NYT report on ‘Aynaghar’ details torture of captives

The New York Times on Thursday ran a report on the incidents of enforced disappearance that took place during the rule of recently ousted former prime minister Sheikh Hasina.
Titled “Alone in the Dark: The Nightmare of Bangladesh’s Secret Underground Prison”, Mujib Mashal and Shayeza Walid’s piece for the NYT touches upon the stories of Mir Ahmad Quasem Arman, Abdullahil Amaan Azmi, Maroof Zaman, and Mikel Changma, who were all unlawfully detained and kept in captive facilities known as “Aynaghar”, or House of Mirrors, by Hasina’s security forces.
Mir Ahmad, son of former Jamaat-e-Islami leader Mir Quasem Ali, who was executed in 2016 for crimes against humanity committed during Bangladesh’s Liberation War in 1971, told NYT about the political circumstances in which he became a victim of enforced disappearance, when he was “under no criminal accusation himself”.
The report delved into the situation surrounding his release as well, being “dropped off in a barren field at the edge of Dhaka” following the events of
August 5.
Notably, the report described Mir Quasen Ali as an “Islamic activist and business magnate”, and quoted his son Mir Ahmad, saying, “I am not proud of his [Mir Quasem] role in ’71.”
Mir Ahmad added that as his father’s lawyer, he believes his father “had not deserved a day in jail, much less hanging”.
Abdullahil Amaan Azmi, a former army general, described the conditions of his captivity. He recounted how “in the beginning, he would try to catch a bit of sunlight through two small ventilation openings. But once they found out through the CCTV camera, they closed those off”.
The NYT reported that the internment centre focused on prolonging the lives of its captives in a state that was “barely worth living”. There were regular and thorough medical checkups, haircuts, and physical torture only occurred during interrogations in the early days.
The report also corroborated the sketches made by three former detainees who made identical drawings of Aynaghar. It described the design featuring long corridors with six rooms facing in opposite directions, with toilets at either end, one for standing and another for squatting. The cells featured large exhaust fans to drown out whatever the guards would say, as well as serving as a tool for psychological torture.
The NYT report also featured the account of Maroof Zaman, a former diplomat, who was in prison for 467 days. He described the physical assault he faced, being hooded and punched repeatedly in the face. He was questioned over his social media and blog posts, where he had been critical of Hasina’s treatment of India.
Similarly, Mikel Changma, the indigenous rights activist who was abducted in 2019 and released following August 5, described his time at Aynaghar.
He was told during interrogation, when he kept asking why he was there, that this was “political retaliation”, for when Hasina went to the Chittagong Hill Tracts to hold a party rally, and Mikel Changma’s party activists blocked the road, reports NYT.
The report goes into details about the psychological difficulty of being kept in an underground prison faced by the survivors the NYT interviewed. Amaan Azmi recounted praying for a dignified death: “Please don’t let cats and dogs eat my body, please have them send my body to my family, my loved ones.”
Family members of the victims of enforced disappearance, as well as survivors, went to the army headquarters on August 5 to finally unearth the mystery of this injustice, according to NYT. They were told to give the army 24 hours, with the assurance that “if anyone is left, we will ensure they will be released as early as possible”.
The report ends with a description of a meeting between Chief Adviser Prof Muhammad Yunus and the mother and sister of Sajedul Islam Sumon, who had disappeared in 2013.
“We are done waiting, what we want is something concrete,” Sanjida Islam Tulee, Sumon’s sister, told Yunus, according to NYT.
In response, Yunus reportedly told them that their protest is what brought this new government into power, and that it served as inspiration for the student protests. He reassured them the interim government would pursue justice for them.