The July Revolution: Use of Lethal Force and the Right to Life

Editor's Note: This is the second post of the CILJ Symposium on 'Human Rights in Crisis: The July Revolution in Bangladesh.'

From 1 July to 5 August 2024, Bangladesh witnessed a complete collapse of human rights, with the right to life under severe threat for 36 days. A peaceful Anti-Discrimination Student Movement, initially protesting a court decision that reinstated a previous decision reserving 56% public-service quota for descendants of Bangladesh's 1971 Liberation War freedom fighters, grew swiftly into a nationwide student-led uprising known as the 'July Revolution 2024'. Instead of entering into dialogue, the former government of Bangladesh responded with unprecedented force against peaceful protesters, deploying ordinary police, Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) units, and army detachments. According to the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) fact-finding mission report, 'as many as 1,400 people may have been killed' between this time, the vast majority due to the unlawful use of lethal weapons, i.e., shot by police or military forces, including many children (12–13% of the dead). The government's violent crackdown was, in the United Nations' words, a 'calculated and well-coordinated strategy' to suppress dissent.

Where firearms appeared from civilian ends, they were mostly pistols, revolvers, submachine guns, homemade weapons and commercial sporting shotguns carried by isolated civilians. By contrast, forensic analysis attributed approximately two-thirds (66%) of the 1,400 estimated fatalities were attributed to projectiles fired from high-powered military automatic and semi-automatic rifles, which are standard equipment for the Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB), RAB, Army, Ansar/Village Defence Party (VDP) Battalions, and Armed Police Battalions–who were also employed in addition to regular police during the protests. Additionally, the Bangladesh Police and Ansar/VDP frequently used shotguns loaded with cartridges containing lethal metal pellets, accounting for another 12 percent of fatalities.

Legal Framework: Limits on State Use of Lethal Force

The right to life, as interpreted by international human rights treaty bodies, extends beyond mere survival to encompass the conditions necessary for a dignified existence, obliging states to protect all individuals from torture and other violations that obstruct unharmed dignity and extinguish the potential for a meaningful life. Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that 'everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person,' and Article 6(1) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), ratified by Bangladesh in 2000, reaffirms that every human being has an 'inherent' right to life and may not be arbitrarily deprived of it. Imposing four positive obligations on the State, e.g., prevention, protection, investigation, and accountability, the UN Human Rights Committee's General Comment (GC) No. 36 clarifies that a State may intentionally take life only when it is strictly unavoidable to protect life or prevent serious injury from an imminent threat.

There has been a serious violation of international standards that set guidelines for law enforcement agencies. Principles 4, 9 and 10 of the UN Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms require officers, firstly, to rely on persuasion and non-violent tactics; secondly, to use firearms only in defence of life or to avert serious injury; and thirdly, to apply force in a manner that is both necessary and strictly proportionate to the danger faced. Soft laws like the 2016 Minnesota Protocol on the Investigation of Potentially Unlawful Death urge States to secure the scene, conduct a prompt autopsy, preserve evidence, and protect witnesses, reiterating the accountability limb of Article 6 of the ICCPR into practice. Likewise, emphasis was placed on Article 2(2) of the European Convention on Human Rights, which, although non-binding in Bangladesh context, employs the phrase 'absolutely necessary' regarding the use of lethal force. In McCann and Others v United Kingdom (1995) and Güleç v Turkey (1998) the European Court of Human Rights upheld strict necessity and proportionality test and added that governments must plan and control operations to minimise any resort to lethal force. In fact, Articles 31 and 32 of the Constitution of Bangladesh prohibit deprivation of life or personal liberty except 'in accordance with law'.

Patterns of Use of Force during the July Revolution

Based on 230 interviews, forensic examination, open-source video evidence, and medical records, the OHCHR report indicates an alarming pattern of excessive use of force by Bangladeshi law enforcement agencies against overwhelmingly unarmed demonstrators. Three recurrent tactics were frequently witnessed from the evidence.

