ASIA / PACIFIC
July 16, 2018
THE ASIAN REPORTER n Page 3
Toxic tanneries forced to move pollute new Bangladesh site
PROCESSING POLLUTION. A Bangladeshi
laborer processes leather at a factory on the banks
of the Daleshwari River in Savar, Bangladesh. Bangla-
desh tanneries prepping leather for shoes, belts, wal-
lets, and purses are dumping toxic chemicals into the
river. (AP Photo/A.M. Ahad)
By Julhas Alam and Martha Mendoza
The Associated Press
S
AVAR, Bangladesh — Bangladesh
tanneries prepping leather for
shoes, belts, wallets, and purses are
dumping toxic chemicals into a river at a
new industrial complex more than a year
after the government shut them down for
poisoning a different river and using child
labor.
“It’s killing the river. The color of the
water has changed,” Abdus Shakur, a local
resident who works as a day laborer, told
The Associated Press. “I have been living
here for decades and the condition of the
river has changed dramatically over the
last year.”
Turning cow hides into soft, hair-free
leather can be a dirty business, and in the
Hazaribagh neighborhood of Dhaka, the
former home to more than 150 tanneries,
the air a year ago was so noxious with
chemicals and rotting hide trimmings that
it was repeatedly named one of the most
polluted places on earth by environ-
mentalists. The adjacent Buriganga River,
a source of drinking water for 180,000
people, was considered poisoned.
In April 2017, under international
pressure, the government shut off power at
the Hazaribagh tanneries, ordering them
to move to a new tannery industrial
complex in Savar.
Now The AP has learned that factories
at the new location are draining chemicals
into the Daleshwari River and dumping
toxic waste in open fields. Although there
are sewage treatment and effluent
systems, they are inadequate to process all
of the waste.
“This was a disaster foretold,” said
Richard Pearshouse, associate director of
the environment program at Human
Rights Watch. “Everyone convinced
themselves that the main issue was
technical — a lack of a central effluent
treatment plant — and not political. But
Bangladesh’s tanning industry will be
plagued by its fundamental problems —
child labor, occupational and environ-
mental health dangers — until govern-
ment authorities finally get serious about
enforcing laws.”
New York-based Transparentem, a
labor-rights nonprofit group, is calling on
American and European companies that
sourced leather in Hazaribagh — or had
items made by companies that also owned
tanneries there — to help clean up the
mess left behind. The companies include
Clarks, Coach, Kate Spade, Macy’s,
Michael Kors, Sears, Steven Madden, and
Timberland. It is also calling on Germany-
based Deichmann, a shoe and sportswear
chain, and two U.S. firms — Harbor
Footwear Group and Genesco — that
design and market shoes in even more
brands to help.
“The primary onus is on Bangladesh’s
government and the leather industry to
clean up Hazaribagh and prevent another
full-scale environmental catastrophe in
Savar,” said Transparentem president E
Benjamin Skinner. “Brands that have
bought from manufacturers affiliated with
tanneries in either location have leverage,
and thus share in the responsibility for
reform.”
Undercover investigators have not
followed a specific piece of leather to a
particular purse or shoe. Supply chains
take a few steps, sometimes dozens, to get
from the source of a product to an item on a
store shelf.
Transparentem is also calling on buyers
to use their collective leverage to advocate
Continued on page 4
A Thai cave, an extraordinary tale, and a captivated
Continued from page 2
“This sets the framework for what we expect from a
great story,” says Roscoe Scarborough, a sociologist at
Franklin & Marshall College in Pennsylvania who studies
first responders and reality television.
“Any action movie follows this script. Thinking they’re
dead but they’re alive. A race against time and the odds to
get them out,” says Scarborough, who is also a firefighter.
“It’s a cultural product that we understand. But this is a
real-life version.”
Technology helped save them
Our world today is utterly consumed with technology —
witness the ability to witness a lot of this event on
television and mobile devices — but also increasingly
uneasy with the way it affects our lives and landscapes.
So to look at such a remote area and watch a good
outcome unfold because of smart uses of technology, from
the pumping effort that drained water out of the cave to
the carefully calibrated oxygen tanks used in extracting
the kids, illuminated the ways technology can encourage
our humanity rather than whittle away at it.
Someone sacrificed everything
In any epic narrative, something precious is lost. In this
case, that was 38-year-old Saman Gunan, the Thai Navy
SEAL who died in the cave during rescue efforts.
This happens often in rescue efforts: People who die
heroically trying to help others become martyrs who are
seen as the best of us. The highest-profile example in
recent years: the firefighters and police officers who died
helping people on September 11, 2001.
“They become symbols of our shared humanity,
representative of our collective values,” Scarborough says.
Politics were nowhere to be found.
It’s pretty obvious that our media-consuming world
needs some news that couldn’t possibly be contentious or
political. This story deftly managed that.
The enemies were diffuse — nature and the ticking
clock. There was no backstory of refugees or immigration
or gun control or economic disparity. There were, to most
of the world watching, no politics whatsoever.
Additionally, their 2014 military coup notwithstanding,
Thais are generally quiet participants in the global
community.
Thus, not much to argue about.
It unfolded gradually,
and time was of the essence
Serial narratives have been around for a while after
their ascent in print form during the 1800s and as
“cliffhangers” like “The Perils of Pauline” or “Flash
Gordon” during cinema’s early days. Their calculus: They
give you some of the story but leave you anticipating more.
Serial podcasts and TV season finales carry on that
tradition today.
In the case of the cave saga, a series of inflection points
kept turning attention back to northern Thailand. The
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TREACHEROUS TASK. This photo tweeted by Elon Musk shows
efforts to rescue trapped members of a youth soccer team from a flooded
cave in northern Thailand. Musk, who visited the cave and left a mini-sub-
marine for potential use by rescuers, tweeted out the photo on July 10,
2018. (Photo courtesy of Elon Musk via AP)
effect, said one observer, felt like the tiny rush you get
when people, one after another, like your Facebook post or
Instagram photo.
And over it all hung a ticking clock. Would the waters
rise again? Would oxygen run out? Would rescuers beat
the countdown?
In the end, this strange summer saga in Thailand was
the kind of story that a modern, media-consuming human
is literally conditioned through life to consume.
It takes its place among similar underground sagas that
entranced the planet — the trapped Copiapó miners
(Chile, 2010); the Quecreek mining disaster (Pennsyl-
vania, 2002), 18-month-old Jessica McClure trapped in a
well (Texas, 1987); and the first such event covered by
modern media, the trapping and subsequent cave death of
Floyd Collins (Kentucky, 1925), where coverage featured
radio bulletins and, in the spirit of the age, a popular
ballad recorded on acetate disc.
Sounds antique and distant, right? But in the end it’s
the same. No matter how many decades pass or how much
the technology progresses, we do the same thing: We
watch, we wonder, and we hope for a happy ending. And
then we move on.
This time, though, in this contentious season of
humanity, we can do it with a smile.
Ted Anthony, director of digital innovation for The Associated Press, was
AP’s director of Asia-Pacific news from 2014 until earlier this year.
It’s not always easy to manage
diabetes, but I keep trying by
taking it one day at a time.
For more information, please
call 1-800-860-8747 or
visit www.ndep.nih.gov.
Wondering what events are
going on this week?
Check out The Asian Reporter’s Community and
A.C.E. Calendar sections, on pages 10 and 11.