Bangladesh Disaster: Female Survivor Found 17 Days Later

17 days after the Bangladesh tragedy that saw the death toll rise over 1,000 people, police and military officials said they have rescued a woman from the rubble of the garment factory building.

Reshma Begum, a seamstress who was working on the third floor of the factory,cried out for help as the rescuers continued to search the rubble for survivors days after the collapse.

Army engineers pulled her from the basement of the building after a workman helping to clear the wreckage reported hearing her faint cries for help from beneath the ruins.

"I heard the sound and rushed towards the spot. I knelt down and heard a faint voice. Sir, please help, she cried," Abdur Razzaq, an army sergeant told Guardian.

He said that Begum has been hitting the concrete with the pipe to alert approaching rescue workers and he heard the sound after the bulldozers lifted loose rubble that had been covering the spot.

He added that she had stayed alive on biscuits in the rucksacks of dead colleagues and drinking rainwater.

There were loud cheers from hundreds of onlookers as she was removed and taken to a military hospital.

"It is incredible that someone could have survived in the wreckage 408 hours after the building came down. Her will to live is amazing. We've given her oxygen and she has been rushed to hospital," Lieutenant Shah Jamal told reorters.

So far, more than 2,500 people have been rescued in the aftermath of the collapse, with about a thousand of them suffering very serious injuries as some of the survivors had to be rescued by severing their limbs trapped under the rubble.

About nine people have been arrested in connection with the tragedy, while Primark and Canadian-owned Loblaw have said that they will compensate victims of the disaster,  the worst disaster that has ever plagued the country.

Only in November, 114 people were killed in  a garment factory fire, while there have been 8 deaths earlier this week from a similar garment factory fire.

Bangladesh Jamaat Leader Handed the Death Penalty

Assistant secretary-general of the Jamaat-e-Islami party, Mohammad Kamaruzzaman, has been handed the death penalty by a Bangladesh war crimes tribunal for war crimes against humanity.

Kamaruzzaman, who has claimed his trial is politically motivated, was convicted on five counts of torture, rape, kidnapping and genocide of at least 120 unarmed Bangladeshi farmers in Sohagpur village.

He was accused of being the mastermind behind the creation of the al-Badr, a killer squad of the Pakistani army that committed mass murder during the 1971 war for independence.

Chief defence counsel Abdur Razzaq said, “He was just a lad during the war. It’s a ridiculous suggestion that a 19-year-old could control the Pakistani army.”

According to an interview held by Al Jazeera with a top analyst, David Bergman, he said, “The Jamaat-e-Islami will not be happy with this verdict, but it is unclear at this point whether there will be violence.”

He also added, “There has been constant criticism from the defence lawyers that they are dealing with a politicized court process and that they are being prosecuted because they are part of an alliance that is against the government.”

He told the correspondent that despite the loud cheers outside the court after the verdict was announced, the defence, however, is extremely critical of the judgment and cannot believe so much responsibility is being placed on a man who was just 19 at the time the crime was committed.

The war tribunal, which was established in 2010 by the government to put under trial Bangladesh natives charged with collaborating with Pakistani forces in an attempt to prevent the independence of East Pakistan, have convicted three other Islamists that play key roles in the affairs of the Jamaat party.

Only in February, Delwar Hossain Sayeedi, a Jamaat leader, was handed the penalty for his war crimes. There are indications that Kamaruzzaman’s conviction will increase the tension between police and Islamist protesters as there have been deadly clashes between the two parties in Dhaka.

According to official statistics, about three million people died in the nine-month Bangladesh secession war, while independent researchers said that the number of deaths were about half a million

Bangladesh Factory Fire Kills 8 People in Dhaka

Only two weeks after more than 900 people died in an eight-storey factory collapse, police say a garment factory fire in an industrial district in Dhaka has killed at least 8 people on Wednesday night.

The fire, which swept through a factory belonging to the Tung Hal Group, a large garment exporter, occurred in the Mirpur area of the Bangladeshi capital overnight.

“It was a big fire but we managed to confine it on one floor,” Mahbubur Rahman, operations director of Bangladesh’s fire service, told AFP news agency.

He added that the victims had suffocated after rushing to a stairwell, and being overwhelmed by “toxic smoke from burnt acrylic clothing”.

Among the victims who died of suffocation was the owner of the factory, who was said to be holding a meeting in the 11-storey building. But the police and fire officials reported that that there was no worker amongst the victims as there was no overnight production.

President of the Bangladesh Garment Manufcaturers and Exporters Association, Mohammed Atiqul Islam, told Reuters news agency, “It is not clear to us how the accident happened, but we are trying to find out the cause.”

Only on Wednesday, the government announced that it had shut down 18 garment factories for safety reasons following the April 24 Rana Plaza collapse, the worst garment manufacturing disaster in the world that has seen the deaths of over 900 people.

