Resistance is high; garment workers force shutdown in 350 factories

June 18, 2012 Libcom.org

The resurgence of unrest in the Bangladeshi garment sector continues with over 500,000 workers now locked out in Ashulia...

The main costs of living for garment workers are food and rent; both are rising much faster than wages. The overall inflation level is around 10%. So workers are demanding pay increases of up to 50% and are calling for rent controls to be implemented. These are the main demands of the recent struggles which began in mid-May (see earlier report[1]) and have now exploded again to new levels. Though there has been also been trouble at nearby Naragayanj, the unrest is centred on Ashulia where about 500,000 garment workers are employed in 350 factories.
Sunday 10th June, Narayanganj, 10 miles south-east of Dhaka; at 11am workers of the Reck Work garment factory walk out on strike and block the Narayanganj-Adamji-Demra highway with burning tires. They are demanding a pay rise and subsidised transport facilities.
Monday 11th June, Ashulia, an industrial suburb of Dhaka; at 9am thousands of workers of the Artistic Design factory (a packaging subsidiary of Hameem Group, who were the focus of last month's unrest) walk out, demanding higher wages. They block a 3-kilometre stretch of the Dhaka-Tangail highway for several hours. They are later joined by thousands of other workers from nearby factories; bricks are hurled at nearby garment factories and 25 vehicles damaged. One hundred other local factories also close to try to avoid becoming involved in the unrest. Police baton charges, leaving 30 workers injured, eventually cleared the road by 1.30pm.
The Hameem Group employs around 24,000 workers, including 4,500 with Artistic Design Ltd.
Tuesday 12th June, Ashulia; almost half of the 350 local factories remain closed for the day. From 9am there are further clashes between cops and garment workers, with police rubber bullets and tear gas met with bricks and stones. 10 factories are attacked, and 80 workers injured, 10 with rubber bullet wounds. 15 vehicles are vandalised, including the jeep carrying Industrial Police Director General Abdus Salam.

Hafiza Akter, who works in a factory of Hameem Group, told New Age that the workers were demanding pay hike to cope with the abnormal increase in the prices of essential commodities.
It is tough to maintain family with the minimum wage of Tk 2,500 fixed in late 2010, she said.
Another female worker, wishing anonymity, said the factory owners were assuring them of increasing the salary to Tk 5,000 while they continued to deprive the workers of overtime bill and others. http://www.newagebd.com/detail.php?date=2012-06-13&nid=13593,

The road was finally cleared around noon when members of the paramilitary Rapid Action Battalion and armed police reinforced the industrial and local police.

On Tuesday, a tripartite meeting of factory owners and government and workers’ representatives urged the workers to return to work. ...
Aminul Islam, a worker of Sharmeen Group, told New Age they wanted minimum wage needed for survival. ‘We will not return to work until there is an announcement of pay increase,’ he said. http://www.newagebd.com/detail.php?date=2012-06-14&nid=13701

Many garment workers suffer from malnutrition as their wages are too low to afford an adequate diet;

Take Rahima (her real name withheld), for instance. She earns Tk 4,500 a month, and pays Tk 1,000 per month for her one-room shanty. Her landlord now wants Tk 1,400.
Over the past several months, she had to skip eggs, the almost one and only source of protein for low-income group people.
“Four eggs cost Tk 40 now. When my wages were increased [in late 2010] they cost Tk 24,” she says as she explains why she cannot afford eggs any more.
With such a price spiral, the inflation graph has swung wildly and remains at a high level. On a 12-month average basis, the inflation rate accelerated to 10.76 percent in May, up from 8.67 percent in the same month a year ago, according to the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS).
Rahima and her fellow workers were shattered by the skyward journey of inflation.
“The workers did not get any benefit of the pay raise as the house owners increased rents four times a year,” said a worker at Ha-Meem Garment at Ashulia on the outskirts of the capital. http://www.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid=238726

Wednesday 13th June, Ashulia;

owners of the factories at Ashulia decided to resume production today upon assurance from the government and labour leaders that there would be no harm to their factories.
The decision came at a tripartite meeting chaired by Labour and Employment Minister Khandker Mosharraf Hossain yesterday afternoon where factory owners and labour leaders were present. http://www.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid=238127

But, despite yesterday's decision, workers turn up for work at 7.30am to find Artistic Design and many others factories closed. They again block the road and are gradually joined by thousands of workers from 200 other factories. Various barricades are built on main roads with logs and tires. Police use baton charges, water cannon and hundreds of rubber bullets and tear gas canisters in clashes with workers.
By early afternoon the workers are dispersed and traffic resumes.
The inability of these 'labour leaders' to deliver yesterday's "assurances" of a peaceful workforce today shows how little they are in control of events on the ground and how self-organised and autonomous from official mediation these struggles generally are. With unions still banned from the workplace strikes are necessarily wildcats by nature, with a limited influence of the marginal union organisations.

