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Seven hundred workers have died in factory fires in Bangladesh since 2005, including the 112 who burned to death or jumped to their deaths at the Tazreen factory on November 24th. Now hundreds more bodies are being pulled from the rubble of the Rana Plaza building, in an industrial district 18 miles from Dhaka.
At Tazreen the owners didn?t build fire escapes. They?d locked the doors on the upper floors ?to prevent theft,? trapping workers in the flames.
At Rana Plaza, factory owners refused to evacuate the building after huge cracks appeared in the walls, even after safety engineers told them not to let workers inside. Continue reading “Who Pays the Real Price of Your Shirt?”
Factory executive returns unscathed after two days ?in hell?
Sabiha Sultana Mukta after her rescue on Friday
Photo- Syed Zain Al-Mahmood
For two days, Sabiha Sultana Mukta lay pinned in the darkness – the lifeless body of a colleague to one side, a concrete pillar just above her head.
?It was like being in a grave. I just prayed,? she said. ?I knew I would die.? Continue reading “Back from the grave”
It’s past midnight now, I took a shower after returning home but it refuses to go away.
I can smell it on my wet hair as strands blow over my face while the fan whirs above. I can smell it on my nightwear and, as I rest my chin on my clasped hands, I can smell the stench of rotting corpses and bloated bodies which stretches from Rana Plaza to Adhar Chandra school grounds in Savar ? rise up from my fingers.
It has not only come home with me, all that scrubbing as I showered has proven to be of little use.
It is not the dead workers who are to be blamed. The stench rises from, as Vijay Prasad puts it, the terror of capitalism.
Kazi Azizul from Linkedin group:?Bangladesh Business Discussion
Latest count 261 dead, 371 missing. bdnews24.com 4:00 am GMT.
Wednesday, 24 Apri: The Clean Clothes Campaign, along with trade unions and labour rights organisations in Bangladesh and around the world is calling for immediate action from international brands following today’s collapse of the Rana Plaza building in Savar, in Dhaka Bangladesh. The collapse of the eight story building, covering three factories and a mall, cost the lives of at least 82 people and injured over 800.
Activists today managed to enter the ruins of ‘Rana Plaza’ and found labels linking major European retailers to this latest tragedy: Spanish high street brand Mango and British Primark. Rana Plaza also produced for a host of well known European and US brand names including C&A, KIK and Wal-Mart. These brands were also involved in the fire at the Tazreen factory, not far from Savar, where 112 workers died in a fire exactly five months ago. German costcutter KIK was also involved in the Ali Enterprises fire in Pakistan, where nearly 300 workers burned to death last September.
The killed and injured workers were producing garments for when their factory ? with allegedly illegally built floors – suddenly gave way with a loud sound, leaving only the ground floor intact. This latest collapse provides yet further evidence that voluntary company led monitoring has failed to protect workers? lives. Labour rights groups say unnecessary deaths will continue unless and until brands and government officials agree to an independent and binding fire and building safety program.
?It’s unbelievable that brands still refuse to sign a binding agreement with unions and labour groups to stop these unsafe working conditions from existing. Tragedy after tragedy shows that corporate-controlled monitoring is completely inadequate,? says Tessel Pauli from Clean Clothes Campaign.
She adds: ?Right now the families of the victims are grieving and the community is in shock. But they, and the hundreds injured in the collapse, are without income and without support. Immediate relief and longterm compensation must be provided by the brands who were sourcing from these factories, and responsibility taken for their lack of action to prevent this happening.?
To stop these collapses from happening, the Clean Clothes Campaign calls upon brands sourcing from Bangladesh to sign on to the Bangladesh Fire and Building Safety Agreement immediately. The CCC, together with local and global unions and labour rights organisations has developed a sector-wide program for action that includes independent building inspections, worker rights training, public disclosure and a long-overdue review of safety standards. It is transparent as well as practical, and unique in being supported by all key labour stakeholders in Bangladesh and internationally.
The agreement was already signed last year by the US company PVH Corp (owner of Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger) and the German retailer Tchibo. The labour signatories are now calling on all major brands sourcing in the industry to sign on to the initiative in order to ensure its rapid implementation. The programme has the potential to save the lives of hundreds of thousands of workers currently at risk in unsafe and illegally built factories.
CCC has been campaigning on safety issues in Bangladesh since the collapse of the Spectrum factory in 2005, which left 64 people dead and involved high street brand Zara.
Dhaka, Bangladesh. April 24, 2013 [DrikNEWS] – At least 100 garments workers have been found dead and 600 others injured as an 8-storied building, Rana Plaza, collapsed in Savar bus-stand area of Dhaka on Wednesday morning. Four garments factories and a bank branch located in the complex were closed on Tuesday after the building?s wall showed cracks. However, some workers returned to factories on Wednesday before the collapse. The injured workers of the Rana Plaza collapse alleged that they had been compelled to join work Wednesday. They also alleged that garments authorities forced them to enter the risky building on Tuesday. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is closely observing the incident and ordered three unit of Army instantly to start rescue mission.
NEW DELHI ? An eight-story building in Bangladesh that housed several garment factories collapsed on Wednesday morning, killing at least 70 people, injuring hundreds of others, and leaving an unknown number of people trapped in the rubble, according to Bangladeshi officials and media outlets. Continue reading “Bangladesh Building Collapse Kills at Least 70”
Background
“We started north from Tokyo at three in the morning, in a rented mini-van loaded with jerry cans of extra fuel, drinking water and food, all of which would be in short supply. We crossed to the Sea of Japan coast of Honshu because of rumors about an imminent nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant.
