At some point, every family searching for a disappeared relative confronts a closed door.
It may be the door of a police station, a camp, a prison office, a government department.Inside are registers, duty rosters, CCTV footage, phone logs, movement orders and perhaps the last trace of a person who did not return home. Outside are parents holding a photograph, a spouse waiting for a call, children learning to live with an empty chair at the table.
The National Human Rights Commission is supposed to matter at that door.
It should be able to ask where a person was held, who had custody, what happened in a room without witnesses and why a family was told there was no record. It should be able to enter detention facilities, inspect conditions, examine documents and speak privately to detainees. It should not have to wait for the institution under accusation to decide what it may see.
The proposed National Human Rights Commission law does not give enough confidence on that point.
Under the draft, complaints involving disciplined forces may require the commission to seek a report from the government or the head of the relevant force. For the families of victims, that will sound painfully familiar. A person says he was tortured in custody; the institution that held him supplies the account. A family asks where their son was taken; the agency they suspect is asked to explain. A death occurs behind prison walls; the first version of events comes from those responsible for the custody of the dead.
That arrangement may be convenient for the state. It is not reassuring for the citizen.
No police force should be presumed guilty. No security agency should be denied its right to respond. But an internal report cannot be the centre of an inquiry into an allegation against that institution. It can be evidence. It cannot be the investigation.
The issue becomes even more serious where the commission’s inspection powers are limited. These clauses may look technical on paper. In real life, they decide whether a victim’s account can be verified.
A rights body that must seek clearance before entering a detention site may arrive after the detainee has been moved. A register may have been updated. The officer on duty may have changed. A room may have been cleaned. Witnesses may have been cautioned. What remains is not an investigation, but an official tour.
The state’s most sensitive spaces are exactly where independent scrutiny is needed. If oversight stops at the gate of a security facility, it is not oversight. If a commission can inspect only what it is shown, it cannot establish what has been hidden.
This is not an argument against national security. Bangladesh needs capable police, intelligence and security institutions. Officers carrying out difficult duties deserve fair procedures and protection from false allegations. But security cannot mean that an institution becomes unreachable when an allegation is made against it. Public power must remain answerable to the public.
BNP has lived through the consequences of state institutions operating without credible checks. Its leaders, workers and supporters have complained of politically motivated cases, arbitrary arrests, detention and coercion. They know how little comfort an official denial can offer to someone whose family member has been taken away or whose rights have been violated.
That memory should guide the new law.
A party that has known the vulnerability of opposition should not leave future victims dependent on the goodwill of the agencies they accuse. It should build an institution strong enough to investigate any government, including its own.
The draft contains provisions that may improve access to complaints and broaden representation within the commission. Those are welcome. But the law will be judged by whether it can deal with its most difficult cases: a detainee who has disappeared, a person alleging torture, a suspicious custodial death, an intelligence operation that has crossed legal limits.
For those cases, the commission needs clear powers. It must be able to investigate allegations against police, intelligence services and all other state agencies without depending on their internal accounts. It needs unannounced access to every detention facility, authority to obtain documents, the ability to interview detainees without officials present, and protection for complainants and witnesses.
A commission that refers victims back to the institutions they fear will not earn public trust. It will only add another office to the journey of those already searching for answers.
The law should ensure that when a family comes with a photograph and a question, the commission can do more than forward a letter.
It should be able to find the answer.