The State Minister for Home Affairs, Shamsul Haque Tuku, said the salary and allowance of the garment workers would be reviewed in the middle of July. He was talking to journalists after meeting representatives of owners and workers. The salary and allowance of the workers are normally reviewed in November. “But, we have decided to review it in the middle of July,” he added. http://www.theindependentbd.com/paper-edition/frontpage/129-frontpage/115463-no-let-up-in-rmg-workers-protest.html

The workers are tired of years of broken promises on pay while their bosses grow ever-richer. With their purchasing power declining to new lows, workers are demanding a rise of between Tk 1,500 and 2,000 per month. Currently, a garment worker gets Tk 3,000($36) to 5,500($61) a month.

Some workers told New Age that the workers are not satisfied by assurances only, they want implementation of the new wage scale immediately
Shamima Akhter, a worker of a factory of the Ha-Meem Group, said the management of the factory assured the workers that they would increase their wages but did not do so.
Another worker of the factory, Rozina Begum, said that now they only get Tk 4,100 to 4,500 per month by doing general duty. Months before they earned a total Tk 7,000 to 8,000 per month by doing overtime but now they have no overtime duty so they are facing trouble in maintaining their families.
She also claimed that they do not know the workers’ leaders who came here today. They did not come to us to know our demands, they came today to protect the interest of the owner, she said. http://www.newagebd.com/detail.php?date=2012-06-15&nid=13798

It is certainly odd and unusual that none of these mysterious "workers’ leaders" or their organisations have been named in news reports.

"We want to increase our salary as no one can run his family by minimum salaries as the price of commodities increase day by day," Rahima, a knitting operator of a factory told The Independent.

Thursday 14th June, Ashulia; the unrest escalates further; during negotiations the government decides to form a committee, headed by the local MP, to hunt down protesters;

... the government formed an inquiry committee ... to identify the mischief makers. The committee was formed at a tripartite meeting of the Labour Ministry and representatives of garments factory owners and workers.
Ruling party lawmaker Talukdar and the State Minister for Home Affairs, Shamshul Haque Tuku, met protesting workers at Artistic Design Ltd in Narasinghapur at 8:30 am.

As the news spreads that the bosses and the state were more intent on punishment rather than a definite pay settlement furious workers return to the streets, blocking the Dhaka-Tangail and Nabinagar-Kaliakoir highways. The Minister for Home Affairs promises a pay rise next month and monitoring of workers' rents but this is not enough to satisfy workers' demands for immediate concrete improvements. Intense fighting breaks out as the area becomes a battleground, police using tear gas and rubber bullets, but they fail to disperse the workers. There is an attempt to set a factory on fire and over 100 vehicles are damaged, including the torching of a TV channel's microbus (media film crews are becoming regular targets of protesters, as footage is being used to identify demonstrators). Workers make barricades at several points along the highways with burning tires and sewage pipes; in securing their territory, workers take temporary control of most of the area. Another 100 workers are injured. Cops later manage to disperse the occupation.

...the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) on Thursday threatened to shut all readymade garment factories at Ashulia in Savar if the ongoing workers' unrest is not contained by Sunday.
[...]
“We will close all of our units first at Ashulia and gradually across the country if the violence continues,” Shafiul Islam Mohiuddin, president of Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA), said at a press briefing yesterday.
He urged the government to take action against the workers who vandalised factories and blocked the roads there for the fourth straight day yesterday.
“A national and international evil power wants to destroy the industry and the government and exporters know who instigated the general workers to do vandalism,” Mohiuddin told the briefing at the BGMEA office in the capital.

Workers have been promised substantial concessions today by Hameem management, (whose boss is head of the country's Chamber of Commerce) but it's unclear if these apply only to their own workers or will be industry-wide. It's also uncertain whether they will be accepted by the majority of garment bosses - or if the promises will be kept;

Several resolutions were agreed on in the meeting mediated by Tuku.
Contacted, Brig Gen (retd) Mohammad Ali Mondal, director of the project at Ashulia of Ha-Meem Group, told The Daily Star that the workers would get an increment from next month.
The owners will also pay for the treatment of the injured workers and that the workers will get the full month's salary although production remained suspended for four days, he added.
Also, the workers were promised that the government would see to it that their house rents at Ashulia do not go up further.

Thurday 15th June, Narayanganj; thousands of garment workers stop work and stage rallies in factories demanding pay rises; some also take to the streets and clash with cops, leaving around 50 people injured. Workers there state they are acting in solidarity with their fellow workers in Ashulia.
Friday 15th June, Ashulia; The unrest continues.

