Quick Blog · Data Investigation
Targeted state killings in Bangladesh during Hasina-era
During the Hasina years, Bangladesh’s security forces killed thousands of people in various types of extrajudicial killings. This piece looks at the ones who were linked to an ideological entity and asks who the country still remembers.
Showing archived totals while the detailed records load.
This project uses data from Netra News and its Body Count report (2023). It looks only at targeted killings, meaning planned killings by the security forces. It does not count those killed during street protests or in jail. The question is simple: of these victims, how many were said to belong to an ideology-driven organisation, and which ones?
Between 2009 and April 2022, under Sheikh Hasina’s government, Netra News counted about 2,600 deaths linked to the security forces. Around 2,000 were attributed to “crossfire” or other apparent planned killings. Of those killed, only about 270 were alleged to have ties to political or outlawed extremist groups. The rest were mostly accused of involvement in crime or drugs.
This piece focuses on that relatively small ideological group of about 270.
The result is surprising. Most of these victims were not Islamists or jihadists, even though the repression of Islamists under Hasina has been central to Bangladesh’s recent rightward drift. Instead, most of those killed who had alleged ideological ties were leftist extremists — people said to belong to clandestine armed communist groups such as the Purba Bangla Sarbahara Party or Gono Mukti Fouz. Taken together, these far-left militant groups form by far the largest category.
And because the data ends in 2022, it excludes killings between 2001 and 2006 under an earlier government led by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). Including that period would likely make the leftist share even larger. Political activists and jihadists were not known to have been targeted in state-linked killings during the BNP era to the same extent as they were under Hasina. But the BNP-created Rapid Action Battalion waged a violent campaign against far-left extremists, widely known as Sarbaharas — literally, “proletarians”.
Of course, this data counts only targeted killings: “crossfire” and fake “gunfights.” It leaves out deaths in street protests and in jail. If those were added, the opposition — BNP and Jamaat, who were out on the streets — would probably be a much bigger share.
But here’s why targeted killings deserve to be examined separately. A protester may be killed without having been individually selected, but a “crossfire” is planned: the person is picked up, taken away, and shot, with a fake story ready. Planned means the state meant to do it. So the fact that most of the planned killings hit alleged far-left militants is a strong, separate point.
Let’s start off by looking at some important clarifications.
Who is who
Secret, armed communist groups like the Purba Bangla Sarbahara Party. This is not the normal, legal left. Parties like the Jatiya Samajtantrik Dal, Ganosamhati Andolon or Communist Party of Bangladesh are very different from the secret groups counted here.
Outlawed Islamist militant groups: Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), Hizb-ut Tahrir, Ansarullah Bangla Team, and HuJI-B.
The normal opposition parties: BNP and Jamaat-e-Islami. Jamaat is an Islamist party, but it belongs here as a normal party, not an armed group.
The Chittagong Hill Tracts-based groups — the United People’s Democratic Front (UPDF) and the Parbatya Chattagram Jana Samhati Samiti (PCJSS/JSS) — are neither banned nor registered. They contest elections through independent candidates. Although they describe themselves as leftist, they are primarily identified as CHT-based regional groups and are therefore listed separately here.
Four kinds of victims
At least 19 different groups, parties and organisations are grouped into four categories.
269 victims across four categories: 163 alleged leftist extremists, 26 alleged jihadists, 67 mainstream opposition members and 13 members of CHT regional groups.
Each square is one person
Each of the 269 squares is one real person from the data. The colour shows their group.
269 squares, one per victim, grouped by four categories. Focus the grid and use the arrow keys to inspect people; the searchable records table below provides the same details in text.
By the exact group
The same people, now split by the exact group each was tied to.
Ranked counts for each exact political party or armed group.
This went on for years
These killings happened over more than a decade.
Year-by-year totals and category breakdowns.
What the data does not show
Everyone here was owed a trial
Whatever these 163 people were accused of being — extortionists, members of banned groups or something else — almost none of it was ever proved. A “crossfire” is not a court verdict. If the state had evidence against them, it should have arrested, charged and tried them. That is the same fair trial people now rightly demand for Shibir activists (aligned with Jamaat-e-Islami) and others persecuted during those years.
That is what a fair trial is for: deciding whether an allegation is actually true. The right does not depend on whether we like the accused or agree with their politics.
Yet, not all victims are remembered in the same way. Bangladesh now talks a great deal about Islamists killed during the Hasina years, and rightly so. Alleged leftist extremists, however, make up the largest group in this data and yet receive almost no attention.
Including them does not mean declaring them innocent. Members of some of these groups were widely accused of murder, extortion and other serious crimes. But when alleged jihadists were killed, their supporters often argued, sometimes correctly, that they had been denied a fair trial, that some posed no immediate threat, or that innocent men had simply been branded as terrorists.
Why was the same question almost never asked about the alleged far-left militants? Were some innocent people killed and then labelled members of banned groups, just as security forces had done with other supposed enemies? We do not know, because almost nobody seriously investigated it.
In my research, I found no substantial investigation into this deadly chapter of state violence in Bangladesh. Even the few people who raised questions online were usually brushed aside, as though the victims automatically deserved what happened to them. That is all the more reason to be sceptical and try to establish the truth.
There are also broader questions worth examining. Bangladesh’s far-left groups had documented links with similar organisations in India. So whereas the wider crackdown on Islamists is often seen as an attempt to appease India, why are the killings of alleged Naxalites in Bangladesh — whose counterparts are routinely killed by Indian security forces — not viewed through the same lens?
Some also have connected the killing of Sarbaharas to the later rise of jihadist groups such as the JMB.
The aggressive campaigns carried out by the Western-backed Rapid Action Battalion also raise an uncomfortable question: did the West’s long-standing focus on anti-communism shape, directly or indirectly, the decisions that were made? If the US-led War on Terror can be blamed for the assault on Islamism in Bangladesh, why do we forget the US’ equally overzealous history of anti-communism?
These are difficult questions, but that is precisely why they need to be investigated. The public interest in uncovering the truth could hardly be greater.
The records
Search by name, group or place; click a row for details.
| Name / group | Called | Killed by | Date | Place |
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