It looks to me like the media outlets in Bangladesh are out for blood. The 668 BDR mutineers have been hauled up in front of a three member special court. All eyes are on 59 year old BDR Subedar Major Gofran Mallick are the leader of the conspiracy and the consequent bloody mutiny that stained the earth and the vaunted image of the Bangladeshi military. But I read the reportage as smacking too much of the visceral stuff of vengeance.
The military has been seen both as a source of national pride and with a certain wary, guarded sensibility that the military may have drunk too much Kool-aid, that they are overzealous in their prediliction to move first and ask questions later when it comes to securing the motherland. So when one of its own is brought to the docket to explain why he killed his superior officers and attempted what must have been, even then, an impossible mutiny, the public outcry can sensibly seen as being both furious and anxious.
There’s no question that broadly speaking the accused are guilty–though many of the accused might well not have committed the specific crimes for which they are accused– and that for all intents and purposes the trials are effectively show trials. Nevertheless, perhaps it does not serve justice well, but speaks to the demand for vengeance, when one of the leading newspapers in the country writes of the proceedings and the fact behind them as if it were re-living each moment that transpired then, more than a year ago, for all time. Perhaps some news outlets could let the public outcry live on or dissipate as it will, without stoking impossible to control sentiments.
