At The Crossroads, Again!

Unless law enforcement asserts control and politics shows maturity, Bangladesh risks letting mobs rewrite authority, deepen communal divides and unsettle fragile regional balances

- SHANTANU MUKHARJI

Mob violence, media intimidation and anti-India anger reveal how fragile Bangladesh's democracy has become

Bangladesh has been struggling for nearly 20 months to steady its course, coinciding with Sheikh Hasina's departure from the country's political scene on August 5 last year.

The deterioration in the law-and-order situation has been rampant, and it has further worsened when Inquilab Mancha leader Sharif Osman Hadi was shot at by miscreants on December 12 in the heart of Dhaka. Despite the best of treatment at a Singapore hospital, Hadi succumbed to his grievous injuries on December 18. From the day he was shot and the return of his dead body from Singapore, the country witnessed large-scale violence, which is sadly of monstrous proportions.

In an unprecedented development, the offices of the most widely read English newspaper, "Daily Star" and the Bangla newspaper "Prothom Alo" were wantonly vandalised, and the editor of the "New Age", Nurul Kabir, was roughed up by the perpetrators. The media houses in Bangladesh are badly shaken by such horrifying assaults, sending a huge sense of insecurity among the media establishments. There has been condemnation of these attacks by the editors, yet their castigation of the criminals seems muted, perhaps to avoid another revengeful attack. The lawlessness that prevailed in the aftermath of Hadi's murder shows a field day for the troublemakers as they went on the rampage unbridled. It was a free run for them.