[Reader-list] BANGLADESH: Election 2008, Human Rights Defenders

[Naeem Mohaiemen]

Please distribute widely.

http://tinyurl.com/electiondefenders

Human Rights Situation Ahead, During and After the 2008 Parliamentary
Election in Bangladesh

The up-coming parliamentary election scheduled for December 29th, 2008
marks an important milestone for the consolidation of democracy in
Bangladesh. Therefore a meaningful election, free of intimidation and
violence, is of imminent importance. But as the experience of the 2001
election shows, a parliamentary election bears the potential of human
rights violations, such as intimidation of and violence against
voters, especially women and religious and ethnic minorities.

We are a group of Bangladeshi and international human rights
activists. Our objective is to protect and support potential victims
of intimidation, harassment and violence. Therefore, we will collect
as much information as possible of any kind of human rights violations
ahead, during, and in the aftermath of the upcoming parliamentary
election.

For this purpose we established a network of national human rights
defenders in several districts all over the country. After verifying
and compiling these reports, we will share this information with
national, regional and international institutions.

We would like to encourage all of you, to support our initiative by
collecting valid information on human rights violations ahead, during
and after the parliamentary election on December 29th. Please consider
that we only can include information that includes solid proofs of
evidence on the reported incidents.

Please include following information in an E-Mail and send it to:
humanrights.election2008 at gmail.com

1. Date and time incident happened

2. Place of reported incident (District, Constituency, Upazila, Union, Village)

3. Source of information (e.g. witness/victim, media report, informant)

4. Details of incident (brief summary of all important facts, for
example: What happened? How many people were intimidated? Who
intimidated them? Could you verify the information independently?)

Please DOWNLOAD BENGALI VERSION for your information collection.

Thanks a lot for your support!