Rights group Odhikar loses registration

The government has scrapped the license of Odhikar, a much-talked-about human rights group, on charge of tarnishing the country's image.

The organisation that has been documenting human rights violations in Bangladesh since 1994, confimed the deveopment on Monday

It has worked closely with United Nations bodies and recorded thousands of extrajudicial killings by security forces as well as enforced disappearances allegedly perpetrated by the elite Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) police unit, according to AFP.

Odhikar shared an order issued Sunday by the NGO Affairs Bureau, a wing of the Prime Minister's Office that regulates charities, saying the government had rejected its application to renew its registration.

"The activities of the organisation are not satisfactory," the order said.

The group had published "misleading information about various extrajudicial killings, including alleged disappearances and murders", the document said.

This had created "various issues against Bangladesh.. which has seriously tarnished the image of the state".

The organisation has been operating in regulatory limbo since it sought to renew its 10-year licence in 2014.

No decision was made on the application until now -- days before a court was to hear a petition from Odhikar seeking its intervention.

"It means our registration has been cancelled," Odhikar's secretary Adilur Rahman Khan told AFP. "We will take legal recourse in this matter.

"Odhikar has been facing persecution for years and the arbitrary cancellation of its registration is the latest attempt to silence Odhikar," Khan said.

"The documentation of human rights violations is not a crime."