CAGE Holds First Public Event in Bangladesh Following Launch of Out of the Shadow of Hasina

Dhaka, Bangladesh — CAGE International participated in its first public event in Bangladesh on Tuesday, 10 March in Dhaka. The event was hosted in coordination with INSAF24, one of the largest pro-Islamic news outlets in the country.

The seminar brought together survivors of enforced disappearance, activists, scholars and community leaders to discuss the findings of CAGE’s recent report, Out of the Shadow of Hasina, which examines how Bangladesh’s counter-terrorism laws and security institutions were used to suppress dissent during Sheikh Hasina’s fifteen-year rule.

At the centre of the event were the voices of survivors whose experiences are documented in the report. Among those who addressed the gathering were Muhammad Arafat Tanvir and Muhammad Masrur Anwar Chowdhury, both survivors of enforced disappearance and key figures in the report’s case studies. Their testimonies described the reality of arbitrary detention, interrogation and the lasting consequences of being targeted under Bangladesh’s counter-terrorism framework.

They were joined by Shaykh Ahmad Rafiq, writer and activist who is himself a victim of enforced disappearance, and Sher Muhammad, head of the Council Against Injustice and another survivor of enforced disappearance. Asif Adnan, writer and political thinker, delivered a presentation examining the report’s findings and the wider political context in which these abuses took place.

The event also heard from Mufti Fakhrul Islam, a witness connected to the report’s first case study concerning Maulana Abul Hossain Al-Amin, who was abducted after exposing cases of torture and repression and is believed to have been held in the notorious “Aynaghor” (“Mirror House”) detention facility.

Speakers reflected on the broader patterns documented in the report, including the use of counter-terrorism laws and institutions to silence journalists, activists, religious scholars and political opponents. Participants also discussed the wider narrative through which practising Muslims and Islamic organisations have been profiled as security threats under the framework of the global “War on Terror”.

The report also examines the role of international actors, noting how counter-terrorism cooperation with global powers - including the United States, the United Kingdom and India - helped sustain Bangladesh’s security architecture during the Hasina period.

To ensure wider access to the report’s findings, Out of the Shadow of Hasina was translated into Bangla alongside the English edition. 

The Dhaka seminar represents the first public intervention by CAGE in Bangladesh and a significant step in bringing the findings of Out of the Shadow of Hasina from international advocacy into Bangladesh’s own civic and political conversation. By centering the testimonies of survivors and victims of enforced disappearance, the event highlighted the human cost of the policies documented in the report while reinforcing a central message: meaningful political change requires confronting the legacy of repression and ensuring justice for those affected.

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Photo by Bornil Amin on Unsplash