Around 57 percent tea garden residents still defecate out in the open, speakers said at a press meeting yesterday. They said this is due to cost-constraints, negligence from tea garden authorities, and lack of space inside households.

Jhuman Das is still in jail, a day after the High Court granted him bail, as the order is yet to reach Sunamganj.

For the last 20 years, Chinami Madraji has been working at a tea garden in Moulvibazar. Rain or shine, the 35-year-old mother of five works for eight to 10 hours a day.

One-year-old Ishan Das Shoumya was all smiles as he played on the bed, but his mother Sweety Rani Das could not fight back the tears as she spoke about the nightmare that was the last six months.

A US congressional body, the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, yesterday held a virtual briefing on the role of law enforcement agencies in cases of enforced disappearances in Bangladesh.

Guernica 37, human rights-focused international justice chamber, has called on the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office to slap sanctions on nine current and former senior officers of Rab for their alleged involvement in human rights abuses and corrupt practices.

Overcrowding with little privacy, substandard beddings, sanitation and weak healthcare facilities have turned prisons in South Asian countries into chambers of perpetual torment rather than places of reform and correction, rights activists of the region have said.

Nine rights organisations yesterday condemned and expressed concern over repeated incidents of violence on Garo and Khasia communities to evict them from their land in Moulvibazar’s Kulaura upazila.

Some residents of Old Dhaka today staged a demonstration, with larvae of Aedes mosquito, in front of Nagar Bhaban in Dhaka today.

Fatema Begum of Kalyanpur slum, locally known as the “Kalyanpur Pora Bosti”, got married to Md Mohsin in March, this year.

Leaders of the National Committee to Protect Oil, Gas, Mineral Resources, Power and Ports yesterday urged the government to fully implement the Phulbari contract, which bans open-pit mining, and expel Asia Energy to protect the country's mineral resources.

Planning and budgeting should be done by keeping gender in mind to ensure equality and equity for the country’s women tea-garden workers, said speakers at a webinar yesterday.

Activists of Adivasi Chhatra Sangram Parishad yesterday demanded a separate human rights commission to prevent “oppression against indigenous women”.

Activists of Adivasi Chhatra Sangram Parishad today demanded a separate human rights commission to prevent “oppression against indigenous women”.

Nearly 600 people have been forcibly disappeared by security forces since 2009, Human Rights Watch said in a report released yesterday. Many turned up dead, some came back alive, and at least 86 still remain missing.

Ancestral lands of indigenous people, both in hilly areas and plains, are being seized for constructing hotels, eco-parks, and security camps, in the name of different development projects.

Speakers at a webinar today said that the Covid-19 pandemic has harmed the overall lives and livelihood of indigenous women. Titled "Livelihood Crisis and Security of Indigenous Women in Covid-19", the webinar was organised by Manusher Jonno Foundation (MJF).

Underprivileged Children’s Educational Programmes (UCEP) Bangladesh and Schneider Electric Foundation will train over 15,000 underprivileged youths in electrical and solar trades across Bangladesh over the next five years.

Eminent citizens today issued a statement demanding arrest and trial of the culprits responsible for vandalising and ransacking several houses, shops and temples of the Hindu community in Khulna's Rupsha upazila.

Human rights activist Sultana Kamal today said, at a webinar, that indigenous people are not only losing their homesteads, gardens, trees, forestlands, or lakes, their cremation grounds are also being grabbed by the state or the people patronised by the state.