Saturday 16th June, Narayanganj; workers withdraw their labour at 10am; roads are blocked and fierce clashes occur with police, injuring four workers with rubber bullets as workers brick the cops. It takes until 2pm to clear the roads.

Saturday 16th June, Ashulia; another day of unrest, with 50 injured and roads blocked for several hours. 4,000 police remain stationed in the area.
Exasperated with continued unrest and their massive losses incurred from shutdowns and damages, the factory owners declare an indefinite shutdown from tomorrow, Sunday;

"We are losing production every day. Now, we can hardly tolerate further. So, we have decided to close more than 300 factories in Ashulia area," said BGMEA President Shafiul Islam Mohiuddin at a rushed press briefing at the association's office in Dhaka. ...
"It won't be possible to reopen the factories until those responsible for the unrest in the industry are given exemplary punishment," BGMEA President Shafiul Islam Mohiuddin told a press conference.
"We will shut all factories across Bangladesh if the situation so demands," he threatened.
The conference followed a meeting of BGMEA (Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association) and the Bangladesh Knitwear Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BKMEA).
"Considering security of people and the industry, we cannot but shut the garment factories in Ashulia area for an indefinite period in line with Clause 1 of Article 13 of the Bangladesh Labour Act," Mohiuddin said.

The Prez continued with a familiar conspiracy theory;

If necessary, Mohiuddin said, the government should ensure exemplary punishment to them who are destroying the country's economy by enacting a new law so that no one can play game with the industry.
He alleged that conspiracy, both from home and abroad, is on to destroy the industry which now has turned into a 5500-factory industry from one factory.

Similar tales of unspecified dark forces conspiring against the industry have been used for years whenever workers unrest occurs; yet there has never been any concrete proof presented to justify such vague claims nor a single prosecution of these mysterious conspirators. The conspiracy claims are used with certain intentions;
1) to attempt to convince foreign buyers - worried that their Corporate Image will be tarnished by association with sweatshop exploitation - that it is external forces rather than poor internal industrial relations and extremes of exploitation that are the cause of unrest.
2) To blame the convenient bogeymen of neighbouring rival countries; both Pakistan (from whom Bangladeshi national independence was won), pro-Pakistan Islamic Bangladeshis and also rival garment exporter nations such as overbearing big brothers China and India.
3) To target western NGOs whose reformist agenda is to expose the pay and conditions of garment workers[2]. This thorn in the side of the garment industry and its image abroad is generally seen as an embarrassment and as contributing to the present difficulties of convincing the US to grant duty-free access to its markets - the US Ambassador had earlier this month expressed "deep concern" over failure to resolve unrest in the industry.[3] Expressing both garment bosses' image concerns and their enduring paranoia, this has now been taken to the level of absurdity - with UK charity/NGO War on Want and UK newspaper The Observer being blamed as "behind the unrest"!

After reading out a written statement, he blamed a non-governmental organisation (NGO) and a UK magazine for the unrest.
"There is an NGO named War on Want. Besides, The Guardian's magazine The Observer has some influences," he said in reply to a query on who they think were behind the unrest.

The BGMEA President seeks to give the impression that there are no genuine causes of workers' dissatisfaction, they are merely being led astray by unseen manipulators. Yet his colleague soon confirms that workers are often deprived of their already miserable wages;

Referring to some newspaper reports, BKMEA Vice President Mohammad Hatem said some units of the industry had failed to pay wages.

The inflation driving up prices for workers also drives up the price of bank loans for employers with high interest rates of 15%. Prices paid by Western buyers have also fallen in some cases. But, though growth has slowed somewhat since the global recession this is deliberately overplayed; exports continue to grow and to maintain a very profitable industry. But bosses remain reluctant to raise wages;

"The global recession has caused the situation. And it is not possible for us to hike salary in this situation," he added.

The concessions promised earlier in the week are, predictably, already being denied;

Mohiuddin said that there was no justification for any increase in the wages of the workers as the owners had increased the wages by 80 per cent in November 2010. [...]

The effects of rampant inflation on living conditions are therefore completely ignored. Nor were all grades of employee wages increased by 80% in 2010 - and the increases made then were still insufficient by any humane measure[4]. This is why thousands of workers continued to demonstrate and riot after these increases were set.

The BGMEA president also said that the announcement on pay hike by the state minister for home affairs was an individual decision of the Ha-Meem Group.
‘The Ha-Meem Group advanced its yearly increment from November to July. But this was not a decision of other owners,’ he added.

