Raghunath Kha
Raghunath Kha is the local correspondent for the a regional newspaper Dainik Projonmo Ekattor and privately owned national broadcaster Deepto TV. He has been part of the district Human Rights Defender network since 2006 and became one of the key voices advocating for landless people and minority communities. Raghunath Kha joined the Satkhira landless leaders in advocating for the rights of the landless people who face human rights violations due to land takeover. This land had been awarded to underprivileged communities, but has since been forcefully occupied by miscreants, who have taken over substantial amounts of land belonging to landlesscommunities in the Khalishakhali area of Debhata upazila. Raghunath Kha has actively called out these land grabbers in his writing for various media networks.
Human rights defenders in Bangladesh face judicial harassment, arbitrary arrest, fabricated charges, abduction, physical attacks, torture and extrajudicial killings. 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.
HRDs working on different rights issues – including indigenous peoples' rights, economic social and cultural rights, women’s rights, migrant rights, labour rights, LGBTI rights, freedom of expression, police brutality, extra-judicial killings and disappearances, and sexual and reproductive rights – report decreasing their public activism and online writings in their area of expertise. Women human rights defenders have been particularly vulnerable: many of them have been sexually harassed and assaulted.
