Aminul had been detained by officials of the National Intelligence Service (NSI) in June 2010. According to Aminul, he was subjected to severe and repeated beatings, which his captors said would stop only if he agreed to give false testimony against his colleagues at BCWS. The NSI officials demanded that he write a letter stating that his colleagues were the instigators of recent worker protests, which had resulted in damage to some factory buildings. Aminul refused. While being transported to another location, he managed to escape his captors and went into hiding.

For many years the dirty secret of the steadily growing Bangladeshi garment industry has been its disposable workers.  The lowest paid garment workers anywhere in the world, hundreds of them have died in preventable factory fires and building collapses during the last two decades, and countless more have been injured.  After each tragedy, labor groups have asked: How many more workers will have to die before the industry changes? Workers have demanded “no more fires.”

Sen. Steinberg had been approached by actress Julia Ormond in 2007.   Ormond had recently founded the Alliance to Stop Slavery and End Trafficking [ASSET] and received funding from the Clinton Global Initiative.  ASSET was working on the 2008 reauthorization of the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act [TVPA] of 2000.  Ms. Ormond approached Sen.

The lady health workers' leaders reiterate that more than 130,000 LHW have successfully run basic health campaigns for last 17 years to eradicate polio and other contagion diseases from the society and provided the health facilities on the door step on very low salaries of merely 7000 rupees and their services were still not regularized.  The struggle of lady health workers will carry on till the fulfillment of their demands for legal protections and a pay scale.