Sunday 17th June, Narayanganj; after recent unrest in the workplace the Sinha Textile Group announces a two day closure of its factory. Police are deployed to prevent further trouble. Sinha employs 40,000 workers.
Sunday 17th June, Ashulia; thousands of workers gather outside the closed factories. They demand an immediate pay rise and immediate reopening of the factories[5]. Barricading the roads, there are more clashes with cops - resulting in 50 people, including cops, injured. Police raid workers hostels and houses and also attack bystanders and shoppers.
Already subject to regular state harassment, leaders of the main opposition BNP party are now also conveniently being blamed for the unrest, with some today charged with the unlikely role of orchestrating the workers' disturbances! Extremely unlikely, as many politicians of both the BNP and the ruling Awami League are owners and investors in the garment industry.
Monday 18th June, Ashulia; 15 workers are arrested in police raids in the Ashulia area. Charges are obstructing police in the discharge of their duty, vehicle vandalism and arson.

A war of attrition

A dispute at one factory employing 4,500 workers becomes, in less than a week, so generalised and intensified in Ashulia that it leads to the drastic measure of the locking out of 500,000 workers from 350 factories by panicked bosses. This shows, once again, the extraordinary solidarity of garment workers that continues to sustain their struggles in the face of such harsh material conditions.
With the exception of 'design classics' such as Levi's jeans, fashion commodities have a stylistic built in obsolescence[6]. Since the 1990s, supply processes and consumer behaviour patterns have become more diverse and fast-changing[7]. Catwalk shows, their clothes horse celeb models and latest designs have in recent decades become media phenomena visible far beyond fashion industry insiders, affecting consumer preference. Influenced by supermarkets developing their own cheap clothing lines, "fast fashion" emerged as fashion 'seasons' grew from two to half a dozen a year; speed of supply became an essential component of competition to get versions of the catwalk's latest styles into the shops and onto the racks faster than one's rivals, with a faster turnover through the shorter seasons. Fast turnaround from design drawing to delivery - for the cheapest price - are what Western buyers demand of Asian garment factories. The workers of Ashulia and Narayanganj are fully aware that every day they strike costs their bosses millions in loss of buyer confidence, contract penalty clauses and much increased transport costs of switching to flight rather than boat delivery to make up lost time.
The factory bosses presumably intend to use their lockout to starve the workers back to work on the worst possible terms. But this is a high risk strategy for garment bosses, driven by desperation and the absence of other immediate options. As financial losses accumulate, so does loss of reputation and of reliability in the eyes of international clothing buyers demanding those vital fast turnaround supply times. It seems the lockout cannot be sustained for very long; losses are so far estimated at Taka 500 crore ($75 million) and rising at a rate of $10 million daily.
Once again, the machinists are rebelling against the machine.

NOTES
1] http://libcom.org/news/return-repressed-new-days-rage-garment-workers-disappeared-27052012
2] As we said previously;

Charities for liberal and regulated forms of exploitation ...
Western NGO's and charities highlight the terrible wages, working conditions and slum housing of garment workers. But they primarily portray them in emotive humanitarian terms as passive victims who only acquire some agency to act in their own interests through the intervention of Western NGO schemes and their lobbying for legal reforms. So the militant class struggles of garment workers are rarely mentioned for what they are - class conflict - but only as tragic and regrettable consequences of an insufficiently regulated industry and 'unethical' consumerism. This ignores the double-edged character of garment workers; while they suffer from extreme exploitation as wage slaves, they are far from simply passive victims. http://libcom.org/library/tailoring-needs-garment-worker-struggles-bangladesh

3] http://news.priyo.com/business/2012/06/12/us-concern-over-rmg-53339.html
4] http://libcom.org/news/rage-over-wage-04082010
5] These recent events, and the fact that workers are here demanding to resume work, should be enough to refute the claims of some 'communisation theorists' that Bangladeshi garment workers display a definite 'anti-work ethic' or tendencies and engage in struggles 'without demands'. In several years of observation we have seen no evidence for these claims, which appear to be only a projection of the theorists' ideological preferences/preferred conclusions - of what one wants to find confirmed in events.
6] Nor is cheap clothing made to physically last as clothing- yet much of it ends up with its synthetic fabrics stubbornly refusing to bio-degrade in Western landfill sites.
7] For a short summary, see; http://utexas.academia.edu/VerticaBhardwaj/Papers/577682/Fast_fashion_response_to_changes_in_the_fashion_industry
Also; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_fashion

Return of the repressed; new days of rage for garment workers - and the disappeared...

May 27, 2012 Libcom.org

After a long period of relative quiet, workers are again taking mass action in the Bangladeshi garment industry. Also; some comments on the recent wave of political 'disappearances'.

