STAFF CORRESPONDENT

Victims of grave human rights violations and their families yesterday urged the government to retain the enhanced powers granted to the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), warning that any move to dilute the new ordinance would render the rights body “toothless” once again.

At an exchange meeting at the NHRC headquarters in the capital, the newly appointed chairperson and commissioners heard harrowing accounts of enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, and custodial torture.

The victims and their families warned that if the National Human Rights Commission Ordinance 2025 and the Enforced Disappearance Remedies and Prevention Ordinance 2025, along with other related ordinances, are amended in ways that would curtail the commission’s powers, it could once again become weak, as in the past.

They said this would make it harder to secure protection and effective remedies in cases involving serious human rights violations.

Leemon Hossain, who became a symbol of state brutality after losing a leg in a Rapid Action Battalion shooting in 2011, told the meeting that the new ordinances finally provide the commission with the authority needed to seek remedies.

SEE PAGE 8 COL 1