The global rights organisation, Clean Clothes Campaign has called for the dismissal of legal cases against Bangladeshi garment worker groups and protesters.

The group also urged international fashion brands to defend the rights of workers employed by their suppliers in Bangladesh.

In a statement released on Wednesday, the CCC said that, a year after a violent crackdown by state forces and employers on Bangladeshi garment workers demanding higher wages, 40,000 workers still face the threat of arrest due to repressive legal charges.

These charges include blank arrest warrants, putting the workers at continued risk.

Campaigners, labour rights advocates and trade union representatives on the day also launched an international campaign condemning the inaction of fashion brands and calling for 36 legal cases against worker groups and protesters to be dropped.

Anne Bienias, a lead campaigner for the CCC, called on the brands to take swift action saying “Brands such as H&M and Zara have a responsibility to ensure that complaints against unnamed protesters cannot be used to intimidate workers and their representatives.”

“The refusal of brands to support union-backed wage demands despite extreme poverty, and their lack of willingness to get these cases dropped, is illustrative of who profits from the status quo and who doesn’t. Brands clearly do.”

The statement also added that the CCC has linked 45 fashion brands to suppliers who filed charges in 36 cases against garment workers in Bangladesh and have been pushing these brands to ensure the cases are dropped for the past year.

While some brands have taken initial steps to ensure suppliers drop false allegations, a year on, all brands and suppliers have failed to follow through and not a single case has been cleared, it noted.

The CCC is launching a new action tracker exposing which brands are linked to the outstanding warrants, including H&M, Zara, Next, Matalan, Levi’s, Bestseller and more.

Campaigners hope this tool will shed light on the complicity of the industry and ensure brands follow through with suppliers to ensure charges are fully dropped.

The launch of this new effort to apply pressure on brands comes on the anniversary of last year’s widespread wage protests in Bangladesh, it said claiming police and the military cracked down on protesting workers who showed their dissatisfaction over the disappointing outcome of the long-awaited minimum wage negotiations.

As a result of the violent police response against protesters, four workers lost their lives, hundreds were severely injured, and 131 were arrested.

The 36 largely ‘baseless criminal cases’ are held against 40,000 ‘unnamed individuals’, the CCC said adding labour representatives are warning these blank arrest warrants could be used against any workers who raise concerns with factory bosses, or as a tool for settling personal or political grievances.

The statement also quoted Kalpona Akter, President of the Bangladesh Garment and Industrial Workers Federation, who said, “In an industry where union repression is rampant, getting the charges dropped is just the first, but very necessary, step towards creating a sector where workers can earn a decent living and where barriers to freedom of association are dismantled. We refuse to live in fear. We are demanding living wages that can support our families.”