A new short film directed by David Munoz and co-produced by me has just been finished. The film tells of the forced repatriation of three Bangladeshi migrant workers after the financial crisis in Dubai, and the implications for their lives.

David’s last short film - Flowers of Rwanda - won the Spanish Film Academy’s Goya Award for Best Short Documentary as well as 42 film awards from various countries all over the world.

Go to the web site HERE.

Press package HERE.

An American medical charity has warned that thousands of Burmese refugees in Bangladesh are facing starvation. Physicians for Human Rights said government authorities are preventing the Rohingya, a Muslim minority, from receiving adequate care. Read here.

Arsonists on Thursday torched four indigenous homes and a school run by UNICEF in the troubled Baghaichari upazila of Rangamati hill district. Read here.

Done with very little consultation, this announcement summarises the state of democratic planning in bangladesh:

Dhaka, Mar 3 (bdnews24.com) – Dhaka City Corporation has undertaken a massive project to construct 45 high-rise buildings at Mohammadpur to rehabilitate the tens of thousands of stranded Pakistanis who have been inhabiting rundown refugee camps for nearly four decades, since Bangladesh gained independence.

After completion, the project will provide permanent housing to 38,667 families of the Mohammadpur Geneva Camp.  Read the whole article here.

“The EU calls upon the government of Bangladesh to swiftly and thoroughly follow up with an independent investigation of this incident and of the allegations that the armed forces were involved,” EU’s chief Catherine Ashton said. Read the article.

The former military dictator has an interesting take on his role in the establishment of Grameen Bank.  He writes in today’s Daily Star:

Grameen Bank Ordinance was promulgated by me to establish Grameen Bank on September 4, 1983 when I had had barely completed my first year in office. One should understand how busy I was during those days.

and

My government allocated resources for Grameen Bank for its expansion program to cover the entire country at very generous terms, mostly, if I remember correctly, with aid funds from Sweden, Norway and Canada.

and

I did this deliberately so that Grameen Bank could provide loans to the poor at a rate that was affordable to the poor at 9-10%. I was assured by Grameen Bank that interest rate would be lowered to the desired level, when the expansion program ended in 1992. But over the years the interest rate went up from 13% in 1983 to 20% after I left office

Ershad is basically saying he was far seeing enough to realise what a good thing Grameen was and would be and thus he facilitated the way for Grameen through his unique “Grameen ordnance.”  He also deftly manages to remove himself from the widely criticised interest rates charged by Grameen!

Another take on this history would be that Grameen did not want to register as a bank or a cooperative. Yunus was able to do his usual politicking to milk the situation. Ershad, as a new military dictator, was keen on promoting a more humane image of his regime. And Yunus needed Ershad’s help to set his enterprise up as a parastatal agency overseen by a board made up of himself, state officials and a larger group of Bank clients. Yunus and Ershad needed to scratch each other’s backs and they did.

Neil Kearney, tireless campaigner for labour rights in the textile industry, died in Dhaka of a massive heart attack on 19 November.

I first contacted him in 2006 to take part in our documentary “Bostrobalikara.” He flew out from Brussels to meet with us in London. He gave a superb interview. And in it he outlined why child labour is so pernicious - a fact some Bangladeshi progressives still cannot grasp to this day.

The textile industry remains a battleground but Neil’s tireless work has highlighted and established important principles for the defence and rights of workers in many countries.

Go well, comrade.

Read more Here.

With this being the London Fashion Week, I thought I would bring myself up to date with developments in the sweatshop trade. Last week I spoke to Mr Ruhul Amin, General Secretary, Garment Sramik Trade
Union Kendro ( Garment Worker Trade Union Centre). Those of you who have seen Bostrobalikara might recall his name. He told me what appears below. Roughly verbatim:

The minimum wage thing is a little complex. There is supposed to be a
tripartite review of wages by the government, factory owners and trade
unions every two years. Just before the departure of the last BNP
government, this period was extended to three years. That expires this
October 21st.

That tripartite body set wages for helpers at 1600 -1700 taka per month. ( £1 is roughly 116 takas).
For helpers, depending on grade, it varies between 1800 to 2400 takas
per month. Most factories have dragged their heels even about this but
given the stridency of the worker’s movement most do provide this
level of salary. This is not however commensurate with current demands
by the trade unions who want a living wage. That would require a
helper to get 5000 takas per month. The Unions have arrived at that figure
through the ILO formula for deriving a living wage. No companies
provide that. Some companies which boast high rates of pay shroud the
actual activity - these payments are for piece rate activity and the
piece rate varies over time given market demand etc. The work is also
very arduous and the longevity of these machine operators is about 10
years ( they might start at 25 and they will finish by age 35).

So the agreement on wages - which is a pittance - is
generally being adhered to. The living wage is of course nowhere near it.
The other demands of workers are far from being addressed: medical
facilities, casual leave, service leave, restriction of overtime to
two hours is not adhered to, timely wages are not given, the full
numbers of hours worked are often not noted and therefore not paid for
etc. Only 1 percent of companies FULFILL ALL OF THE 2006 AGREEMENT.  The agreement contained 10 points. ( weekly holidays, timely payments, 2 hour max overtime etc etc). Over 90
percent however fulfill the WAGES agreement which is a pittance and
not a living wage.

The seventh edition of Film South Asia ‘09, the festival of South Asian documentaries, held in Kathmandu Nepal awarded Swapnabumi the 2nd best award. Here is the jury’s decision:

The Promised Land by Tanvir Mokammel is very well crafted and deftly captures the festering sore of ‘stateless citizens’ or ‘stranded citizens’ in so many regions of our extended sub-continent. It powerfully draws our attention to the issue of identities that have become a bane of post-colonial South Asia – the question ‘Who Am I’ becomes one of the trickiest questions of our times, as many segments of our population become playthings of current history. The film tells this story with grace.

We are all very happy of course and we are particularly grateful to Mohammad Hasan, a leading activist from the Urdu-speaking community of Bangladesh, for presenting the film at the Festival. The top prize went to Yasmine Kabir “The Last Rites” a beautiful film about shipbreaking in Bangladesh.

Stefania Ragusa, an Italian journalist, has reviewed Bostrobalikara for Il Manifesto.

by gutter newspaper News of the World. I am no supporter of gangmasters or labour exploitation but this action is disgusting. Read the story HERE.

Delwar Hussain writes about  ” the frenetic urban growth of Bangladesh’s capital..”

What is not just irksome but downright unethical is to give an article a big headline like “The Modern Face of Slavery” and then follow it up with some initial text bristling with buzz words like bonded labour AND THEN fizzle out into nothing. No information. No references. Just a couple of interviews on this most incredible of issues.

So, with all that in mind, this is HOW NOT TO WRITE an article about modern slavery.