Odhikar itself became victim of rights violation

Rights body Odhikar has apparently become a victim of rights violation itself, said its secretary Adilur Rahman Khan yesterday.

Cancellation of Odhikar's registration as election observer in the upcoming national polls and some “motivated” news based on intelligence reports against it are in a way such acts of intimidation to overthrow the organisation, he said.

Adilur was speaking at a press conference at the organisation's Gulshan office.

The Bangladesh-based human rights organisation said it was earlier a listed election monitoring organisation with the Election Commission (EC).

On Tuesday, EC cancelled its application, saying the organisation was not registered with the NGO Affairs Bureau anymore.

Adilur claimed that their registration has not expired, but rather been withheld since 2014. The EC arbitrarily cancelled their registration to obstruct the organisation from monitoring the election, he alleged.

Recently, some media outlets published reports on Odhikar, saying the “organisation has again been involved in murky activities”.

Odhikar termed the reports false and motivated. Adilur said among the three reports, only one media house contacted them to verify the allegations.

“Since its [Odhikar] inception, all the audit reports were submitted to the NGO Affairs Bureau under the PMO till 2013. However, since April 2014, the bureau has closed all of Odhikar's human rights related projects, and its bank accounts have been made dormant by the authorities concerned,” he said.

Odhikar said it is continuing its activities on a limited scale with contributions from its members and voluntary efforts of rights activists associated with them. It thinks their reports about the country's human rights situation have become a “headache” for the government.