On October 10, 2024, the 22nd World Day Against the Death Penalty will be marked across the globe. This year’s theme – “The death penalty protects no one” – is dedicated to challenging the misconception that the death penalty makes people and communities safer.
This year, World Day Against the Death Penalty merits special attention in Bangladesh. In light of the end of Sheikh Hasina’s rule, and the commitments the interim government has made to form a Commission of Inquiry to investigate allegations of enforced disappearances, now is a good time to ask: Is it time to declare a moratorium on the death penalty in Bangladesh?
The death penalty is part of a state’s toolkit of sanctioned killings – the ways that a government can end the life of an individual. While the death penalty is legitimized by law, enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, and deaths in custody are perpetrated with the authorities’ tacit consent, complicity, or acquiescence. These actions are carried out blatantly violating the human right to life enshrined in the Constitution of Bangladesh as well as in Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which Bangladesh acceded to in 2000.
With the interim government’s commitment to investigate enforced disappearances, another form of state-sanctioned killing, the practice of the death penalty, ought to face the same scrutiny.
The death penalty is a topic that is not discussed widely in Bangladesh, unless there are public calls demanding the death of someone. It is an emotional and sensitive topic that rouses hatred and anger. Like many Commonwealth countries, the death penalty found its way into Bangladesh’s Constitution post-independence and as such, it has become part of the foundational furniture. Penal laws in Bangladesh provide capital punishment for 33 offenses ranging from drug offenses, murder, arms offenses and rape – all crimes contained in at least 15 Acts of Parliament. There are several criminal laws where either the maximum punishment or only punishment for an offense is the death penalty, such as in the Special Powers Act 1974, where the death penalty is the maximum punishment for crimes such as hoarding, smuggling, and adulteration of food.
According to the Human Rights Committee General Comment No. 36 on Article 6 of the ICCPR, a “sentence of death may be imposed only for the most serious crimes.” The term “most serious crimes” must be read restrictively, only in relation to “crimes of extreme gravity involving intentional killing.”
In 2023, human rights organization Odhikar reported that there were a total of 390 persons sentenced to death by the lower courts in Bangladesh, and five executions were carried out. Most of these sentences were passed against offenses beyond the international law threshold, including rape, drug offenses and robbery.
In March 2023, a court in Madaripur simultaneously sentenced 23 persons to death in one case. Group sentences like this raise questions as to whether all 23 people accessed their rights to a fair trial as set out in Article 14 of the ICCPR – “everyone shall be entitled to a fair and public hearing by a competent, independent and impartial tribunal established by law.” Reports of forced confessions due to torture while in police custody also raise significant fair trial concerns.
Beyond the actual practice of imposing the sentence of death, the reality is that many individuals spend years on death row in Bangladesh awaiting the appeal process due to a high backlog of cases. According to a March 2022 report, there were 2,213 death row inmates in the condemned cells in 68 prisons across the country – some incarcerated therein for over 10 years. Those sentenced to death are kept in solitary confinement, which is a violation of the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (the Nelson Mandela Rules).
There is a myth that the death penalty makes people feel safer. To debunk this misguided notion, we need to look at who the persons living on death row are. “Living Under Sentence of Death,” a 2022 study by the University of Dhaka, supported by the Bangladesh Legal Aid and Services Trust (BLAST) and The Death Penalty Project, studied 39 people on death row, noting that due to the sample size, its findings only apply to those surveyed. Of that sample, they confirmed that the majority of persons had not completed schooling past the age of 14 (87 percent), were in low-paid work or unemployed (53 percent), were under 30 years old at the time of their arrest (74 percent), and had no prior convictions (74 percent). As over half of those surveyed were married at the time of their arrest, and one-third had children, the impact of their prolonged incarceration had dire economic effects on their families too.
This profile of a person on death row – young, impoverished, uneducated, and with no prior criminal convictions – is far from the scary “drug kingpin” images of death row prisoners that television and movie depictions have led us to believe is the norm.
So, why does the death penalty remain in place? Many believe that the death penalty serves as an effective deterrent to the crime of homicide. Circling back to the theme of World Day Against the Death Penalty, this belief is not supported by research. In 2012, the United States National Academies of Sciences conducted the “Deterrence and the Death Penalty” study, an extensive review of over 30 years of studies. The study concluded that there was absolutely no conclusive research on the topic. Thus, the researchers said, “[C]laims that research demonstrates that capital punishment decreases or increases the homicide rate by a specified amount or has no effect on the homicide rate should not influence policy judgements about capital punishment.”
Following the events that transpired on August 5, when long-time Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was forced to resign, Bangladesh is on a new path. The interim government is open to stronger ties and cooperation with the United Nations, including its human rights mechanisms. The interim government, having taken the significant step of acceding to the U.N. International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, in addition to establishing its own Commission of Inquiry, must continue to move forward.
At this point of introspection and accountability, now is the time for the government of Bangladesh to declare a moratorium on the death penalty. Meaningfully investigating other forms of state-sanctioned killing and human rights breaches is at odds with implementing the death penalty.
It is clear from the data that people are living for years on death row in solitary confinement, with court processes drawn out due to excessive delays. Those sentenced to death are predominately poor people, who were likely convicted for an offense that is not within the scope of “most serious crimes,” breaching Bangladesh’s ICCPR obligations. In no way is this justice.
Declaring a moratorium is a way for Bangladesh to formally pause and stop any further executions from being carried out. This would allow the interim government to conduct a proper review of the cases of those on death row now, to ensure that they are afforded their fair trial rights (such as access to a lawyer) and that their cases are determined by an impartial court. A proper review of the conditions of those housed on death row, along with transparent data on the profiles of the wider death row population, is also needed.
A moratorium will guarantee the right to life as enshrined in the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights and the ICCPR. After that, the decision regarding full abolition can be made with a frank, factual, and honest dialogue about the myth of the effectiveness of the death penalty and consideration of alternative solutions to combat crime in the country.
Capital punishment is incompatible with human rights and human dignity for indeed the death penalty protects no one.