The trauma and technique in documenting violations during the July Uprising

After Asadullah was shot on 19 July at Uttara Sector 7, his wife desperately began searching for him. It wasn't until 24 July that Farzana Akter received a clue at the Dhaka Medical College Hospital morgue.

She found out Asadullah had died on 22 July. His body had already been buried at Rayerbazar graveyard as one of eight unidentified victims of the July Uprising. 

Morgue officials had preserved a photograph of his body, which helped confirm his identity.

Farzana waited till the end of August, but Asadullah's name was not enlisted in the official martyr list until Saleh Mahamud Rayhan, from her neighbourhood, reached out. 

Saleh has been documenting the martyrs and cases of human rights violations in Uttara in the July uprising – one of the fierce battlefields during that time.  

Saleh, a member of the July Revolutionary Alliance voluntary group, obtained some photos from an employee at Sea Food House restaurant where Asadullah was shot. He analysed the photos and took a statement from the witness. 

All this was done to determine Asadullah had been killed and who shot him. It was a local Chhatro League leader. They are now planning to file a case against the culprit at the International Crime Tribunal. 

Similar to Asadullah's case, the July Revolutionary Alliance has so far documented 82 cases of killings in Uttara. This is one of the many groups that has been on this path of documentation. 

During our interviews with several volunteers and researchers, they described the mental toll. Days of conversations with victims' families, the harrowing details of the killings and the grief of mourning mothers left them deeply affected. 

Yet, despite the heavy trauma, they maintained a highly meticulous standard of documentation.

"The trauma with this task was so intense that our work almost came to a stop at one point," said university student Hasan Imam, a volunteer who documents testimony of the martyr's families in the Jatrabari area. 

He added, "For example, the mother of a martyr in Ashulia, whose body the police burned, kept asking us 'They killed my son but why burn the body?' 

"What do you answer to that?" 

Why the records matter 

Shoeb Abdullah, Digital Rights Advocate and Visual Archivist said, "The first urgent task after the fall of any autocratic regime is to reveal the wounds inflicted upon society by that regime." 

He added, "This process begins with the careful archiving and documentation of gross human rights abuses, disappearances and murders that occurred under such rule. This archiving is essential not only for prosecuting those responsible but also for achieving national reconciliation." 

According to the official martyr list published on 24 September, at least 708 people were killed in the July uprising in Bangladesh. At the same time, the interim Health Ministry said more than 1,000 people had been killed, reported Reuters in August. 

On 31 October, Sarjis Alam, General Secretary of the July Martyrs Memorial Foundation, said the foundation has listed and verified more than 1,600 killed – and the number is expected to rise. The list is with the Health Ministry for further verification. 

The task is a tall order, undoubtedly. And although the final list is yet to be published by the authorities, for the volunteer organisations who have taken on the job, it is a Sisyphean one. 

It is not just that they collect the numbers of the martyrs and the injured, but the volunteers collect testimonies of the families, hospital data, witness accounts and visual proof. It is a long process, and in many cases, it proves to be emotionally taxing. 

It is not lost on Abdullah that many young people in particular have taken on this task since the fall of the Hasina regime and that those who are involved in archiving these mass killings face significant mental health challenges. 

"I am currently in contact with at least 15 communities actively volunteering in this initiative, though unfortunately, they lack adequate guidance," Shoeb said, "They are often exposed to distressing content – revisiting bloody images, videos and statements from victims and families, which they had already witnessed on the streets," he said. 

"Repeatedly confronting these graphic memories has a profound impact on their mental well-being, which could lead to serious problems. However, it is important to recognize that this mental health crisis cannot be addressed by medication alone. In this case, justice is essential, like medicine," he added. 

The intricate details 

Saqib Sarker, an independent journalist and researcher, has been working on an international project that seeks to document the killings that occurred during the July-August movement for "accountability purposes". 

"I was asked to join in July. I was very eager to work but was hesitant at that point given the immense risk involved. For me particularly, I felt "more" at risk, if that makes sense, as I was working full-time as a journalist at Netra News," Sarker told The Business Standard. 

Even though all of this now seems like a distant past, Sarkar's "intense mental debility and dilemma" was genuine, because Hasina was still in power.  

"For a typical news story, for instance, you would speak with family members of the victims and other witnesses. We also do the same work, but we approach it as evidence gathering, not simply recording a comment," he said. 

"We take very detailed interviews of family members, witnesses [when available], collect police, hospital and other documents, photographic and film evidence [if available], corroborate film/photo by visiting the site and matching photo/video images."  

It can be quite difficult because the family or witness does not understand why they have to confirm something that appears to them as obvious. 

Sometimes, a witness will summarise the whole event in a few sentences. They will say, for example, "When I saw [name] bhai get shot I took him to the hospital." 

"My challenge is then to go back and ask them many details - if they actually saw the moment the bullet hit the victim…how they went close to the victim if the police were still firing…if they could walk or if they had to crouch. I need the details for how exactly they carried the victim to a rickshaw without help."

Besides, it can also be hard to explain his role to the person he interviews, as he is not doing the interviews for a news outlet. People sometimes struggle to understand the purpose of the interview and they tend to expect that it would directly lead to prosecution of the police forces or former government officials.

The local volunteers shared that they also maintain certain mechanisms of documentation. 

Hasan Imam said that they shoot video interviews of martyr families, and details about their lives, where, when and how they were killed. "We also take testimonies of those who witnessed the deadly and bloody fights and those who were injured and lost their limbs," he added.

Saleh's group also collects videos of martyr families and corroborates footage from where they have been killed. "We have some drone footage. We check if we can spot them, check which police official or who shot them. It is a proper investigation," he said.

There are also groups like Bangladesh Protest Archive which record documentation of human rights violation footage from online and offline sources. 

One of its members Adnan Aziz said they have so far documented over 500 violations. 

"We categorise and catalogue them based on types," Adnan said. 

"The total work for a case often takes several days to finish," said Sarker, "There is not necessarily a typical time duration." 

Sometimes, witnesses want to evade interviews for various reasons. And there are cases when new evidence like footage online emerges, and the archivist has to return to the family or witness. 

Carrying the weight of the trauma  

"Many couldn't endure the mental trauma and left the work," Hasan said. 

Saqib, on the other hand, himself didn't face a significant mental toll, but he admitted that it can be "quite distressing" to listen to family members recall how they went through the ordeal of hearing the news of the death of their loved ones. 

Hasan explained how the volunteers, over time, became mentally unstable, lost appetite and lost sleep. "We had to take mental health support," he added. 

Uttara's volunteer organisation member Saleh said, "I was directly involved in protests and saw people dying. I was angry, so I didn't feel the horror to my core. But listening to so many families every day now strikes deeper." 

When Hasan started his work on 6 August, his primary objective was to establish that a massacre had been orchestrated in Bangladesh, through archiving the documents.

Hasan remains steadfast to date. "Our motto is to 'bring back July'. No matter what, we will bring back July over and over again. We will not allow July to be forgotten," Hasan recently told TBS.