Mozammel Hoque Chowdhury
Mozammel Hoque Chowdhury is a human rights defender and Secretary-General of Bangladesh Jatri Kalyan Samity, a platform which works to ensure passengers’ rights by documenting road accidents and denouncing irregularities and poor administration of the transport sector in Bangladesh.
Human rights defenders in Bangladesh face judicial harassment, arbitrary arrest, fabricated charges, abduction, physical attacks, torture and extrajudicial killings. Between February 2013 and September 2017, at least 15 Bangladeshi human rights defenders and activists were murdered. Local extremist groups pledging allegiance to Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent often claimed responsibility for the attacks, which have targeted HRDs who write about women’s rights, indigenous peoples’ rights, freedom of religion, and other human rights issues. Despite these risks, there was no impetus on the part of the government to address the protection needs of HRDs. The authorities have so far failed to properly investigate a majority of the murders and impunity remains a serious concern.
