The human rights situation of May 2018 has been analyzed in this report. The country's human rights situation was found to be deteriorating since 2009, which has since become of serious concern due to the repressive attitude and policies of the government; while has returned to power through the farcical elections of 5 January 2014. The upcoming 11th Parliamentary elections in December 2018 are further cause for escalating violations. The Awami League‟s re-assumption of power for a second term, through controversial Parliamentary Elections in 2014 has created a peculiar parliament, where the Jatiya Party has simultaneously become the Opposition and partner of the government. The government, after assuming power, has created a state of fear in the country by due to lack of accountability and by giving law enforcement impunity for their unlawful actions. The commission of enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings and matters relating to impunity and injustice have been highlighted by Member States in Bangladesh‟s human rights review as a matter of grave concern, during the third cycle of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR)2 of Bangladesh on 14 May 2018 at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. However, the government has always denied that enforced disappearance exist. During the second cycle of the UPR in 2013, the then Foreign Minister Dipu Moni said that enforced disappearance does not exist in Bangladesh. This time while reviewing Bangladesh, the Law Minister Anisul Huq disagreed with the position that enforced disappearances occur in Bangladesh. Instead he said that the cases of abduction of some individuals are often reported as enforced disappearance; and there has been a tendency for quite sometime to label all cases of missing persons
as enforced disappearance.

Full Report: Odhikar May 2018 Human Rights Monitoring Report