A labor organizer who helped ABC News expose brutal working conditions in Bangladeshi clothing factories was tortured and killed last week, according to authorities:

“All indications are that Aminul Islam was murdered because of his labor rights work,” said Scott Nova, executive director of the Worker Rights Consortium, an American group working to improve conditions at factories abroad that make clothes for U.S. companies. “This depraved act signals the deterioration of an already grim labor rights situation in Bangladesh, which is now the fourth largest exporter of apparel to the U.S.” [ABC]

Islam, a senior organizer with the Bangladeshi Center for Worker Solidarity (BCWS), had been working to organize the Shanta Group, which makes clothes for such well-known American brands as Tommy Hilfiger, Nike, and Ralph Lauren.

When ABC News reported on a deadly factory fire, Islam helped to arrange interviews with survivors of the blaze. Death by fire remains a common occupational hazard in Bangladesh’s clothing industry. Nearly 500 Bangladeshi workers have died in factory fires over the last five years.

[Photo credit: Workers in an unnamed garment factory in Bangladesh, jankie, Creative Commons.]