The recent BBC documentary, “Bangladesh: The Blood Price of Protest,” has cast global attention on the final days of Sheikh Hasina’s regime in August 2024.

Featuring footage captured by protesters themselves, the film documents scenes of unarmed students being gunned down, the massacre at Jatrabari, and the harrowing final moments of a young man who continued filming even as gunfire surrounded him.

Perhaps most damning is a forensically verified audio clip aired by the BBC in which Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is heard issuing direct orders to security forces during the protests.

The implication is unmistakable: lethal force was not merely condoned but commanded at the highest level.

The response from the Hasina family was swift, but not conciliatory. Sajib Wazed Joy, Hasina’s son and political heir, released a lengthy statement that focused less on the documented violence and more on attacking the credibility of the BBC.

He dismissed the documentary as biased and unethical, avoiding any direct reference to the victims. His statement offered no acknowledgment of the students who were killed, the families torn apart, or the police officers now imprisoned for executing orders during the unrest.

The absence of empathy in his remarks suggested not just a failure of leadership but a striking emotional and moral detachment.

This response, marked by technical rebuttals and political defensiveness, stands in stark contrast to the outcry on the ground in Bangladesh.

While grieving families mourn their losses and demand accountability, Joy focused on faulty forensic details, timestamps, and alleged inconsistencies in footage–raising laughable questions about the priorities of a political dynasty long accused of authoritarian tendencies.

A more troubling message came days earlier in the form of a 20-minute audio recording released by Sheikh Hasina herself. Rather than reflecting on her government’s collapse or expressing remorse, the fugitive prime minister delivered what many interpreted as a defiant and unapologetic address.

In the message, she rejected the legitimacy of a contempt of court ruling against her and mocked the judiciary, asking, “Where is the court that I have allegedly disrespected?”

The tone of both responses–Joy’s faulty rebuttal and Hasina’s emotive, and Hasina’s combative speech–reinforces a perception that the former ruling family remains unrepentant and disconnected from the suffering of ordinary citizens.

Hasina’s admission, unbeknownst to her

BBC documentary, using footage filmed by a young protester who was later killed during demonstrations in Jatrabari, the BBC cross-referenced visuals with ballistic evidence, government records, and witness testimony.

The most incriminating element was a forensically authenticated recording of Hasina herself giving a direct order–reinforcing what the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) had already suggested.

Within that speech, Hasina inadvertently offered more than any investigator could have extracted. At one point, she stated: “If I wanted to stay in power, I would have had to kill hundreds. I never wanted that.”

This was no apology; it was a justification thinly veiled as restraint. While her son dismissed the documented death toll as “unverified,” Hasina seemed to acknowledge it–and implied it could have been worse, had she chosen otherwise.

The worldview on display is one of entitlement and impunity. The Hasina family's relationship with Bangladesh appears transactional–where citizens exist either to serve or to be silenced.

Perhaps most revealing was another line from Hasina’s recording: “Every killing that occurred–each was part of a meticulously designed plan.” Whether intended as an accusation against others or a slip that reveals foreknowledge, the statement is chilling.

It mirrors the regime’s broader rhetoric–invoking conspiracies involving foreign actors, Nobel laureates, opposition parties, military dissent, and student movements–without ever acknowledging its own role in the events.

And then, Sheikh Hasina crossed a line no former leader should. In what many have interpreted as an act of profound cruelty, she declared her intent to exhume the graves of those killed during the August protests, stating: “Every so-called martyr’s grave will be dug up and forensically tested.”

In a country still in mourning–where families grieve sons, brothers, and friends–this was not a promise of justice. It was a threat to erase the dignity of the dead, to retroactively discredit those who perished as criminals rather than victims.

It was not a misstatement. It was a deliberate glimpse into a worldview where dissent is treason, and even the dead must be punished.

Hasina’s rhetoric, in both tone and substance, positions opposition as existential threat. In her eyes, those who protest are not citizens entitled to rights, but adversaries unworthy of basic human dignity–even in death.

Her reference to international forensic involvement raised further questions: which organization does she believe would legitimize such a process? And is she even aware of the United Nations' own reporting on these incidents, which contradicts her narrative?

Joy’s faulty counterpoints

Her son, Sajib Wazed Joy, echoes this posture. His response to the BBC documentary steers clear of empathy or reflection. He doesn't ask why police fired on unarmed students, why the death toll was so high, or why accountability remains elusive.

Instead, his focus is procedural: who operated drones, why autopsies were skipped, where forensic protocols may have lapsed. These are not the questions of someone seeking justice–they are the arguments of someone trying to cast doubt, to reframe the narrative without engaging with its human cost.

But the institutions from which Joy now demands answers are the very ones his mother spent years weakening. Under her leadership, the police were militarized, the judiciary politicized, and law enforcement agencies hollowed out to serve partisan aims.

To now ask these same bodies–undermined by design–to deliver impartial investigations is not just naive. It reflects a deeper inversion of responsibility. The mother threatens the dead. The son insists on due process–from systems they helped dismantle.

What neither seem to grasp is that the public is no longer asking for explanations. They have seen the footage. They have buried their children. The physical evidence–bullet wounds, autopsy reports, and eyewitness accounts–speaks more clearly than any press release ever could. The dead, after all, do not lie. But those who fear the truth often do.

In one of her most startling statements, Hasina attempted to justify the violence with a legal claim: “If someone comes to kill, you don’t need orders to respond–it’s in the law.” This framing shifts responsibility away from command structures, portraying state violence as spontaneous self-defense.

But the BBC documentary, supported by forensic evidence and authenticated communications, undermines that narrative. Orders were given. Directives came from senior leadership. The chain of command was not bypassed–it was activated.

Even if one were to accept Joy’s argument–that the police acted under siege–the deeper question remains: who deployed them under such conditions, and with what mandate? The documentary’s findings are clear: the shoot-to-kill orders came from the top. That “top” was Sheikh Hasina.

Today, many of the officers who followed those orders are imprisoned. Their careers are over. Their families are broken. Children have lost parents. Yet in Joy’s version of events, these individuals are omitted–sidelined as inconvenient details in a narrative focused solely on salvaging one legacy.

He will move on. They cannot.

Meanwhile, Joy’s criticism of the BBC for failing to seek “comments from the accused” ignores the very media landscape his party helped shape—one where independent journalism was suppressed, critical voices silenced, and dissent criminalized.

For over a decade, domestic media largely echoed the ruling party’s narrative. When a foreign outlet refused to conform, the instinct was not to engage, but to attack.

The irony is plain: the same BBC that Joy now brands as biased was, just months earlier, cited approvingly by the Awami League when it scrutinized Nobel laureate Dr. Muhammad Yunus. Then, its reporting was celebrated.

Now, similar scrutiny aimed at the ruling family is dismissed as part of a “foreign conspiracy.” The same inconsistency is evident in their relationship with international bodies.

Overall, Joy’s faulty rebuttal, despite its seemingly polished language does not amount to a defense, rather it qualifies as pure disinformation. It also reads as an inadvertent admission–of how far removed this family has become from the grief and struggles of ordinary citizens.

It reflects not just a refusal to acknowledge responsibility, but a deeper indifference to the pain their governance inflicted.

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Arif Hafiz is a political analyst, cultural critic, and independent columnist.