Staff Correspondent,

Dhaka – Human Rights Watch has said the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) government led by Prime Minister Tarique Rahman fell short on its human rights protection reforms after the 2024 uprising that brought a political changeover.

The rights advocacy group, in a statement on Wednesday, said the BNP government, which assumed office in February 2026, recently passed three laws that have once again pushed the country's human rights protection system backward.

The organization identified the laws as the National Human Rights Commission Act of 2026, the Enforced Disappearance Prevention and Remedy Act of 2026, and the Special Response Battalion (SRB) Act of 2026, which abolished the controversial Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) unit of the police.

“To prevent a return to the terrible abuses of the past, Bangladesh needs real security sector reform and an independent human rights body with the authority to investigate allegations of abuse,” said Elaine Pearson, Asia director at Human Rights Watch.

The new government’s efforts to shield security forces from scrutiny and accountability offer no reason to trust that killings and disappearances will remain a thing of the past, added Pearson.

The statement said that during the former interim government led by Muhammad Yunus, several measures were taken to protect human rights, but these were canceled after the passage of the three new laws.

As a result, measures to prevent human rights violations such as widespread enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings in the past have been weakened, the statement said.

Two ordinances had been issued during the former interim government with the aim of strengthening the National Human Rights Commission. Under them, the commission was given the power to prevent enforced disappearances, investigate them, and hold those involved in such incidents accountable.

But after assuming office last February, Tarique Rahman's government curtailed the independence of that commission, and the institution's investigative power was weakened under the new law, HRW observed.

In addition, although there was a demand to abolish the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), the specialized police force widely accused of being responsible for extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, and torture, the Human Rights Watch statement mentioned that, in effect, only the organization's name has been changed.

HRW also observed that even the types of protective rules that apply to the regular police force have not been included in the new law.

Detains in the link : https://www.hrw.org/news/2026/09/22/bangladesh-new-laws-reverse-rights-protections-empower-abusers