Since the deployment of the new Industrial Police Force (IPF) in 2010 struggles had been much reduced by the IP's innovative tactics(1). But recent events in Dhaka's industrial suburb of Ashulia and elsewhere suggest that workers' anger, solidarity, willingness to struggle and sheer weight of numbers can't be contained indefinitely.

Thursday, May 12th 2012, Ashulia, an industrial suburb of Dhaka; during the evening shift Salman, a store room worker at the Hameem Group factory, is reprimanded by a manager for using his mobile phone at work(2). The argument escalates into a physical fight. What happens next is unclear. According to police and management Salman was then taken to jail; it was reported matter-of-factly by several newspapers that;

According to the police...the director beat up Salman and handed him over to the police, they said. Ashulia police confirmed that he was sent in jail on Saturday.
http://www.thedailystar.net/newDesign/latest_news.php?nid=37659

But a different, even worse, version of events was soon to circulate amongst workers...
Saturday morning, May 14th, Hameem Group factory; Workers arrive at the factory to begin work. Seeing that Salman is still absent and hearing of the incident on Thursday, rumours spread that Salman was tortured to death by the managers and his body hidden. The workers gather in the factory, demanding to know what has happened to Salman - the Industrial Police arrive and begin trying to disperse the workers. The workers resist the cops and intense fighting breaks out. A store room is set ablaze and sweater machines are vandalised. By 10am the clashes spill out onto the main Dhaka-Tangail highway where police make repeated baton charges and workers respond with volleys of bricks, burn tires and block traffic.

The Hameem Group workers call out workers from neighbouring factories to join them; soon thousands of workers are fighting with police. The cops fire rubber bullets and tear gas. In the chaos, there are chases and counter-chases - in a crowd running away from a police charge a female garment worker, Nahar, 30, is hit by a bus and killed.

Workers begin attacking garment factory buildings along the highway, damaging 50 properties. Over 50 vehicles, 12 belonging to the Hameem Group, are also damaged. Fearing a contagious effect, 300 local factories stop production and send workers home - losing millions in lost production and adding to the mass of workers on the streets.

A police constable has a rifle snatched from him by a group of workers. Several TV crews are attacked and their cameras smashed, probably partly in response to recent use of film footage to identify rioters. Clashes continued until 1.30pm, by which time the area is swamped by cops and the Rapid Action Batallion para-militaries.

Apart from the dead worker, over 100 people are injured, including around a dozen cops and six journalists. Management of the Hameem Group estimate damage to the factory and machinery at Tk 10 crore (over $1 million).



(Protest footage starts at around 1.02 secs)

Sunday morning, 15th May; workers begin work in the Hameem Group factory but, with still no visible sign of Salman the vanished worker, soon stop and leave the factory. Gathering on the highway at 9am, they again quickly bring out nearby factories; 50,000 workers converge on the street. Fighting begins on the road, workers set afire tires and logs, blocking traffic. Another 100 people are injured, including workers, journalists, pedestrians and two police constables. A hundred teargas shells and 1000 rubber bullets are fired. Hundreds of factories are again closed for the day.
In an attempt to calm the situation Hameem management and police bring a 'Salman' to the factory. But the workers claim "This Salman is not our Salman" and, unconvinced, the unrest continues into the afternoon.

Eventually Hameem management are able to convene a meeting with the workforce where a return to work is agreed. Six arrested workers are released by police and the real Salman is apparently produced to the workers' satisfaction. The police rifle snatched by workers the previous day is recovered, found hidden under a pile of firewood.

Monday morning, Narayanganj, 10 miles south-east of Dhaka; workers protesting the illegal summary sacking of several co-workers agitate stop work at the Sinha Textiles factory. Hundreds of workers barricade the local highway and fight pitched battles with cops for two hours. Several other factories are vandalised.

Tuesday morning, Narayanganj; Sinha Textiles workers find themselves locked out and the factory under "indefinite closure". Though such dismissal without any advance warning is illegal it is a frequent occurrence. At 9am, as hundreds of workers demonstrate and fight cops for an hour, several vehicles are vandalised and a bus is torched.

While fleeing from police baton charges, another young female worker, 22-year-old Sonia, is killed when hit by a bus. 30 people, including 10 cops, are injured.

The 18 month 'truce' as both sides adjusted to the tactics of the new Industrial Police Force is well and truly over. The IPF tactics may even begin to backfire now by provoking a possible escalation; as workers begin to appreciate that their own levels of organisation, co-ordination, tactics and numbers involved must be sufficient to combat the now-greater organisation of the cops.

* * *

The Disappeared

Whichever of the two main parties are in power, every Bangladeshi parliamentary term of office tends to follow a predictable route, becoming ever more repressive. The present ruling Awami League's term is no different, though now somewhat worse than their recent predecessors, seemingly intent on crippling all organised opposition.

