Bangladesh’s government led by Yunus signs UN convention involving enforced disappearance

DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) — Bangladesh’s interim government on Thursday signed the instrument of accession to an international convention of the United Nations aiming at preventing enforced disappearances as a state party, authorities said.

Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, who took over this month as head of the government after former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina stepped down and fled the country to India amid a mass uprising, signed the accession to the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearances, his press department said in a statement.

The signing took place during a weekly meeting of the interim government’s advisory council amid applause from the council members, the statement said.

“It is a historic occasion,” Yunus was quoted as saying.

The move came just one day before the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances. There have long been accusations that during Hasina’s 15-year-rule, hundreds of Bangladeshis, including critics and opposition activists, became the victims of enforced disappearances.

Earlier this week, the interim government established a commission to investigate cases of enforced disappearances during Hasina’s rule since 2009.

New York-based group Human Rights Watch, in a letter to Yunus, said that according to Bangladeshi human rights monitors, security forces carried out more than 600 enforced disappearances since 2009. While some people were later released, produced in court or said to have died during armed exchanges with security forces, nearly 100 people still remain disappeared.

The group also said that leaked information from military intelligence records indicates that some individuals who were forcibly disappeared were killed in