DHAKA: Bangladesh police fired rubber bullets at protesters on Monday, as violence erupted across the country ahead of the verdict on a top Islamist for allegedly masterminding atrocities during the 1971 liberation war.

Activists of the Jamaat-e-Islami party threw homemade bombs at police, after taking to the streets in several cities in support of the Islamist, who could face the death penalty if convicted, the officials said.

Journalists were among those injured after they were caught in the clashes in Dhalpur district of the capital Dhaka, local police chief Rafiqul Islam said.

“One of the journalists was hit by (shrapnel),” he told AFP, adding the protesters hurled at least five small home-made bombs at police who retaliated with rubber bullets.

Police also fired rubber bullets at protesters in the cities of Bogra, Comilla and Rajshahi after activists went on the rampage, attacking and torching dozens of vehicles, police officials told AFP.

A war crimes tribunal is set to hand down its verdict against Ghulam Azam, 90, for alleged crimes committed during the liberation war against Pakistan, which the government says killed three million people.

Prosecutors have sought the death penalty for Azam, comparing him to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. They describe him as a “lighthouse” who guided all war criminals and the “architect” of the militias which committed many of the 1971 atrocities.

Security was tight at the International Crimes Tribunal — set up by the country’s secular government in 2010 — ahead of the verdict set to be handed down soon.

Jamaat, the country’s largest Islamic party and a key member of the opposition, called a nationwide strike on Monday to protest the impending verdict, saying the warcrimes trials are aimed at eliminating its leaders.

Azam is no longer politically active but is seen as Jamaat’s spiritual leader. He faces five charges of planning, conspiracy, incitement, complicity and murder and torture.

Violence broke out in several cities on Sunday immediately after the tribunal announced its decision to pass the judgement on Monday.

Azam’s lawyer Tajul Islam said the charges were based on newspaper reports of speeches Azam gave during the war, which led to the creation of Bangladesh.

“The prosecution has completely failed to prove any of the charges,” he told AFP.

Bangladesh: A once-fearsome cyclone that was threatening Bangladesh and Myanmar dissipated quickly, causing some deaths but largely relieving authorities who had told more than 1 million people to leave vulnerable coastal areas in preparation for a far worse storm.

Cyclone Mahasan lost power as it shed huge amounts of rain and then veered west of its predicted path, sparing major Bangladeshi population areas, including Chittagong and the seaside resort of Cox’s Bazar, said Mohammad Shah Alam, director of the Bangladesh Meteorological Department.

Coastal areas were spared major damage because it hit Thursday afternoon during low tide, causing no major tidal surge, he said.

“Thank God we have been spared this time,” local government administrator Ruhul Amin said.

Before the storm threat weakened, Bangladesh had evacuated 1 million people, and the United Nations warned that 8.2 million people could face life-threatening conditions.

Myanmar was spared almost entirely. Evacuation attempts there had met with frustration as some of the tens of thousands of displaced Rohingya people in western Rakhine state were wary about the government’s order and refused to leave.

“It’s all over, and we are very relieved that we didn’t have any unfortunate incident in Rakhine state due to the cyclone,” Win Myaing, Rakhine’s regional spokesman said.

In Cox’s Bazar, tens of thousands of people had fled shanty homes along the coast and packed into cyclone shelters, hotels, schools and government office buildings. But by Thursday afternoon, the sun was shining and Amin said he planned to close the shelters by the evening.

The storm’s slow movement toward Bangladesh gave the government plenty of warning to get people to safety, Amin said.

“But for the evacuation, the casualties would have been higher,” he said.

Ferry services in the delta nation resumed Thursday night after being suspended in advance of the cyclone. Scores of factories near the choppy Bay of Bengal had been closed, and the military said it kept 22 navy ships and 19 Air Force helicopters at the ready.