In the past two years there has been a wave of unexplained disappearances of dozens of political opposition figures. They have included local party activists of the Bangladeshi National Party(BNP), some more prominent BNP politicians and some student unionists. So far there only apparently been one disappearance due to activities related to labour struggles. Aminul Islam was a former garment worker; elected by workmates as a convenor on the Workers Representation and Welfare Committee at his workplace (the WRWC being the only form of minimal workforce representation allowed by bosses) he was sacked for his militancy. Helped with his legal case against his former employers by the Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity, a group that has argued for higher pay and better working conditions, he later became a union organiser for BCWS. The BCWS was active in the 2010 campaign for a minimum wage - since then its leading activists have suffered harassment, arrest, torture and legal frame-ups. Mr Islam was previously arrested by the security services in 2010 and tortured.

He was last seen alive in April 2012 in the industrial area of Ashulia, outside the BCWS offices, where the premises appeared to be under police surveillance. Receiving a phone call from a worker requesting help, he left home but never arrived at the agreed meeting place. His family filed a missing person report with police. Two days later his tortured body was found dumped by a roadside 100 kilometres away. The local police buried his remains as unclaimed and of unknown identity, but also had pictures of the corpse published in the press. These were seen by his friends and relatives, leading to the body being exhumed and positively identified. Signs of torture were obvious on Aminul Islam's body, with numerous wounds, bruises and broken bones.(3)

Whatever the routine official denials, nobody is under any illusions as to the state security services' role in these murders. While militant workers, rank'n'file labour activists and unionists have suffered harassment, arrest and torture, for the moment, at least, most disappearances continue to be of political activists related to the BNP;

In reply to a question posed by MP Tarana Halim in the Bangladesh parliament on March 14, minister of home affairs, Shahara Khatun, commented that most of the victims of enforced disappearances were affiliated with criminal groups and abducted by their rivals.
http://www.rediff.com/news/special/enforced-disappearances-on-the-rise-in-bangladesh/20120420.htm (our emphasis)

Minister Khatun expresses here either an unintentional or deliberately cynical sense of irony; the opposition BNP's history is every bit as corrupt and murderously repressive as the present Awami League regime - so in that sense his explanation is perfectly accurate.
NOTES
1) See; http://libcom.org/news/policemans-new-clothes-new-styles-repression-bangladeshi-garment-industry-12012012
2) Recent years have seen an explosion of mobile use in Bangladesh, now ranked 13th in the world for usage; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_mobile_phones_in_use As they have become more affordable for workers no doubt they are being used to co-ordinate factory strikes and protests.
3) For more info on Islam's death; http://www.nl-aid.org/domain/human-rights/bangladesh-dgfi-tortured-to-death-labor-activist-aminul-islam/
Correspondence released by Wikileaks in 2010 revealed that the UK government had been training the para-military Rapid Action Batallion, notorious for its many assassinations; http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/21/wikileaks-cables-british-police-bangladesh-death-squad
While international criticism has led to a decline in RAB extra-judicial killings - with victims routinely reported as caught in "crossfire" - the state has merely replaced these with its tactic of disappearances. On the present wave; http://www.rediff.com/news/special/enforced-disappearances-on-the-rise-in-bangladesh/20120420.htm

Labor Organizer Murdered Despite Repeated Appeals to Walmart for Intervention

April 11, 2012 Making Change at Walmart

The body of a prominent labor organizer in Bangladesh’s garment industry
was found last week after he was tortured and killed. Aminul Islam worked
for improved standards and fair wages for his country’s garment workers in
his leadership role in the Bangladesh Centre for Worker Solidarity (BCWS).

After arrest and repeated harassment, BCWS leader Kalpona Akter presented
Walmart CEO Mike Duke with a petition signed by hundreds of thousands of
supporters last year at Walmart’s annual shareholders’ meeting. The
petition explicitly asked Walmart to protect Aminul Islam, urging Walmart
to “tell [their] suppliers that have instigated false charges against
Kalpona Akter, Babul Akhter, Aminul Islam, and other labor leaders that
those charges must be dropped; that the officers responsible for torturing
these individuals must be held accountable; and that labor rights
defenders like the Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity must be allowed
to operate freely.” As one of the largest single purchasers of
Bangladesh-made garments ($1 billion annually), BCWS leaders insist that
Walmart can have a major impact on labor discussions within Bangladesh.

In late March, Akter appeared on ABC News to again ask Walmart and other
major companies for their protection. Unfortunately, the appeals seem to
have been to no avail.

Local Police Chief Mahbubul Haq told AFP that Islam’s, “…legs had severe
torture marks including a hole made by a sharp object. All his toes were
broken.”

