APSN | Bangladeshi garment workers strike

Home > South-Asia >> Bangladesh

Bangladeshi garment workers strike

Agence France Presse - April 29, 2013

Bangladesh owner is at nexus of politics, business - Associated Press. April 28, 2013
Bangladeshi factory owners arrested after 300 dead - Agence France Presse. April 27, 2013
Bargains for the West, disaster for Bangladesh - Sydney Morning Herald. April 26, 2013
Owner forced workers into doomed factory - Sydney Morning Herald. April 25, 2013
Bangladesh garment workers protest building tragedy - Agence France Presse. April 25, 2013

Thousands of Bangladeshi garment workers have walked out of their factories, demanding the death penalty for the owner of a tower block that collapsed and killed at least 381 of their colleagues.

Managers at all of the country's 4500 garment factories had given workers an unscheduled two days holiday over the weekend in the hope that anger over last Wednesday's disaster at the Rana Plaza would subside.

But police and unions said there was a mass walk-out in the Ashulia industrial zone on the outskirts of the capital Dhaka soon after the reopening on Monday morning and workers then began a protest march through the area. Local police chief Badrul Alam put the number of protesters at more than 15,000 while a local television network, Private Independent, reported that a number of vehicles had been torched, including an ambulance.

Police responded with rubber bullets and tear gas to bring the unrest under control. "They blockaded roads and were chanting 'Hang Rana'," Mr Alam told AFP, referring to Mohammed Sohel Rana, the owner of the collapsed compound, who was arrested on Sunday.

Witnesses have said workers reported seeing cracks within the building on Tuesday night, but they were ordered to return to their workstations after engineers had given the structure the all-clear.