A 1991 cyclone that slammed into Bangladesh from the Bay of Bengal killed an estimated 139,000 people and left millions homeless. In 2008, Myanmar’s southern delta was devastated by Cyclone Nargis, which swept away entire farming villages and killed more than 130,000 people. Both those cyclones were much more powerful than Mahasen, which hit land with maximum wind speeds of about 100 kph (62 mph) and quickly weakened, said Alam, the meteorological official.

The main section of the storm reached land Thursday and immediately began weakening, according to Mohammad Shah Alam, director of the Bangladesh Meteorological Department. However, its forward movement was also slowing, meaning that towns in its path would have to weather the storm for longer, he said.

Even before the brunt of the storm hit, at least 18 deaths related to Mahasen were reported in Bangladesh, Myanmar and Sri Lanka.

The storm could bring life-threatening conditions to about 8.2 million people in Bangladesh, Myanmar and northeast India, according to the U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Danger was particularly high for tens of thousands of displaced Rohingya people living in plastic-roofed tents and huts made of reeds in dozens of refugee camps along Myanmar’s western coast.

Driven from their homes by violence, members of the Muslim minority group refused to follow evacuation orders. Many distrust officials in the majority-Buddhist country, where Rohingya have faced decades of discrimination.

U.N. officials, hoping they would inspire greater trust, fanned out across the area to encourage people to leave.

Early Thursday, the cyclone battered the southern Bangladesh fishing village of Khepurpara along the Bay of Bengal with 100 kph (62 mph) winds and was heading east toward the city of Chittagong and the seafront resort town of Cox’s Bazar. River ferries and boat service were suspended, and scores of factories near the choppy Bay of Bengal were closed. The military said it was keeping 22 navy ships and 19 Air Force helicopters at the ready.

Tens of thousands of people fled their shanty homes along the coast and packed into cyclone shelters, schools, government office buildings and some of the 300 hotels in Cox’s Bazar to wait out the storm. Some brought their livestock, which took shelter outside.

“We have seen such a disaster before,” said Mohammad Abu Taleb, who shut down his convenience shop in the city of 200,000. “It’s better to stay home. I’m not taking any chance.”

A 1991 cyclone that slammed into Bangladesh from the Bay of Bengal killed an estimated 139,000 people and left millions homeless. In 2008, Myanmar’s southern delta was devastated Cyclone Nargis, which swept away entire farming villages and killed more than 130,000 people.

Both those cyclones were much more powerful than Cyclone Mahasen, which is rated Category 1 — the weakest level. It hit land with maximum wind speeds of about 100 kph (62 mph) and quickly weakened to 90 kph (56 mph), said Alam, of the Bangladesh Meteorological Department.

Heavy rain and storm surge could prove deadlier than the wind. Bangladesh’s meteorological office said the cyclone was moving so slowly it may take a whole day for it to pass the Bangladesh coast.

In Cox’s Bazar, local government administrator Ruhul Amin turned his own three-story office building into a shelter for about 400 people as intermittent rains and gusty winds hit.

Huddling with the crowd, evacuee Mohammad Tayebullah said, “Each time there is a cyclone warning we come to the town for shelter. This has become part of our life.”

The Bangladesh Ministry of Disaster Management said more than 1 million people had been evacuated from coastal areas. Television stations reported the deaths of two men, one of whom was crushed by a tree uprooted by the wind.

Related heavy rains and flooding in Sri Lanka were blamed for eight deaths earlier this week. At least eight people — and possibly many more — were killed in Myanmar as they fled the cyclone Monday night, when overcrowded boats carrying more than 100 Rohingya capsized. Only 43 people had been rescued by Thursday, and more than 50 Rohingya were still missing.

India’s Meteorological Department forecast damage to the northeastern states of Assam, Mizoram, Manipur, Tripura and Nagaland, and advised fishermen off the west coast of the country to be cautious for the next 36 hours.

Much attention was focused on western Myanmar because of the crowded, low-lying camps where many Rohingya remain.

In Rakhine state, around 140,000 people — mostly Rohingya — have been living in the camps since last year, when two outbreaks of sectarian violence between the Muslim minority and ethnic Rakhine Buddhists forced many Rohingya from their homes.