There would be an explosion at Fukushima Daiichi later that day which would deposit a massive amount of nuclear fallout on the ground, creating a nuclear no-man’s land, but we were unaware of the severity of the situation on the other side of the island, as we were focused on getting over to Iwate Prefecture safely.? By the next morning rain had turned to snow. In the center of the island gasoline was being rationed and lines of cars stretched for kilometers.? Supply lines in Japan for everything, including food and bottled water, were already breaking down.? In fact, we had to abandon the mini-van and hire a taxi that used propane for the lack of gasoline.? The snow intensified in the tsunami zone. I wanted to climb right out of the taxi window, so intense was the desire to record the unthinkable.? Still, we had little notion that life in Japan would never be the same again.? James Whitlow Delano,?an American photojournalist who has lived in Japan for 20 years, captured conditions immediately following the Tohoku tsunami and has been back several times to record the eerie emptiness of the contaminated no-entry zone and the conditions facing displaced people. FotoEvidence?is partnering with James to produce a hard copy book of his work, ?Black Tsunami: Japan 2011,? a beautiful but haunting portrait of the devastation left by the great tsunami that killed more than 18,000 people and caused the nuclear meltdown that has permanently displaced tens of thousands. James? images of farms and villages in the exclusion zone show an uninhabited landscape where ancestral graves lie in neglect, where pets and livestock have been left to perish, and massive mountains of contaminated debris have become permanent features of the landscape. He takes us to the shelters where displaced families huddle around heaters for warmth and struggle with understanding their uncertain future.
The Book
?Black Tsunami: Japan 2011? will be an important book because the Tohoku tsunami and subsequent meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant have had a profound effect on the Japanese psyche. James’ work reveals a deep appreciation for the beauty of Japan and profound compassion for those whose lives have been devastated by both the tsunami and the nuclear meltdown it provoked. The book is designed by Mark Weinberg, whose recent work for FotoEvidence was recognized as one of the best books for 2011 by Photo Eye.The hard cover, black and white book will be printed using a four color process at?Ofset Yapimev?in Istanbul.
The iPad version of “Black Tsunami: Japan 2011” (FotoEvidence) took the bronze medal in the digital book category at PX3 in 2012. Afterword by Bill Emmott
The afterword in the book is written by?Bill Emmott, former editor of of?The Economist, the world’s leading weekly on international current affairs, now an independent writer and consultant on international affairs, who writes regular columns for?The Times?in Britain and?La Stampa?in Italy. From the afterword
“An outsider?s memory is of little importance compared with the memories of the people of Tohoku, and of the rest of Japan, for they will not forget March 11th for centuries, if ever. But it is nevertheless important to share those Japanese memories, in however small a way, to maintain a sense of solidarity, of understanding, and above all of our human vulnerability in the face of nature?s force.” From James Delano dedication
“This book is dedicated to the people whose lives were lost, or continue to be disrupted because of the Black Tsunami.?This natural event created a cleavage in Japanese history and in my life here in Japan. It has truly been a ?Year Zero?. To stand on solid ground and look up to third floor windows or higher impaled by trees, has forever cemented my sense of humility and awe for the forces of nature. A lot of people, young and old, weak and strong, needlessly lost their lives that day. I think about them, especially when walking through the cities where they once lived along one of the most beautiful coastlines on the planet.” Links to the Black Tsunami project
Photographers who produce spectacular images of Detroit, Chernobyl, and other ravaged areas have sparked disagreements whether they are exploiting others? misfortune?or just covering the bad news
Mitch Epstein?s Biloxi, Mississippi 2005 vividly represents the inversion of normalcy that is Hurricane Katrina?s legacy.?BLACK RIVER PRODUCTIONS, LTD. AND MITCH EPSTEIN/COURTESY SIKKEMA JENKINS & CO., NEW YORK.
?RUIN PORN? is a phrase so immature and gawky it isn?t sure how seriously to take itself. Like its linguistic relatives ?animal porn,? ?shoe porn,? ?food porn,? ?real estate porn,? and ?fill-in-the-blank porn,? it?s a smirking neologism that may or may not aspire to be a social critique. Continue reading “Disaster Photography: When is Documentary Exploitation?”
The pain of loss for Hassan and Hossain on Ashura, is replicated as we mourn the 124 workers burned to death in the tragic fire at Tazreen Fashions.
That was the fire in number 10 she told me.
What happened?
What’s there to say. The owner took the bodies and dumped them in the drain at night.
How do you know?
Everyone knows.
What happened to the owner?
Nothing ever happens to owners. If I had a camera, I’d take his picture and put that guy in jail.
She was ten and believed with a camera, she could right a wrong. This was 1991.
Twenty years later, there are few child workers in garment factories, but garment workers remain dispensable.
I didn’t know her name or didn’t have time to wait for the relatives to identity her so that I could get her name. But she may be a mother , may be a wife or daughter and to me a human being. Her body was laid down on the floor of a under-constructed mosque. Some army soldiers cordoned her body along with some others. It was difficult for me to take the photograph, disfigured still beautiful, with a small ornament visible on her destroyed nose. I felt sad to take the photo at the same time I felt grief and anger inside me to show the gruesome portrait to understand and make the world realize, how much importance they get when dead but nothing when alive.
Earlier incidents: