Moshrefa Mishu, president, Garments Sromik Oikko Forum, who was leading the fast-unto-death hunger strike of Tuba Group workers demanding 3 months arrear wages, festival allowance & overtime since July 28 was picked up by police today post-midday. She is being held by Detective Branch police at Minto Road. There is concern for her safety as?she has been remanded (Bangladeshi euphemism for police torture) earlier, and has narrowly escaped attempts on her life. Please raise your voice to demand her immediate release, and immediate payment of all workers’ dues.
Yesterday the 6th August, police and government goons carried out an unprovoked attack on garment workers and activists.
More?Photos at Tuba Garments
Related links:
Earlier updates on Mishu by Rahnuma Ahmed
Statement of protest for earlier arrest of Mishu
Earlier hospitalisation of Mishu after being beaten?by police
Tag: BGMEA
Let me see the world just one more time
They said I would need a mask. ‘The smell’ they said. It was five days into the accident.
But it was no accident. A building built illegally, of faulty construction, showing signs of rupture, had been made their prison. It eventually became their grave. More money needed to be made.
Who Pays the Real Price of Your Shirt?
By David Bacon, The Progressive.
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?”
MASS MURDER AT SAVAR
The stench of rotting corpses
by rahnuma ahmed
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.
Continue reading “MASS MURDER AT SAVAR”
Eating up children
by rahnuma ahmed
Josna, isn’t Josna feeling cold?
I didn’t know what to say as I sat beside Josna’s mother on the curb, outside the Emergency department of the Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH). It was slightly chilly, the last cold wave of January was making its appearance felt.
The breeze seemed to blow away her words, but only as far as outside appearances went. They clung to the inner recesses of my mind.
I shivered, but not because of the cold. Josna, 16 years old, a garment factory worker at Smart Exports in Mohammadpur Beribadh area, was lying cold, on a metal trolley inside the morgue. Continue reading “Eating up children”
Flash protest at five star hotel by Rokeya Bahini
In memory of Tazreen Fashion’s workers
Monday, December 24, 2012
Rokeya Bahini organised a flash protest at Sonargaon Hotel at midday today. Members of the Bahini flashed open a banner, “Justice for Tazreen’s Workers” in the lobby of the five star hotel. The hotel authority illegally detained members of the Bahini, subjected them to questioning and took away their banner.
The protest was in rememberance of the workers who were burnt to death at Tazreen Fashions in Nischintapur a month ago, on November 24th. The government and the BGMEA put the death toll at 112 but family members of missing workers, left labour organisations and independent activists insist the figure is much higher. Both the government and the BGMEA are colluding in suppressing the exact number of workers who died and we are furious at the fact that the factory owner has not yet been arrested. Continue reading “Flash protest at five star hotel by Rokeya Bahini”
NISHCHINTAPUR TRAGEDY: Letter from an unborn child
by Saydia Gulrukh
Honourable prime minister,
I AM an unborn citizen of Bangladesh. I was killed before I was born. My mother was twenty-two weeks and three days pregnant with me when fire broke out at Tazreen Fashions in Nischintapur.
I was killed before I was born.
Honourable prime minister,
My mother, Mimi (pseudonym) worked as an operator in the sewing section of Tazreen Fashions. My father, Rakibul (pseudonym), works as a helper in a local bus company. They had met and fallen in love in Nischintapur?s factory surroundings, they got married at a nearby Kazi office (marriage registrar?s office). These days, say neighbours, they had been very happy, their joy radiated as does that of expectant parents. But it was short-lived.
I was killed before I was born. Continue reading “NISHCHINTAPUR TRAGEDY: Letter from an unborn child”
Press statement: BGMEA is responsible for the deaths of Tazreen's workers
BGMEA is a giant propaganda machinery which protects killers
—————————————————————————————————
Organised by Rokeya Bahini
11:00 am, Wednesday, December 12, 2012
In front of BGMEA Bhaban, Panthopoth Link Road, Karwan Bazar
Dear journalist brothers and sisters,
Many garment workers died on the evening of November 24th when fire broke out in Tazreen Fashions in Ashulia’s Nischintapur. The exact death toll is still unknown. According to the government, 112 workers had died but many family members were unable to identify their beloved ones as the flesh had burnt away leaving behind only charred bones and skeletons. Fifty three unidentified bodies have been buried in Jurain graveyard. But several investigative reports have concluded that the death toll is higher. Some of us have conducted preliminary research in Nischintapur’s Buripara at our own initiative, and, we too, have been forced to reach the same conclusion. The government and the BGMEA should immediately have launched a serious drive to ascertain the exact number of those who have died, but instead they displayed a callous indifference which amounts to nothing short of criminal negligence. Continue reading “Press statement: BGMEA is responsible for the deaths of Tazreen's workers”
The cost of cheap clothes
NISCHINTAPUR DEATHS: Killers at large
by rahnuma ahmed
EVERYTHING SEEMED to come to a standstill as the death toll in the factory fire at Nischintapur kept rising. Death isn’t a question of numbers, even a single death which could have been prevented, is one too many. But still, the numbers were staggering.
Sunday’s newspaper headlines had said, nine. But as the day unfolded, the death toll shot up unbelievably; the numbers were conflicting — 110, no 124, later, down to 111. They still conflict, for, family members say some loved ones are still missing.
Numbing numbers. I stare at them blankly. I look at my partner Shahidul and wonder, what, if he’d been one of the 111 or so dead? I reach out and touch him. No, its nothing, I say, when he looks up. Continue reading “NISCHINTAPUR DEATHS: Killers at large”