Bangladeshi woman killed after police open fire on protesting garment workers
A Bangladeshi woman was shot dead on Wednesday after police in Dhaka opened fire during a protest held by garment workers demanding a wage increase. Anjuara Khatun, a 26-year-old machine operator at Islam Garments in Gazipur, was on her way home after the factory closed suddenly as a large group of protesters gathered nearby.
Her husband told reporters he heard gunshots when police opened fire on about 400 workers and then saw people carrying his wife’s motionless body. “She was shot in the head and died in the car on the way to the hospital,” he said. “There was blood oozing out from a hole in her head.”
Khatun, a mother of two, was quickly taken to Dhaka medical college hospital where she was pronounced dead. She is the third garment worker to be killed in the past two weeks, with hundreds of others badly injured, during clashes that have broken out in key production hubs in the capital, Dhaka, including Ashulia, Gazipur and Savar.
Among the dead are Rasel Hawlader, 26, who had worked as an electrician at Design Express Ltd, and Imran Hossain, 32, who died from critical injuries inside ABM Fashions, after it was set on fire.
The minimum-wage-setting process for garment workers had been going on in Bangladesh since April 2023, but fresh violence broke out this week after the government’s announcement of a monthly wage increase to just 12,500 taka (£92), which workers and rights groups deemed inadequate – and is half of what the workers are asking for.
As news of the revised wage spread, protests around the capital turned more violent. Thousands of workers blocked a main road while police used teargas and rubber bullets to break up the crowds. Buses were set alight, buildings were vandalised and the border guard was called in.
“We call on the prime minister to step in and stop the police brutality immediately,” said trade unionist Nazma Akhter. “The proposed new wage is unacceptable. We reject it and demand a revision.”
Akhter urged the Bangladesh government to ensure that a new wage provides equitable compensation and meets the needs of workers and their families. “Global fashion brands must also speak out,” she said. “What use is all their talk of female empowerment when the women who make their clothes are being murdered on the streets?”
ceses in the US that have put in place policies to restrict LGBTQ+ Catholics, said Francis DeBernardo of the USbased New Ways Ministry.
“It is big and good news,” DeBernardo, whose ministry has long pushed for greater acceptance in the church, told the Associated Press. “It is a major step for trans inclusion.”
He described it as confirmation that the pope and high-ranking church leaders do not see gender identity as a de facto barrier when it comes to participation in Catholic sacraments. “We hope that church leaders will apply these guidelines by following Pope Francis’s example of extravagant welcome, rather than using them to continue old restrictions,” he added in a statement.
The LGBTQ+ advocacy group Glaad characterised the decision as part of a broader push by the pope to make the church more welcoming to LGBTQ + people, despite doctrines that reject same-sex marriage and sexual activity.
“Pope Francis is continuing to break down barriers that have kept LGBTQ
Catholics away from full participation as members of the Roman Catholic church and is instead calling on global leaders to create welcoming spaces for LGBTQ people,” said Glaad’s Sarah Kate
Ellis in a statement.
In July the Vatican released comments made by the pope during an interaction with an Italian in their early 20s who said they were torn between the
Catholic faith and transgender identity. Francis replied: “The Lord always walks with us … Even if we are sinners, he draws near to help us. The Lord loves us as we are, this is God’s crazy love.”
Months later he suggested that there could be ways to bless same-sex unions, though he reiterated his belief that matrimony is a union between a man and a woman.
The document published on Wednesday, however, was vague in its response to whether a same-sex couple could baptise an adopted child, or a child born via a surrogate, saying there had to be a “a well-founded hope that the child would be educated in the Catholic religion”.
It offered a similarly nuanced response when it came to the question of whether a person in a same-sex relationship could serve as a godparent, noting that the person had to “lead a life that conforms to the faith”.
Still, the document was warmly welcomed by those who have long advocated for the rights of LGBTQ + people in the church. “This is an important step forward in the church seeing transgender people not only as people (in a church where some say they don’t really exist) but as Catholics,” Father James Martin, a prominent Jesuit priest, wrote on social media.