Bangladesh

“That period was a time I was in hell” is how one woman describes her two years working for VK Garments (VKG) in Thailand. Hla Hla Tey, who at 54 has struggled to find work since losing her job and now lives in a monastery, is among 130 former workers who are bringing a landmark case against Tesco in the UK. The supermarket giant stands accused of...

The world has done “absolutely nothing” to ensure safety in Myanmar for its persecuted Rohingya minority, said Bangladesh’s foreign minister, complaining that his country is sheltering more than 1 million refugees without support.

Foreign minister Shahriar Alam told the Guardian financial support for the Rohingya has decreased each year and there...

At least six people were killed and several injured on Saturday when a fire broke out after an explosion at an oxygen plant in southeastern Bangladesh, officials said.

The death toll could rise as a rescue operation was ongoing at the plant at Sitakunda, 40km (25 miles) from the south-eastern port city of Chittagong, they added.

It was not...

Activists have called for urgent assistance to rescue 160 Rohingya refugees, including young children, who they say are stranded at sea on a damaged boat and have been without food or water for days.

The boat, which activists say is near Malaysian waters, is believed to have left on 25 November from Bangladesh, where almost 1 million Rohingya live...

The only newspaper of Bangladesh’s main opposition party has stopped publishing after a government suspension order was upheld, stoking fears about media freedom in the south Asian nation.

Campaigners and foreign governments including the US have long expressed worries about efforts by the prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, to silence criticism and...

Two top leaders of Bangladesh’s main opposition party have been arrested amid a violent crackdown on government opponents during which at least seven people have been shot dead and thousands arrested.

Over recent weeks, Sheikh Hasina’s government has launched a repressive campaign against the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist party (BNP), which has...

Global criticism of the treatment of hundreds of thousands of workers from countries such as Nepal, India and Bangladesh who have been building Qatar’s World Cup dream led to the Gulf state introducing a range of labour policy changes that it says have improved the lives of the migrant workforce. Have those changes worked and how likely are they t...

The UN has been forced to cut food rations for Rohingya refugees by 17% and has warned of “unconscionable” further cuts in April as a result of dwindling international donations.

The World Food Programme (WFP) said it needs $125m (£104m) urgently to avoid the further cuts.

“The repercussions of these cuts will be immediate and long lasting, as r...

The deaths of migrant workers in Qatar in the build-up to this year’s World Cup have drawn criticism across the world. While the tournament’s organizers put the official count at 40, estimates by the Guardian put the figure in the thousands. Here we explore the key questions around an issue that has tarnished the World Cup for many fans.

Workers and activists have been campaigning to push Levi’s, one of the world’s largest clothing brands, to sign on to an international accord for workers’ health and safety in Bangladesh and Pakistan.

On 24 April 2013, the Rana Plaza building in Dhaka, Bangladesh, which housed five garment clothing factories, collapsed, killing 1,134 people and...

Shamima Begum would face the death penalty if sent to Bangladesh, her parents’ country of origin, and is now effectively stateless, a court has heard.

The 23-year-old’s legal appeal at the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (Siac) was told that the then home secretary, Sajid Javid, had failed to consider the “serious practical consequences” of r...

The camera of a budget smartphone has become a way for many of the Rohingya stuck in Bangladesh’s refugee camps to tell their own stories, capturing photos of their lives in the camps, which became the world’s largest when 700,000 people fled the Myanmar military five years ago, joining 300,000 who had already sought refuge across the border.

These...

It was a warm afternoon in May 2020 when Ahmed Kabir Kishore, dozing lazily, awoke to 20 men breaking down the door of his apartment in Dhaka, Bangladesh. With guns waved in his face, he was dragged to a van outside. “Move away, we have arrested a terrorist,” he heard them shout at the crowds.

Kishore was not a terrorist. He was a cartoonist whose...

Two Islamist militants who were on death row in Bangladesh for the killing of a US blogger critical of fundamentalist Islam have made a dramatic escape on motorbikes while being escorted to a court hearing in the capital, Dhaka.

The two men were among those convicted of the murder of Avijit Roy, an American-Bangladeshi writer and blogger who was hac...

Nur Asma is 10 years old. She lives in the Rohingya refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, with her family. She has four siblings; she is the third child in the family.

Nur loves creative play – crafting, making horses and utensils out of mud, making a chicken coop from bamboo, that sort of thing, and she loves studying too. She is very shy and i...

At least eight Bangladeshi asylum seekers have been released from immigration detention in Australia after languishing there for a decade, in a move that signals the Albanese government is winding back arbitrary detention, according to a lawyer for some of the men.

But while their release has given them hope, the men have spoken out about the...

It has been five years since Myanmar’s military launched a campaign of massacres that killed about 7,000 Rohingya in a single month and compelled 700,000 to flee for the Bangladeshi border.

Since the first major military operation against the Rohingya minority in 1978, which forced out 200,000, the Rohingya have been collectively stripped of their...

Qatar is facing renewed calls from migrant workers, their families, and rights groups to compensate for human rights abuses including wage theft, injuries and uninvestigated deaths, days before the World Cup kicks off.

As fans and footballers descend on the Persian Gulf country for the month-long tournament, workers and their families, who have...

In the 31 years since Anuara Begum’s family moved into their bamboo shelter in the Nayapara refugee camp, the only improvement they could make was replacing its tarpaulin roof with tin sheeting – less flimsy but hammer-loud when the rains come.

Running from Myanmar’s military, their new home was built to be temporary, and so it proved when it took j...

It was saddening to see the report on Indonesian farm workers being obliged to pay recruitment fees (Revealed: Indonesian workers on UK farm ‘at risk of debt bondage’, 14 August), but it would not surprise anyone who has worked with transnational migrant workers, particularly from developing countries.

For 19 years, I have volunteered with a...

Dozens of hungry and weak Rohingya Muslims were found on a beach in Indonesia’s northernmost province on Sunday after weeks at sea, officials said.

The group of 58 men arrived on Indrapatra beach at Ladong, a fishing village in Aceh Besar district, said local police chief Rolly Yuiza Away. Villagers who saw the group of Rohingya on a rickety wooden...

At least 24 people have died and millions were without power after Cyclone Sitrang struck Bangladesh, forcing the evacuation of about a million people.

Most of the deaths were from falling trees, police and government officials said, with two dying in the north on the Jamuna river when their boat sank. A Myanmar national working on a ship also died...