Nearly half the displaced live in coastal areas considered highly vulnerable to storm surges and flooding from Cyclone Mahasen.

“Pack and leave,” a Rakhine state official, U Hla Maung, warned as he walked through a camp near Sittwe, the state capital. Accompanied by more than a dozen soldiers and riot police, he suggested that people living there move to a nearby railroad embankment, then left without offering help.

U.N. workers spread across the area to help persuade Rohingya to evacuate. More than 10,000 families had been moved in recent days, the U.N. said.

“It is unclear at this stage if all those that needed to be evacuated have moved given the challenges,” said Ashok Nigam, the head of the United Nations Development Program in the country.

Some Rohingya took down their tents and hauled their belongings away in cycle-rickshaws, or carried them in bags balanced on their heads.

“Now we’re afraid. … We decided to move early this morning,” said U Kwaw Swe, a 62-year-old father of seven who was hoping the government would transport his family. Otherwise they intended to walk to safety.

Ko Hla Maung, an unemployed fisherman, was among those who had not left as of Thursday morning.

“We have no safe place to move, so we’re staying here, whether the storm comes or not,” he said. “… The soldiers want to take us to a village closer to the sea, and we’re not going to do that. … If the storm is coming, then that village will be destroyed.”

Later Thursday, government officials said they would forcibly evacuate those who remain in the most exposed camps.

“This area will be totally empty tonight,” army Lt. Lin Lin at a half-empty camp near Sittwe where dozens of people still refused to move. Without elaborating, he said the military would “take action” to force people to leave.

Myanmar’s President’s Office Minister Aung Min told reporters Wednesday that the government guarantees the safety of the Rohingyas during relocation and promises to return them to their current settlement when the storm has passed.

The Rohingya trace their ancestry to what is now Bangladesh. Though many have lived in Myanmar for generations, the government officially dismisses them as illegal immigrants. They face widespread discrimination in largely Buddhist Myanmar, and particularly in Rakhine, where many of the Rohingya live.

Tensions remain high in Rakhine nearly a year after sectarian unrest tore through the region and left parts of Sittwe, the state capital, burned to the ground. At least 192 people were killed.

Bangladesh: Several of the biggest Western retailers embraced a plan that would require them to pay for factory improvements in Bangladesh as the three-week search for victims of the worst garment-industry disaster in history ended Monday with the death toll at a staggering 1,127.

Bangladesh’s government also agreed to allow garment workers to form unions without permission from factory owners. That decision came a day after it announced a plan to raise the minimum wage in the industry.

The collapse of the eight-story Rana Plaza factory building April 24 focused worldwide attention on hazardous conditions in Bangladesh’s garment industry, where workers sew low-cost clothing that ends up on store shelves around the globe, including the U.S. and Western Europe.

The tragedy came months after a fire at another garment factory in Bangladesh killed 112 workers.

Swedish retailing giant H&M, the biggest purchaser of garments from Bangladesh; British companies Primark and Tesco; C&A of the Netherlands; and Spain’s Inditex, owner of the Zara chain, said they would sign a contract that requires them to conduct independent safety inspections of factories and cover the costs of repairs.

The pact also calls for them to pay up to $500,000 a year toward the effort and to stop doing business with any factory that refuses to make safety improvements.

Two other companies agreed to sign last year: PVH, which makes clothes under the Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger and Izod labels, and German retailer Tchibo. Among the big holdouts are Wal-Mart Stores, which is the second-largest producer of clothing in Bangladesh behind H&M, and Gap.

Gap, which had been close to signing the agreement last year, said Monday that the pact is “within reach,” but the company is concerned about the possible legal liability involved.

“This agreement is exactly what is needed to finally bring an end to the epidemic of fire and building disasters that have taken so many lives in the garment industry in Bangladesh,” Scott Nova, executive director of the Worker Rights Consortium, one of the organizations pushing for the agreement.

