‘Highly inaccurate’: Sheikh Hasina rejects UN report on 2024 Bangladesh protests

The legal counsel of former Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has formally written to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk and raised serious concerns over the UN Fact-Finding Report regarding 2024 protests in the country. She has called the findings “highly inaccurate”.

The report, titled “Human Rights Violations and Abuses related to the Protests of July and August 2024 in Bangladesh,” was published on February 12, 2025.

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Addressing the letter to Turk, Steven Powles highlighted that it emerged from official records of Muhammad Yunus-led interim government that the UN report contained inaccuracies, particularly over its estimate that up to 1,400 protesters were killed during the major unrest.

Further, they have accused the former interim government of circulating “false and inflammatory information” to justify the exit of the Hasina-led government in the country.

Published by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), the report concluded as up to 1,400 people were killed in just 46 days. It added that out of the total figure, the vast majority was shot by security forces. It noted that they found reasonable grounds for believing that officials of the former Awami League government in the South Asian nation, including its security and intelligence apparatus, committed serious and systematic human rights violations.

In the letter, dated May 28, Powles cited the official gazette of the interim government which documented that the number of casualties was closer to 834, or close to half the figure recorded in the UN report, IANS reported.

Further, he claimed that the figure of 834 cannot be relied on due to the “political motivations” of the interim government.

“It is of serious concern that a UN report has arrived at a conclusion that diverges so far from the truth. It puts into question the credibility of the fact-finding process and sets a disturbing precedent for the use of such erroneous findings for incitement and legitimisation of political violence. Accordingly, it is respectfully requested that your Office issue a correction and public retraction to set the record straight,” read the letter.

Powles claimed that the extent to which the OHCHR fact-finding mission to Bangladesh was under the influence of the Muhammad Yunus-led government raises questions about the “impartiality and independence” of the UN report.

“A further concern, as acknowledged by the Report itself, is the temporal time frame of the fact-finding process, limited to alleged abuses between ‘1 July and 15 August 2024’. This plainly prevented the OHCHR from investigating ongoing abuses committed by the interim government itself – including widespread violence against elected members of the Awami League and religious minorities – while echoing the false accusations that allowed it to usurp power through unconstitutional means,” the letter added.