DHAKA: Reprisals against journalists and indiscriminate arrests risk undermining Bangladesh's once-in-a-generation opportunity to end the legal abuses seen under ousted premier Sheikh Hasina, Human Rights Watch warned Tuesday.
Hasina fled into exile last August after a student-led revolution ended her 15 years of autocratic rule, capping an uprising that claimed hundreds of lives.
An interim government led by Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Muhammad Yunus took charge days later, pledging to institute far-reaching democratic reforms and stage fresh elections.
In a report released Tuesday, HRW said Yunus' administration had begun the process of reforming degraded institutions used as tools to persecute opponents of Hasina's Awami League party.
But the watchdog's Asia director Elaine Pearson warned "this hard-won progress could all be lost if the interim government does not implement swift and structural reforms".
The report said that police had "returned to the abusive practices that characterized the previous government" to target Hasina's supporters, filing charges against tens of thousands of people in the two months after Hasina's ouster.
It said family members of those killed by security forces in the protests that toppled her government had been pressured into signing case documents without knowing who was being accused in their murder.
The report also said the interim government had taken drastic action against journalists it perceived to support Hasina's government.
Murder charges were filed against at least 140 journalists by November for their alleged support of the Hasina government's crackdown on protesters last summer, the report said.
Yunus' government has yet to comment on the report.
The 84-year-old has said he inherited a "completely broken down" system of public administration and justice that needs a comprehensive overhaul to prevent a future return to autocracy.