Meanwhile, the search for bodies at Rana Plaza was called off Monday evening. For more than 19 days, the rubble pile in the Dhaka suburb of Savar had been the scene of frantic rescue efforts, anguished families and the overwhelming smell of decaying flesh. The last body was found on Sunday night.

“Now the site will be handed over to police for protection. There will be no more activities from the fire service or army,” said Mohammed Amir Hossain Mazumder, deputy director of fire service and civil defense.

Reshma Begum, a seamstress who survived under the rubble for 17 days on cookies and bottled water before she was rescued last week, told reporters at a hospital Monday that she never expected to be rescued.

“I will not work in a garment factory again,” she vowed.

The Rana Plaza owner and eight other people, including garment factory owners, have been detained in the investigation. Authorities say the building owner added floors to the structure illegally and allowed the factories to install heavy equipment that the building was not designed to support.

Bangladesh has about 5,000 garment factories and 3.6 million garment workers. It is the third-biggest exporter of clothes in the world, after China and Italy.

Working conditions in the $20 billion industry are grim, a result of government corruption, desperation for jobs, and industry indifference. Minimum wages for garment workers are among the lowest in the world at 3,000 takas ($38) a month.

On Monday, Bangladesh’s Cabinet approved an amendment lifting restrictions on forming unions in most industries, government spokesman Mosharraf Hossain Bhuiyan said. The old 2006 law required workers to obtain permission before they could unionize.

“No such permission from owners is now needed,” Bhuiyan said. “The government is doing it for the welfare of the workers.”

Union activists responded cautiously.

“The issue is not really about making a new law or amending the old one,” said Kalpana Akter of the Bangladesh Center for Workers Solidarity. “In the past, whenever workers tried to form associations they were subjected to beatings and harassment. The owners did not hesitate to fire such workers.”

Bangladesh’s government has in recent years cracked down on unions attempting to organize garment workers. In 2010 the government launched an Industrial Police force to crush street protests by thousands of workers demanding better pay and working conditions.

On Monday, nearly 100 garment factories shut down in the Ashulia industrial area near Dhaka after protests erupted over the death of a worker, Parul Akter, 22, whose body was found Friday inside a garment factory. A local police official, Badrul Alam, said she committed suicide.

Thousands of workers took to the streets and vandalized vehicles and shops before police used sticks to disperse the protesters. Several people were injured, said a police official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.

On Sunday, the Bangladesh government set up a new minimum wage board that will issue recommendations for pay raises within three months. The Cabinet will then decide whether to accept those proposals. The wage board will include representatives of factory owners, workers and the government.

Government officials also have promised improvements in safety.

Since 2005, at least 1,800 garment workers have been killed in factory fires and building collapses inBangladesh, according to the advocacy group International Labor Rights Forum.

In the blaze last November in Dhaka, the factory lacked emergency exits, and its owner said only three floors of the eight-story building were legally built.

The rescue Friday of 19-year-old Reshma Begum brought a boost to the workers who had spent more than two weeks pulling decaying bodies from the rubble. By Saturday, they had resumed their grim recovery task, as the death toll surpassed 1,100 in the world’s worstgarment industry disaster.

“We will not leave the operation until the last dead body and living person is found,” said Maj. Gen. Chowdhury Hasan Suhrawardy, the head of the local military units in charge of rescue operations.

Lt. Col. Azizur Rahman, a doctor at the military hospital where Begum is being treated, said she was exhausted and badly stressed when she was brought in an ambulance Friday afternoon. She suffered scratches, but no major injuries, he said. Her kidneys were functioning at less than 45 percent and she suffered insomnia.

“She is panicked, sometimes she holds nurses’ hands tight,” he said.

Doctors were giving her semi-solid food and saline for her dehydration. They advised complete rest, and barred reporters from speaking with her for fear their questions would worsen her fragile psychological state.

“We don’t want those memories to haunt her now, so we are not allowing anybody to ask her anything,” Rahman said, adding that a team of psychiatrists would examine her.