Aminul Islam will be remembered for his hard work in promoting the rights
of some of the most exploited workers globally that often find themselves
working in dangerous work conditions with pay only slightly more than a
dollar a day.

Scott Nova, executive director of the Worker Rights Consortium told ABC
News report, “All indications are that Aminul Islam was murdered because
of his labor rights work.”

Click here to sign a petition from the International Labor Rights Forum
calling for a full investigation of Islam’s murder.

Bangladesh: Government must act now to stop police unlawful killings

24 August 2011 Amnesty International

The Bangladesh authorities must honour their pledge to stop extrajudicial
executions by a special police force accused of involvement in hundreds of
killings, Amnesty International said today in a new report.

Crimes unseen: Extrajudicial executions in Bangladesh also documents how
the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) justify these killings as accidental or
as a result of officers acting in self-defence, although in reality many
victims are killed following their arrest.

“Hardly a week goes by in Bangladesh without someone being shot by RAB
with the authorities saying they were killed or injured in ‘crossfire’ or
a ‘gun-fight’. However the authorities choose to describe such incidents,
the fact remains that they are suspected unlawful killings,” said Abbas
Faiz, Amnesty International’s Bangladesh Researcher.

The RAB has been implicated in the killing of at least 700 people since
its inception in 2004. Any investigations that have been carried out into
those killed have either been handled by RAB or by a government-appointed
judicial body but the details of their methodology or findings have
remained secret. They have never resulted in judicial prosecution. RAB has
consistently denied responsibility for unlawful killings and the
authorities have accepted RAB claims.

“It is appalling that virtually all alleged instances of illegal RAB
killings have gone unchallenged or unpunished. There can be no justice if
the force is the chief investigator of its own wrong-doings. Such
investigations cannot be impartial. There is nothing to stop the RAB from
destroying the evidence and engineering the outcome,” said Abbas Faiz.

Former detainees also told Amnesty International how they were routinely
tortured in custody, suffering beatings, food and sleep deprivation, and
electric shocks.

At least 200 alleged RAB killings have occurred since January 2009 when
the current Awami League government came to power, despite the Prime
Minister’s pledge to end extrajudicial executions and claims by the
authorities that no extrajudicial executions were carried out in the
country in this period.

In addition, at least 30 people have been killed in other police
operations since early 2010, with the police also portraying them as
deaths in “shoot-outs” or “gun-fights”.

“By failing to take proper judicial action against RAB, successive
Bangladeshi governments have effectively endorsed the force’s claims and
conduct and given it carte blanche to act with impunity. All we have seen
from the current government are broken promises or worse, outright
denial,” said Abbas Faiz.

In many cases the investigations blamed the victims, calling them
criminals and portraying their deaths as justified even though available
public evidence refuted that.

“The Bangladesh authorities must act now and take concrete steps to
protect people from the alleged unlawful killings by their security forces
.The government must ensure independent and impartial investigations into
all suspected cases of extrajudicial executions and bring those
responsible to justice.”

Bangladesh’s police and RAB continue to receive a wide range of military
and police equipment from overseas, including from Austria, Belgium,
China, Czech Republic, Italy, Poland, Russia, Slovakia, Turkey and USA. In
addition, diplomatic cables from the US Embassy in Dhaka, obtained and
released by Wikileaks in December 2010 alleged that UK police had been
training RAB officers.

Amnesty International calls upon these countries to refrain from supplying
arms to Bangladesh that will be used by RAB and other security forces to
commit extrajudicial executions and other human rights violations. Any
country that knowingly sends arms or other supplies to equip a force which
systematically violates human rights may itself bear some responsibility
for those violations.

RAB was created in March 2004, to much public acclaim, as the government’s
response to a breakdown in law and order, particularly in western and
central Bangladesh.

In Rajshahi, Khulna and Dhaka districts, armed criminal groups or powerful
mercenary gangs colluded with local politicians to run smuggling rings or
extort money from local people. Within months of its creation, RAB’s
operations were characterized by a pattern of killings portrayed by the
authorities as ‘deaths in crossfire’, many of which had the hallmarks of
extrajudicial executions.

They usually occurred in deserted locations after a suspect’s arrest. In
some cases, there were witnesses to the arrests, but RAB authorities
maintained that victims had been killed by ‘crossfire’, or in ‘shoot-outs’
or ‘gunfights’.

Bangladesh’s two main political parties – the Bangladesh Nationalist Party
and the Awami League – have shown no commitment to limiting the powers of
RAB.

In the first couple of months of coming to office, the Prime Minister
spoke of a “zero tolerance” policy toward extrajudicial executions. Other
government authorities repeated her pledge. These hopes were dashed in
late 2009 when the authorities, including the Home Minister, began to
claim that there were no extrajudicial executions in the country.

