Offence against rights activists reaches new height

Offence against human rights activists has reached new heights in many countries including Bangladesh but international reaction to the circumstances remains weak, Ireland-based rights group Front Line Defenders said in its annual report.

“Extreme violence is being used more frequently and in more countries, while fabricated prosecutions and unfair trials have become the norm in many parts of the world,” said Executive Director of the organisation Mary Lawlor. 

The 2016 report launched yesterday said 156 human rights activists were killed or died in detention in 25 countries in the first eleven months of 2015.

As of November, 52 were killed in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Myanmar, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Thailand. Almost 70 percent of these killings involved environmental, land or indigenous peoples' rights. In reference to Bangladesh, the report cited the killings of five bloggers.  Rights activists also received death threats from religious extremists. Physical assaults by police, plainclothes agents or unidentified thugs were on the rise, and occurred in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, China, India, the Maldives, Nepal and Vietnam.