BROKEN photography exhibition in Brussels:

A NGO Shipbreaking Platform exhibition featuring photographs by Saiful Huq, winner of the Bervelt Foundation Prize 2010

From 04 - 29 November 2010, Halles Saint-Géry, Place St. Géry 23, 1000 Brussels. Open everyday from 10am to 6pm, on Fri and Sat also from 8pm to 1 am.

BROKEN is a reflection of the devastating environmental and working conditions on the beaches of Bangladesh caused by shipbreaking. It is a mirror held to a place where one world's toxic trash has the last of its riches reclaimed by the sweat and blood of another's most desperate and dispossessed. It depicts an inversion of the right to life and a perversion of the right to work. It is a world held upside down, seen through the lens of Saiful Huq, an acclaimed Bangladeshi photographer.

The organiser of the exhibition is the NGO Shipbreaking Platform, a global coalition of environmental, human and labour rights organisations working together to reverse the environmental and human rights abuses of current shipbreaking practices and to ensure the safe and environmentally sound dismantling of end-of-life vessels world-wide.

Shipbreaking is currently one of the world's most dangerous and dirty industries. Today, 80 percent of   end-of-life ships, in great part European-owned vessels, are broken down by hand on the beaches of the poorest countries of South Asia, often by children. Workers die or suffer great injuries while coastal ecosystems and communities are devastated by pollution.

Even though ships can be dismantled in safe and environmentally sound ways, the majority of ship owners, including many European shipping companies, still choose to dump their end-of-life toxic vessels on the beaches of South Asia, where ships are broken by workers that have no protective equipment at all and are regularly exposed to toxic materials, such as asbestos, PCBs and heavy metals. In addition, there is no environmental containment on a beach, and toxic substances are directly released into the environment destroying sensitive coastal zones.  Taking advantage of the lack of enforcement of environmental and labour laws, shipowners maximise their profits when their obsolete and toxic vessels are sold to countries like Bangladesh, India and Pakistan.

As Belgium is currently holding the presidency of the Council of the European Union, the NGO Shipbreaking Platform takes this opportunity to raise awareness on the shipbreaking issue in Brussels, the capital and the heart of Europe. The Platform calls on the European Union to stop European-owned and European-flagged end-of-life ships to be broken on the beaches of Bangladesh, India and Pakistan.

The NGO Shipbreaking Platform kindly acknowledges the financial support of the European Commission.

Source: The NGO Shipbreaking Platform. 2 November 2010 

http://www.shipbreakingplatform.org/v2/?page=v2/news/12/15/BROKEN-photography-exhibition-in-Brussels/