Fire at Bangladesh Collapse Halts Rescue Effort

There was a fire outbreak late Sunday in the wreckage of the Bangladesh 8-storey garment factory that collapsed days ago.

According to the reports by rescuers, there was smoke sipping out from a pile of shattered concrete, which forced the rescuers to temporarily stop their efforts, while hundreds of people are still trapped beneath the rubble.

Syed al-Amin Roman, a volunteer rescuer, said that the flames suddenly broke out when sparks were generated by those rescuers trying to cut through a steel rod to reach a woman.

Firefighters reported to the scene to put out the flames as the rescuers retreated from the area. Brig. Gen. Mohammed Siddiqul Alam Shikder, who is overseeing the rescue operations, said that they will be able to control it, hopefully.

The incident occurred only a few hours after Mohammed Sohel Rana, owner of the illegally-constructed building, was arrested in Benapole in western Bangladesh as he was about to flee into Bengal state, west India.

He has being brought back to Bangladesh to face a court trial for negligence.

Bangladesh Building Collapse: Factory Owners Arrested

According to the Bangladesh police, three arrests have been made over the garment factory disaster that has killed more than 300 people, as the death toll rises to 324.

Bazlus Samad Adrian and Mahbubur Rahman Tapas are suspected of negligence, forcing their staff to work in the building, ignoring warnings about the cracks.

Deputy Police Chief Shyamal Mukherjee told AFP news agency, ‘‘We’ve arrested Bazlus Samad, the chairman of New Wave Buttons and New Wave Style factories, and Mahmudur Rahaman Tapash, a managing director of one of these plants, after midnight.’’  

Hopes of relatives were raised when 45 more people were rescued from the rubble on Thursday night, and 15 more were pulled out of the debris of the eight-storey building in the commercial suburb of Savar Saturday morning.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina told lawmakers, ‘‘those who are involved, especially the owner who forced the workers to work there, will be punished.’’

He added, ‘‘wherever he is, he will be found and brought to justice.’’

Bangladesh garment industries, the largest in the world, have been widely criticized for its low pay, limited civil rights, and the hazardous working conditions the workers have to contend with.

The disaster has called for new criticism of Western companies who were accused by activists of placing profit before safety by sourcing their products from the country regardless of the deadly disasters plaguing it.

British-owned Primark fashion line and Spanish giant Mango, have admitted that their suppliers were running their business in the collapsed building, and have agreed to work towards reviewing standards.

Wal-Mart and France’s Carrefour are still investigating. Italy’s Benetton has denied having links to the building, even as evidence of their involvement with suppliers was found in documents by activists.

Gareth Price-Jones, Oxfam’s country director for Bangladesh told Reuters, ‘‘these are billion-dollar companies. They have huge amount of power to change the way that building safety is accepted here.’’

Human Rights Watch, having analyzed the tragedy, said that reforms should include a drastic overhaul of the government’s system of labor inspections and an end to government efforts to thwart the right of workers to unionize.

In a statement published on the group’s website, Asia director of HRW Brian Adams said, ‘‘given the long record of worker deaths in factories, this tragedy was sadly predictable.’’

Protests Arise Amidst the Bangladesh Building Collapse as Death Toll Rises

There was a massive protest of over a thousand workers over the deaths of many in the Bangladesh building collapse that saw the death toll rise to more than 200 on Wednesday in the city of Dhaka.

As rescuers continue to hunt for possible survivors, grief turned to anger as the workers barricaded important roads in about three industrial areas outside the capital, with the factory owners having no choice but to give the workers the day off.

Some of the workers did damage to windows and vehicles,  before the police intervened, according to Wahidul Islam, a deputy commissioner of Dhaka police.

According to Police Chief of Gazipur district, hundreds of thousands of workers occupied roads for a while, and then went their separate ways. Some had sticks in their hands chanting aloud slogans such as ‘we want the execution of the garment factory owners.’

It was a bad day for those factory owners who bluntly refused to give their employees the day off, as the workers went on the offensive, according to Police Inspector Kamrul Islam. ‘‘They were protesting the deaths of the workers in Savar. Some even wanted to donate blood to their fellow workers,’’ he added.

Interior minister, Muhiuddin Khan Alamgir, told reporters at that the culprits will be punished for negligence of the fact that the building had violated construction codes, after he took a survey of the site.

‘‘Many people are still trapped in the building, which housed a number of garment factories employing hundreds of people’’, Army Brigadier General Mohammed Siddiqul Alam Shikder said.

According to the surviving workers, the building developed cracks on Tuesday evening, which led to the evacuation of thousands of workers. But, the supervisors stubbornly ordered them to go back to the production lines.

While dozens of people have been found in the Rana Plaza trapped in a room and eventually rescued, the police and the government’s CDA (Capital Development Authority), according to local police chief Mohammed Asaduzzaman, have dragged the building owner to court over several cases of negligence.