Great Job Wal-Mart! Fifth Jordan Sweat Shop Rape Victim Goes Public- Scandal Steps Forward

The women manufactured clothing for the U.S. market, one victim from Sri Lanka now is covered with the scars of human bite marks... and it gets worse.

(WASHINGTON, DC) - The fifth woman in two years to claim she was raped by a manager at a factory in Jordan making clothing for U.S. companies has come forward to call on Hanes, Macy’s, Target, Sears, Walmart, and Khol’s, all of whom make clothes at the factory, to take action to protect her and other female workers.

The Bangladeshi national, called “Anowara” to protect her identity, gave video testimony (transcript here) of her rape by a manger at the Classic Factory while sewing clothes for Hanes. Anowara joins four other women who say they were raped at the factory, and nearly 150,000 people who have joined a popular campaign on Change.org calling on Hanes and other companies to take workers’ allegations of serial rape at the factory seriously.

“He said, if you try to do anything now, I’ll kill you right here. Then he put his hands on me … he violated me,” said Anowara in her testimony. “I want his judgment and that he go to jail, with that I’d be happy. So he can’t do this to another woman again.”

The Institute for Global Labor and Human Rights launched the campaign asking companies making clothes at Classic to intervene after a series of interviews with factory workers indicated widespread and ongoing human rights abuse, labor violations, and sexual assaults. The labor rights group says Hanes, Target, Macy’s, and Sears have all refused to take action -- including by temporarily suspending the managers accused of rape -- until the Jordanian government releases the results of their investigation. But activists see the government’s investigation as a “whitewash.”

“The Jordanian Government investigation of Classic has been severely flawed by incompetency, a lack of resources and trained investigators, and a deliberate campaign by Classic management to hold the foreign women guest workers in a state of terror and repression,” said Charles Kernaghan, Director of the Institute for Global Labor and Human Rights. “Investigators have failed to secure basic documentation related to the rape accusations, have refused to allow victims to be interviewed in safe circumstances by women’s advocates, and have kept independent human rights groups out of the investigation. This is not a serious investigation, but a whitewash.”

The Institute for Global Labor and Human Rights’ campaign on Change.org has been covered by major news outlets across the country, including the Washington Post, NPR, Ms. Magazine and the Huffington Post.

Live signature totals from The Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights' Change.org campaign:
https://www.change.org/petitions/tell-walmart-to-stop-rape-and-torture-of-young-women-in-its-factories

Washington Post coverage of the campaign:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle-east/rape-case-draws-attention-to-concerns-about-abuses-in-jordans-garment-industry/2011/09/07/gIQABDMX8J_story.html