Nevertheless, Suhrawardy said Begum told him she was fine.

Several photographers and cameramen were allowed to take pictures of Begum on Saturday afternoon as she lay on her hospital bed. Her head was covered in a neon green scarf, and she looked tired but alert. A white sheet covered her up to her neck. She was hooked to a monitor and had an intravenous drip in her left arm.

Begum had spent 17 days in a room-like area under the rubble high enough for her to stand, surviving on dried food, bottled water and rainwater, Suhrawardy said. She got fresh air from some of the 27 air holes that rescuers had dug in the rubble. She even found cartons of dresses inside and was able to change her clothes, Suhrawardy said.

“Her return is amazing, miraculous,” he said.

Begum’s family said they — like many other families of workers still missing — had been losing hope of finding her alive. Her brother Zayed Islam said her relatives initially camped out at the collapse site and then moved to the hospital in the first days after the disaster, hoping to find her among the injured. Eventually, they moved to the school ground that had been turned into a makeshift morgue, so they could try to find her among the dead bodies.

Then, on Friday, they were told to come back to the hospital: She was alive.

Bangladesh: Hundreds of garment factory workers who survived a building collapse in Bangladesh protested for compensation, as the death toll from the country’s worst-ever industrial disaster passed 700.

The police control room overseeing the recovery operation said the death toll stood at 705 on Tuesday afternoon as workers pulled more bodies out of the wreckage of the eight-story building that was packed with workers at five garment factories when it collapsed on April 24. The factories were making clothing bound for major retailers around the world.

The disaster is the worst ever in the garment sector, surpassing a fire that killed about 260 people in Pakistan and another in Bangladesh that killed 112 last year, as well as the 1911 garment disaster in New York’s Triangle Shirtwaist factory that killed 146 workers. It is also one of the deadliest industrial accidents ever.

No one knows what the final toll will be, as the exact number of people inside Rana Plaza at the time of the collapse was unknown. More than 2,500 people were rescued alive.

Hundreds of survivors blocked a major highway near the accident site in a Dhaka suburb on Tuesday to demand the payment of wages and other benefits. No violence was reported, although traffic was disrupted for hours.

Local government administrator Yousuf Harun said they are working with the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association to ensure the workers get paid.

The workers, many who made little more than the national minimum wage of about $38 per month, are demanding at least four months in salary. The workers had set Tuesday as the deadline for the payment of wages and other benefits.

Harun said no salary remained unpaid except for the month of April and there was an agreement for the workers to receive an additional three months of pay. After a team from the BGMEA arrived at the protest and pledged to make the payment later Tuesday, the workers left the highway, Harun said.

The BGMEA had said Monday that it was preparing a “complete list” of workers employed in the Rana Plaza factories and the process would take a few more days.

Bangladesh earns nearly $20 billion a year from exports of the garment products, mainly to the United States and Europe.

Authorities have not set any specific timeframe to complete the recovery operation at the building site, saying they will continue until all bodies and debris are removed.

DHAKA: At least 28 people have been killed in pitched battles between Bangladeshi police and thousands of hardline Islamists in the capital Dhaka.

In some of the fiercest violence to rock the capital since independence four decades ago, hundreds more people were reported to have been injured as riot police broke up a mass rally.

Police used a water cannon, sound grenades, tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse at least 70,000 Islamists who were camped at a key commercial district in a push for a new blasphemy law.

“We were forced to act after they unlawfully continued their gathering at Motijheel,” Dhaka police spokesman Masudur Rahman said.

“They attacked us with bricks, stones, rods and bamboo sticks.”

Hundreds of bankers, insurance officials and stock traders had to sleep in their offices as the sound of gunfire echoed around the Motijheel Commercial Area through much of the night.
Witnesses say shops were torched while trees were been torn down and thousands of rocks littered the ground.

Police say the protesters have now dispersed.

Police inspector Mozammel Haq, at Dhaka Medical College Hospital, says 11 bodies were taken to the clinic.

