BBC’s article on recent developments in Bangladesh.
There are many photographs that stand out in our collective consciousness as iconic of the extraordinary situations in which they were taken. While this image certainly won’t reach the status of the taking of Berlin, the National Geographic Girl, or Kim Phuc’s Vietnam Napalm, I think it will be remembered for a long time in Bangladesh, no matter how hard the military is trying to destroy it. All the rifles in the world can intimidate people into line (or kill the uncooperative ones), but not even bullets can silence the mind. It’s fitting, then, that the leaders of the uprising against military rule in Bangladesh are university students who have had enough of the restrictions put on free expression.
Now the military is bullying the paper that published the photograph, and they’re trying to track down the student to add to their growing list of “mysteriously disappeared” academics, activists, journalists, police officials and politicians. Guess they didn’t get the message.