Gamekeepers turned poachers; villagers cop the robbers

Libcom.org May 5 2011

A late night burglary in a Bangladeshi village sparks off a day of rioting
as the law'n'order situation is turned upside down...

Kaharol, Dinajpur - north-western Bangladesh; in the early hours of
Tuesday morning (3rd May) a house burglary occurred in a village in the
far north of the country. Dr Rajendranath Devnath, owner of the house,
discovered the group of masked robbers at 1.30 am;

   “Hearing the sound of breaking the front door, I rushed out of my room
to see what was happening. Without saying anything, the intruders hit
me with sharp weapons,”

After stabbing the doctor, the robbers also attacked another family member
before leaving with Taka 3 Lakh (around £2,500/€2,750/$4,100), some gold
ornaments and several mobile phones.

Hearing cries for help, nearby villagers were alerted to the incident and
gathered to try to stop the robbers making their getaway in a white
microbus. The robbers responded by throwing Molotov cocktails and firing
at the crowd before driving away.

As the crowd grew, they began chasing the microbus and eventually caught
it by blocking the road at nearby Boleya Bazaar. The robbers, now trapped
and surrounded, then introduced themselves to the angry crowd - as police
officers of nearby Birganj station. The furious crowd now beat up the five
cops and then locked them in a nearby building.

Responding to a call by mobile from the detainees, later in the morning
two senior policemen - one a Deputy Commissioner - arrived to insist on
the release of the detained cops. Quickly surrounded by an angry mob of
thousands, they were chased away under a volley of stones.

Later a larger detachment of eight police attempted to free their
colleagues. Firing rubber bullets, a pitched battle began as villagers
replied with more volleys of stones. Overwhelmed by force of numbers,
these police were also captured and confined in the same room as their
colleagues. Abandoned police vehicles were torched.

The level of anger reflected the long frustrations of villagers - as one
local explained;

   'It is an outburst of the locals against continuous harassment of
people by the police and frequent robberies in the area.' (New Age - 4
May 2011)

An earlier incident meant locals were also already suspicious of wider
police involvement in the rise in robberies;

   On March 8, villagers attacked a robber while he was leaving after
robbery in Doptoir village of Biral upazila. The robber was later
found to be a policeman of the upazila. (Daily Star - 4 May 2011)

(Upazilas are county sub-districts.) The villagers had suffered reprisal
in March; "The next day ... two platoon riot police baton-charged the
villagers for attacking the policeman." The following day a regional
senior officer arrived and "begged apology to the villagers for the
atrocities". (bdosintmonitors.blogspot.com) This suggests the regional
police command have long been aware of and concerned at the unrest
provoked by local police corruption in the area.

As clashes continued through Tuesday the unrest spread over a wider area.
Villagers from Birganj and Kaharol marched in protest to their local
police stations and laid siege to them. By 1.30pm Birganj station was on
fire, along with several police vehicles. Police repeatedly fired rounds
of rubber bullets to disperse the crowd. One person was hit by a vehicle
and died while 30 others were injured during the clashes, including three
police; one cop is in a critical condition.

The station OC (officer-in-charge/stationmaster) and other officers were
forced by the mob to remove their uniforms and close the stations. Some
officers fled, leaving behind vans and two rifles.

The locals had their own ideas about 'justice';

   The villagers shouted slogans against the OC of Birganj accusing him
of being the ‘mastermind’ behind all robberies in the area and
demanding that he should be handed over to the locals for trial in the
‘people’s court’. [...]
   ‘Locals alleged that police were involved in the robbery which I
cannot confirm at the moment. But we have taken the allegation
seriously,’ Dinajpur deputy commission Jamal Uddin told New Age. (New
Age - 4 May 2011)


Two platoons of paramilitary Border Guard(1) forces were rushed to the
area and the 13 imprisoned cops were eventually freed after villagers
secured a promise of an investigation into the robberies and action being
taken against the guilty officers. Several officers have now been
suspended - including the OCs of both Birganj and Kaharol stations - and
some are apparently in custody (perhaps as much for their own protection
as any other reason).

The police Criminal Investigation Department have begun their
investigation and are quoted as being "suspicious" regarding the role of
local police in the events. One issue is why Birganj police, in the middle
of the night and in plainclothes, were at the time of the robbery
patrolling an area under the jurisdiction of Kaharol police.

NOTES
1) Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) are the former Bangladesh Rifles, renamed
and reorganised after their 2009 mutiny; for details, see our earlier
articles; http://libcom.org/news/bangladesh-bdr-mutiny-10032009
http://libcom.org/news/aftermath-bdr-mutiny-state-murders-class-struggles-bangladesh-28042009