He says the bodies include several who had been hit by bullets, and a policeman who had been hacked in the head by protesters with machetes.

Eleven other bodies were taken to three other clinics, while hospital officials said hundreds of people were injured.

The violence erupted on Sunday afternoon and continued until the early hours of Monday morning.

It came after hundreds of thousands of Islamists demanding a new blasphemy law blocked highways and fought running battles with police on Sunday, leaving 10 people dead and hundreds injured in the Bangladeshi capital.

Chanting “Allahu Akbar!” (“God is greatest!”) and “One point, One demand: Atheists must be hanged”, activists from the hardline Hefajat-e-Islam marched along at least six highways, blocking transport between Dhaka and other cities.

Police say about 200,000 people marched to central Dhaka, where fierce clashes erupted between thousands of rock-throwing protesters and security officials, with police beating back demonstrators with batons.

Prime minister Sheikh Hasina has ruled out a new law, insisting she will not cave into the demands of hardliners who have been infuriated by bloggers whom they accuse of insulting the Prophet Mohammed.

Bangladesh: As Farida knelt beside the linen-wrapped body and looked at the dress that she herself had purchased, her sobs of sorrow turned to tears of painful relief. She called her husband to speak the words she had been praying for during her week of searching: “I got her. I got her.”

Just moments before, she had stopped workers from placing the body in one of the dozens of unmarked graves dug for victims of Bangladesh’s building collapse whose bodies were too battered to identify. With wails and sheer persistence she had pushed through the crowd of onlookers and forced officials to give her one last look at the row of decaying bodies to see if one might be her beloved sister-in-law. One was.

“Oh, this is my Fahima! This is my Fahima!” she cried at officials. She pointed out the distinct spot on her sister-in-law’s forehead and the red salwar kameez outfit she had given her.

Farida, who uses only one name, said Fahima had narrowly escaped the worst fire in the history of the country’s garment industry last year. This disaster, she did not escape.

For Farida and countless other relatives of the garment workers who disappeared when Rana Plaza came crashing down, the past week has been one of tumbling expectations, as hope that their loved ones survived turned into fears they may have to return home without even a body to bury. Many are impoverished villagers who spent what little money they had to rush to a capital they had never seen, only to find that news was hard to come by and officials were often indifferent.

Without one central list to track the rescued and the dead, relatives waited outside the wreckage or crisscrossed the congested city to visit hospitals and makeshift morgues, armed with only photographs and prayers. Posters of the missing are plastered on walls and utility poles across the industrial suburb of Savar, where Rana Plaza had stood. The collage of faces provides a constant reminder of the scale of a disaster that has killed at least 450 people.

Jahid Sheik wakes up near dawn every day to continue the search for his 18-year-old daughter, Amena Khatun, who worked on the building’s second floor. He doesn’t stop until midnight. He said that since he arrived in Savar from the country’s southwest the day of the accident, he has checked every hospital where survivors were rumored to have been admitted and every place the dead were taken. It has been one disappointment after another.

“There has been no help from officials,” the 40-year-old said. “I am a poor man. I am illiterate. Who will help me?”

Along with a handful of other relatives of the missing, he attended Wednesday’s mass burial in Jurain searching for answers. When he left for the funeral he said a prayer to Allah that he would find Amena and he kept reciting the prayer in his head the entire way there.

He watched as flatbed trucks carried the bodies through this impoverished suburb, weaving through potholed lanes congested by rickshaws and spotted with beggars bickering for territory next to open sewers. He saw the dead arrive at the cemetery to the wail of an ambulance’s siren and the whistles of workers clearing the crowd. He watched as the bodies were unloaded and adults and children alike covered their noses against the overpowering stench of rotting flesh.

He watched as hundreds of men and boys wearing white skull caps lined up and recited a traditional Muslim prayer that asks for peace for the dead. Then the bodies were placed in their graves.

He did not see his daughter.

“Again, nothing,” he said.

He vowed to carry on, both comforted and saddened by his memories.

