Ismail Ferdous on a Bangladesh Garment Factory Collapse

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Lotus

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I am sure every piece of electronics I am using, both directly and indirectly, was manufactured in conditions at least as bad as the situation that led to this child’s death. The irony is not lost on me. How do we stop feeding the monster of greed that allows situations like this to flourish?

Fazle Rabbi was born in 1996. He worked at one of the factories housed inside Rana Plaza. On April 24th, 2013 he died in the collapse. He was only 13 years old. This is @ismailferdous in Dhaka, Bangladesh, sharing my project @afterranaplaza, a year-long documentary photography project to shed light on the lives of people who remain deeply impacted by one of the world's deadliest industrial catastrophes. “When I heard the Rana Plaza building had collapsed, I ran towards it from our house. When I saw the building had completely collapsed, I could not figure out what to do. I requested a guy in front of me to give me his phone so that I could call my eldest son. For the next three days we searched for him in every possible place but we could not find him. We went to all the clinics around Savar so many times but there were no traces of him. On 27th April morning we went to Enam Medical Hospital because we heard victims from the 4th and 5th floors of Rana Plaza had been rescued that day. But he was not there. Afterwards, we went to a nearby school field. We saw ambulances were rolling in with dead bodies. Then we saw a microbus coming towards the field. My son’s dead body was in that ambulance. I found his body lying on the verandah and I told the authorities “it’s my son!” When they asked me how I know that it’s him, I told them I can recognize him from the shirt and jeans pants he wore on his last day of work. He body was smashed badly. I could not believe it. …After I identified him they told me to move away as there was a smell coming from dead body. But it was body of my dead son, how can the smell ever bother me?” shares Rahela Khanam, mother of Fazle Rabbi. Please follow @afterranaplaza for more. Website: www.AfterRanaPlaza.com #opensociety #fairfashion #ranaplaza #afterranaplaza #bangladesh #everydaybangladesh #humanrights #workersrigths #fashionindustry #garmentworker

A photo posted by Open Society Foundations (OSF) (@opensocietyfoundations) on

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