Monday, March 2, 2009

Recent Upheaval in Bangladesh

Recently there has been violent revolts in Bangladesh by the border guards against the Army. They claimed that the Army was not handling them their pay and that the conditions of their service were bad. Their way of revolting was to take the main building and kill many of the military officers that where there. Not only did they kill them, but many of the bodies were hidden in obscure places that people would never imagined that they would be, such as sewers or in mass graves. Their method of killing were also very cold, as they did not go for the clean killing by just shooting them, but they were tortured before hand and their families were also raped and then killed gruesomely. There are many bodies that hasn't been identified and are most likely never to be identified because of the condition that they are in. One of the murder of a family of a military men has been confirmed, it was the wife of the commanding officer. The way she was killed was a very cold way where it gives goosebumps and one cannot but cringe when one hears how she was killed. There has been around 148 either dead or missing which they are presumed to be dead since the border guards have hidden many of the bodies.
Everything started on the morning of February 25 where around 4000 troops gathered in the main building on the capital. It took 24 hours for the rebels to reach a negotiation with the Prime Minister of the country and to convince them to lay their arms and surrender.

Even though I can understand how the rebels felt about their suppression within the Army and not receiving their payments because in countries like that, their payment is utterly necessary for their survival and their families survival, I do not agree in the methods in which they voiced their pleas. The Army did wrong by treating them badly and by holding their payments, but there are always other methods to protest against those injustices. They did not hold any right to kill those officers and less to violate and kill their families in the process, but also do it coldly and hide their bodies. For us, the people that live in industrialized countries that do not see atrocities such as these, it is hard for us do believe that these things still exist in this world, in the 21st century none the less. What this teaches us is that no matter how much we may advance economically, politically or technologically there are still countries that are still behind in those areas and that in effect it drive its people to create problems like that.

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