Collateral Damage: Reshma Rescued
DHAKA, Bangladesh — Well over a thousand impoverished factory workers died in the deadliest disaster in the history of the garment industry. Five factories were operating inside the building when the structure pancaked downward. The carnage was horrific and has focused global attention on unsafe conditions in Bangladeshi garment factories that make clothing for North American and European consumers — especially since there were advance warnings that the structure was unsafe.
The Rana Plaza death toll, now at 1,053, has been rising quickly in recent days, and will probably keep climbing. Located in an industrial suburb of Dhaka, Rana Plaza exemplified many of safety problems plaguing the garment industry in Bangladesh, the world’s second-leading garment exporter, trailing only China.
The authorities in Bangladesh now say the building was illegally constructed, with permits obtained through political influence. The owner, Sohel Rana, now in jail, was illegally adding upper floors to the structure at the time the building collapsed, officials said. [Public outrage has led to demands for his execution in the wake of over 1,000 deaths attributable to him and the corrupt officials he bribed/influenced.]
A female garment worker named Reshma escaped the carnage…a survivor–a miracle!
“Save me!” rescuers heard her shout, before they pulled her into the afternoon light, her face powdered in dust as she was placed on a stretcher.
The rescue of Reshma, as described by rescuers and government officials, has offered a temporary respite from the gloom and a startling tale of resilience: she survived in an opening maybe 10 feet by 8 feet in size, high enough for her to stand, within a penumbra of collapsed beams and pillars. Air trickled through the crevices. She found enough food and water to last until two days ago.
“I never dreamed I’d see the daylight again,” she told local Somoy TV from her hospital bed, according to news accounts.
Reaction in Bangladesh was euphoric. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina rushed to the military hospital where Reshma had been taken. Twelve days earlier, on April 28, rescuers had worked desperately to save another woman, Shaheena, who was then thought to be the last survivor. But she died after a fire broke out in the final hour of the rescue operation.
At Rana Plaza, recovery crews had little hope of finding a survivor when work began on Friday. A five-member army rescue team had begun using heavy machinery to crack into an area of the building’s basement but found it flooded with water. As they worked from the first floor, searching for the source of water, they noticed a movement.
“Suddenly we saw the movement of a stick,” Major M. M. Moazzem Hossain, a member of the team, said in an interview. “Someone from the second floor was trying to draw attention by inserting a stick through a narrow hole. When we reached there, we asked, ‘Is there anyone inside? ”
A female voice shouted out, “Save me!”
Major Hossain said the woman had told him her name was Reshma.
“We are with you,” he said he had told her. “We will not move out from this place without rescuing you.”
Now the soldiers and a group of firefighters began cutting a hole, using a hand drill and hammers, to try to reach her. “We were aware of the tragic accident during the operation to rescue Shaheena,” he said. “So we were very careful.”
For an hour, they kept cutting, making a hole about a foot and a half in diameter. Major Hossain said he squeezed through the hole and helped bring Reshma out. Startled, gazing curiously into the sunlight, Reshma was placed on a stretcher and taken immediately to the military hospital.
The Rana Plaza disaster led to nationwide mourning in Bangladesh as well as outrage because it appears that the accident could have been averted. A day before the collapse, an engineer examined cracks in the structure and warned Mr. Rana, as well as owners of the garment factories, that the building was unsafe and should be closed. Instead, workers were told to come to their factories the next morning.
REFLECTIONS:
The P(a)radox in all this stems from the inconsistency of some of the most violently radical anti-state (A)narchists who demand all government, all laws, all hierarchies be abolished. The contradiction is readily apparent to even childish minds.
How would such a scheme, if it were possible, prevent force & fraud (or protect the environment), both of which were at play in this outrageous example of capitalism literally crushing impoverished workers under its heel? Those youthful violent dilettantes calling themselves (A)narchists who so gleefully enjoy twisting the lion’s tale have no answer. Rather, by antagonizing the beast, they distract scrutiny of criminals such as the owners of the Bangladeshi sweatshops and those corporations who patronize them. The animal becomes obsessed with ridding itself of the lice biting its skin.
“If you strike a king, you must kill him.” -Machiavelli-
The young punk cultural acolytes playing at ‘revolution’, instead of mounting any credible threat to the state, slash tires of vehicles they suppose are too ‘nice’. They smash windows of businesses, small and corporate alike. They routinely assault journalists who they hope will cover their public demonstrations/riots. They demand media attention, then assault those who provide it. They aggressively photograph public events, then assault those who follow suit.
The hooligans cloaking themselves in the mantle of ‘revolutionaries’ vex, but they do not prevail. They antagonize, but they do not remedy. They protest, but they do not listen. They plead for solidarity while engaged in assault and violating the rights of others. They argue for social justice while denouncing the very notion of ‘rights’ or laws intended to prevent force and fraud. THIS, they gush, is the path to a better tomorrow, a brighter more just future for all. Some of their most ardent proponents are not the young who will inevitably adjust their vision once their social imperative has been filled. It is those senior mentors who often derive their professorial salaries from the State while they preach “smash the state”, their tenure secure.
The assaultive U.S. (A)narchist extremists are anathema to the idea of freedom and autonomy they espouse. The relatives of dead Bangladeshi garment workers won’t be looking to (A)narchists for solace, but a government which will eschew corruption by preventing force, fraud, exploitation of the environment, and indentured servitude through wage slavery. Those that can, DO! Those that can’t become violent juvenile street thugs wrapping themselves in the pretext of ‘politics’ and (A)narchy…a cancer on the principles of liberty, freedom, and autonomy.
