The collapse of a Bangladesh factory two weeks ago has shined a spotlight on one of the world’s largest garment industries, where many clothes for Western retailers are produced. The death toll has passed 800 and continues to rise, making the catastrophe one of the worst industrial accidents of modern times.

Stories like the final desperate hours of the last person to survive the building’s collapse have riveted the nation, prompting anger and outrage.

This BBC investigation goes inside the garment industry in Bangladesh to examine the complicity of Western buyers who turn a blind eye to hazardous conditions that allow them to keep costs down. Using undercover cameras, the BBC finds striking evidence of child labor and unsafe practices that continue to put workers at risk.

“If I ever see the owner (of the factory), I’ll burn him alive,” says a woman who lost her daughter in a factory fire, “just like he burned my child to ash and emptied a mother’s chest.”

For more investigations like this one, subscribe to The I Files, a project of the Center for Investigative Reporting.

Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.

Amanda Pike (she/her) is the director of the TV and documentary department and executive producer of films and series at Reveal. Under her leadership, The Center for Investigative Reporting garnered its first Academy Award nomination and four national Emmys, among other accolades. She was the executive producer of the inaugural year of the Glassbreaker Films initiative, supporting women in documentary filmmaking and investigative journalism. She has spent the past two decades reporting and producing documentaries for PBS, CBS, ABC, National Geographic, A&E, Lifetime and The Learning Channel, among others. Subjects have ranged from militia members in Utah to young entrepreneurs in Egypt and genocide perpetrators in Cambodia. Pike also has dabbled in fiction filmmaking, producing the short film “On the Assassination of the President,” which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. She is a graduate of Princeton University and the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. She is based in Reveal's Emeryville, California, office.