Saiful Huq Omi, Bangladesh
Ships And Beyond

In the southern part of Bangladesh there lies the Bay of Bengal. More than 35 years ago, after being hit by a storm a huge ship found its last resting place on sea beach of Shitalpur. The people in the Shitalpur decided to break down the ship and sell it as scrap metal – they did not know that their actions would give birth to a new era – the ship-breaking industry was born in Bangladesh.

The PHP ship-breaking yard is in Shitalpur. It is probably one of the few yards where a photojournalist can hope to manage access. The owners are not very happy with cameras around. They do not want to get photographed, neither do they want to allow photographers to be inside their yards.

My story is about the life around the ships. It is about the workers who work in the ship-breaking yard, about the owner and about the ship itself, especially the majestic ones, standing tall till the last moment of their death. It is about the sea, about the blueness and sadness of it, it is about those ones who have been disabled for life and its about widows who have lost their beloved husbands, or about the mother who has lost her only son in an accident in the ship-breaking yard.

This is also a story about the monga, the name of the famine that strikes the northern part of Bangladesh every year, causing thousands of people leave their homes to find jobs. A large number of them find themselves in the yards – where 10 to 12 working hours get them US$2 or less.

And above all it is the story about capitalism – how ruthless it is, how exploratory the system is and how it makes the poor poorer and the rich richer.