“I will remember to my death that way my daughter called me ‘Baba.’ I will never forget that sound. My daughter loved me so much,” he said.

“We are working here round the clock,” army spokesman Shahinul Islam said. “Rescue operations are taking time as everything is being done with utmost caution.”
Junior minister for local government Jagangir Kabir Nanak told reporters that Savar’s mayor, Mohammad Refat Ullah, had been suspended for approving the construction of Rana Plaza.

A senior official from the state-run Capital Development Authority (CDA) said last week that the Savar municipality did not have the authority to grant the permit it had issued for a five-storey building at the site, and that three more floors had been illegally added to the building.

“We won’t spare anyone… actions will be taken against all who are responsible for the tragedy,” Nanak said.
The building’s owner, Mohammed Sohel Rana, and his father, Abdul Khalek, are among eight people arrested so far, and police are seeking a fifth factory boss, Spanish citizen David Mayor .

There were about 3,000 people inside the complex, which was built on swampy land, when it collapsed. About 2,500 people have been rescued, many injured, but many remain unaccounted for.

About 40 unidentified victims were buried on Wednesday. One woman at the cemetery collapsed into tears when she recognized the body of her sister by her dress.

EU WARNING
The European Union has said it is considering trade action againstBangladesh , which has preferential access to EU markets for its garments, to pressure Dhaka to improve safety standards.

Duty-free access offered by Western countries and low wages have helped turn Bangladesh ‘s garment exports into a $19 billion a year industry, with 60 percent of clothes going to Europe.

Any action by the EU on Bangladesh ‘s duty-free and quota-free access would require the agreement of all member states and could take more than a year to implement.

Garment factories, which together produce about 80 percent of Bangladesh ‘s exports, re-opened on Thursday as workers returned to their machines following days of sometimes violent protests over the disaster.

With local anger growing over the country’s worst industrial accident, a delegation from the International Labour Organization met Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in Dhaka on Wednesday to offer support and press for action to prevent any more such incidents.

The EU had already urged Bangladesh to adhere to ILO standards in January after two factory fires, including one last November in which 112 people died.

A European Union official said the latest EU statement, issued late on Tuesday, was “a shot across the bows”. “We want to turn up the diplomatic heat on them and get them to sit down and discuss this with us.

About 3.6 million people work in Bangladesh ‘s garment industry, making it the world’s second-largest apparel exporter behind China. The industry employs mostly women, some of whom earn as little as $38 a month.

A raucous procession of workers on foot, pickup trucks and motorcycles wound its way through central Dhaka on Wednesday. They waved the national flag and banners, beat drums and chanted “direct action!” and “death penalty!”

From a loudspeaker on the back of a truck, a participant spoke for the group: “My brother has died. My sister has died. Their blood will not be valueless.”

May Day protests, customarily an opportunity for workers in this impoverished South Asian nation to vent their grievances, have taken on a poignant significance this year following the April 24 disaster.

Five garment factories were housed in the illegally constructed, eight-story Rana Plaza that collapsed in this Dhaka suburb. Five months after a fire killed 112 people at another clothing factory, the collapse again exposed safety problems in Bangladesh’s garment industry, which is worth $20 billion annually and supplies retailers around the world.

The owner of the building, Mohammed Sohel Rana, is being questioned by police while under arrest. He is expected to be charged with negligence, illegal construction and forcing workers to join work, which is punishable by a maximum of seven years in jail. Authorities have not said if more serious crimes will be added.

Workers protesting Wednesday demanded capital punishment for the 38-year-old Rana, a small-time political operative with the ruling Awami League party.

“I want the death penalty for the owner of the building. We want regular salaries, raises and absolutely we want better safety in our factories,” said Mongidul Islam Rana, 18, who works in a garment factory that was not located in Rana Plaza.

The Bangladesh High Court has ordered the government to confiscate Rana’s property and to freeze the assets of the owners of the factories in Rana Plaza so the money can be used to pay the salaries of their workers.