Firstly, indiscriminate live firing before curfew. Throughout July, the security forces relied on military-grade rifles and, to a lesser extent, shotguns loaded with lethal metal pellets. The report records repeated episodes in which live rounds were directed at crowds that were retreating or already dispersed, including the killing of the student Abu Sayed outside Begum Rokeya University on 16 July; the clearance of Dhaka University on 17 July; and the prolonged shooting at blockades in Uttara, Rampura and Badda on 18-19 July. Even if the state perceived unrest as threatening public order, the question remains whether the security forces face an imminent lethal threat during this period. In absence of such imminent lethal threat in the cited incidence, live firing, not being the last resort amounted in arbitrary deprivation of life, violates the State's preventive duty under Article 6 of the ICCPR and fails the 'strictly unavoidable' test in GC 36.

Secondly, using security force's helicopters to complement ground action. Although the Police and RAB denied operating firearms on helicopters, witnesses testified seeing 'personnel on helicopters shooting rifles or shotguns loaded with lethal ammunition at protesters during the period of 19-21 July'. However, dropping tear gas and sound grenades from helicopters was confirmed by the heads of Police and RAB, as documented by the OHCHR report, to intimidate protestors, including dropping tear gas shells in front of a hospital on 19 July, driving away people trying to access it. Even assuming the state's intention was crowd dispersion, area-effect munitions released from altitude offer no capacity to distinguish between an aggressor and a by-stander and therefore fail the Basic Principles' injunction that firearms or any potentially lethal means should be aimed exclusively at a specific target threatening violence. By obstructing ambulances and hospital access, the tactic further breached the protection limb of Article 6.

Thirdly, killing in the disguise of curfew enforcement in the final phase of the protest. The former government imposed a 'shoot-on-sight' curfew order, accompanied by a nationwide internet shutdown to cover up the extrajudicial killings. One of the most deadliest implication was in the Dhaka-Chittagong highway clearance mission carried on by Police, Army and RAB on 20-21 July in Jatrabari to deliberately kill protestors; a nearby hospital alone received 1,200 injured victims. Another incident was the brutal bloodshed suppressing the 'March for Dhaka' on 4 August, when a count of 400 deaths were estimated by the OHCHR. According to a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report, one police inspector reported that superiors told him to 'apply the highest force, do whatever you think is necessary to control the situation, take a hardline approach' while another testified that commanders at Dhaka Headquarter were watching live CCTV and directing officers to shoot like 'they were ordering someone to shoot in a video game'. Even if the government viewed curfew breaches as criminal acts, according to the Code of Criminal Procedure and the Penal Code of Bangladesh, breaking curfew is an imprisonable offence. Therefore, deliberately killing protestors does not per se justify the proportionality ground reflected in GC 36.

Revenge Killing and Accountability Gap

In the turbulent aftermath of the July Revolution, some pockets of revenge violence emerged against state officers. For example, in Sreepur, a BGB officer was beaten to death after protesters attacked paramilitary buses, and other minor injuries were reported during several spontaneous clashes. However, these incidents were isolated and stand in stark contrast to the scale of state violence: while hundreds of civilians were killed and thousands injured, the OHCHR report notes that 'deaths from firearms used by civilians would constitute only a small minority of firearm-related deaths.' Moreover, the bulk of the violence, nearly 50 deaths and around 3,000 injuries among the armed forces, occurred after 5 August, when the former government collapsed and after which mobs targeted local police stations and security forces. For example, the fatal attack on Enayetpur station on 4 August killed about 13 officers.

Despite the condemnable nature of these reprisals, the legal response to accountable authorities has been unfavorably minor. The interim government swiftly initiated prosecutions against political figures, including a high-profile case against the former prime minister and senior ministers at the International Crimes Tribunal of Bangladesh (ICT-BD), while security personnel seemed to be largely shielded. Though the victims initiated criminal proceedings against law enforcement agencies, the government's responsibility was reflected through the charges against only eight security personnel at the ICT-BD. Additionally, no senior military or paramilitary commanders have been charged, despite evidence that directives for live-fire and helicopter deployments originated at military headquarters. This glaring discrepancy sends a dangerous message: political violence is criminalised, but State force applied to civilians remains beyond legal scrutiny. Unless this double standard is reversed, Bangladesh risks entrenching a precedent of impunity rather than enforcing rule of law.

Dr Manjida Ahamed is a Senior Lecturer in Law at Middlesex University, UK. She did her PhD in Customary International Criminal Law at the same university. She pursued an MSt in Human Rights Law at the University of Oxford, UK and an LL.M. in International Crime and Justice at the University of Turin, Italy. She also holds an LL.M and an LL.B. from the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh