This study investigates how enforced disappearances have developed, evolved, and served political purposes inBangladesh since 2009. The research used multiple types of documents, including: reports from human rightsNGOs; technical advice from the UN; working group reports; media investigation articles; and court materials (i.e.indictments, case documents). The research identifies where patterns of enforced disappearances developed, whattypes of institutions participated in carrying out enforced disappearances, as well as what types of institutional andnormative barriers exist to accountability. The studies demonstrate that enforced disappearances are a distinctpolitical tool of state control in addition to other forms of coercive enforcement used by the state, producing patternsof enforced disappearances that target different groups of individuals including opposition activists, mediajournalists, students and minority group activists, and are most frequently occurring in the context of increasedopposition and protest activity, facilitated by inadequate oversight, elite security unit operational opacity and thepolitical narrative that portrays dissent as a "security risk."
Rahman et al. (Sat,) studied this question.