on end using the same biased judiciary and repressive practices. Nor am I asking for sympathy, which the atrocities committed by the Awami League have made difficult for anyone to feel towards the party’s members. What I do struggle to understand, however, is how a government full of human rights practitioners and champions – led by a victim of judicial harassment and vocal proponent of due process at home and abroad – who are so bent on reforms, can continue to be indifferent to such a flawed and ineffective criminal justice system. Should my father be imprisoned indefinitely? 

Is this also not a failure of justice for the victims of the uprising? Does having the victims’ cases stuck in the deliberate purgatory of the judicial system, bouncing back and forth between courts, months going by without any movement, contribute in any way towards holding their real killers accountable? How do their families feel about their loved ones being used as pawns in what is being revealed as a blatant game of political retribution?

These vague, mass arrest cases have, by this point, seen potentially hundreds of people imprisoned without charge by the current government. While the majority of the senior members of the former regime have managed to escape – the details of how that happened and who conspired to allow it have yet to come to light – it seems that anyone even remotely affiliated with or accused of being affiliated with the Awami League is fair game.

In January 2025, Human Rights Watch published a detailed report on the atrocities committed by security forces during the mass uprising, as well as wider human rights abuses committed during the Awami League’s rule. There is no way to deny that this truly happened. But what went relatively unnoticed in our media, much less by our interim government, was the concerns it raised about persisting abuses under the interim government, including arbitrary arrests and failure of due process when dealing with the thousands of murder cases that have been lodged since August 5th 2024. Local media have occasionally reported on a number of irregularities in the filing of such cases, including plaintiffs signing reports without knowing who was being accused, identical cases where only the victims’ details were changed, and false cases being used for extortion and furthering personal vendettas. 

This weaponisation of murder cases means that my family lives in constant fear of retribution. Are we allowed to speak up about the failure of justice we see happening in front of our eyes or will we face more cases and repercussions from the government? From the very beginning, there has been a concerted online campaign spreading disinformation about my father and the company he was part of, aimed at fuelling a social media witch-hunt. Recently, this culminated in the inclusion of the company’s directors in a single murder case where 408 individuals were accused. Iresh Zaker, who supported and participated in the student-led movement, was named alongside Sheikh Hasina, whose government conducted the slaughter last summer. 

While the law adviser’s acknowledgement that murder cases are being used as tools of harassment, and claim that the legal system will be prepared to combat this, is reassuring, I cannot help but wonder if this extends to every citizen of this country, or just the perfect victims. When my father was first picked up by the police, the chief adviser’s press secretary gave a breakdown of his supposed guilt that was thin on evidence and heavy on populist rhetoric, before my father was even arrested on a crime, let alone given the opportunity of a fair hearing. When such a senior member of the government shows no concerns about judicial bias and conflict of interest – using a platform that he admits is partly official and which he frequently uses to speak for and of the chief adviser, promulgating government talking points – I cannot help but wonder whether we can really expect due process and accountability from this government. 

When my father was first arrested, his daughter-in-law, the University of Dhaka teacher Kajalie Islam – who consistently stood by her students during the uprising as part of the University Teachers’ Network, even going to the infamous chief of Dhaka Metropolitan Police’s detective branch, Harun-or-Rashid’s office to find out the whereabouts of the student co-ordinators who had been abducted by the police – spoke out about how my father defended her right to participate in protests to people far more powerful than him. She clarified that while that did not absolve him from criticism for his politics, his involvement in politics does not exclude him from accessing justice in a fair court of law either.

In the same vein, I will not try to convince anyone that my father went into politics with the genuine belief that it was better to create incremental change and serve your constituents from within a broken system than to expound criticisms that fall on deaf ears from the outside. I am not here to explain that, when a country takes a vicious turn towards the unbridled authoritarianism we were subjected to, there is very little that MPs from peripheral districts can do to reverse that trend, and even less they can do to extricate themselves from the situation without creating significant dangers for themselves and their families. These may very well be considered unacceptable excuses that are disingenuous, naive or lacking in moral courage.

But what I will not stop asking for, over and over again, regardless of whatever repercussions may follow, is justice. Real justice for each and every victim of the state-led killings during the Awami League regime, for Mamun, Liza, Siam and all others massacred during the uprising, and justice, equally real and meaningful, for my father, who has the right to be presumed innocent until proven otherwise. He has a right to bail, to a fair and transparent investigation, and for his dignity and fundamental rights to be protected. 

Asaduzzaman Noor has now spent more than 220 days as a political prisoner. I am well aware that this has happened countless times to political opponents during the Awami League regime. I am equally aware and repulsed by the many political opponents who were victims of enforced disappearance, torture and extrajudicial killing. I am grateful for the silver lining of this dark cloud – that at least I know where he is, that I haven’t had to endure the agony of the families of the disappeared. But I am reminded of a big difference in the case of my father. When things like this happened on the Awami League's watch, we were living in an autocracy. This time around, we are not. Are we?●

Shuprova Tasneem is a writer and journalist.