Cost of image crisis
Saudi Arabia has executed eight Bangladeshis in full public view in the name of their version of 'Sharia' justice. We the shell-shocked citizens are lost for words to voice our indignation to the barbarism meted out to these Bangladeshi souls who went to Saudi Arabia to give a better life to their families.
It is the poor who with sweat and blood made the desert green and built the mansions for the rich. People now point the accusing finger at the elitist government of ours of ignoring the case of the poor expatriates whose remittance helped us survive the recent recession. We don't know whether the government pursued the matter properly.
If it did we could have known it through the media. The media then could have put pressure on the Saudi government by raising world opinion against capital punishment. At home the hush-hush nature of governance is already costing us dearly in the form of extrajudicial killings, arrests and abductions.
So, being itself a violator of human rights, the government has lost its moral strength to protest the Saudi barbarity. Were the accused citizens of America, would they have been given the same treatment? Definitely not. Being weak as a nation makes a gulf of difference in treatment. Furthermore, this image crisis has already cost us World Bank's fundings of the proposed Padma Bridge. How many deaths and dents in the economy can galvanize the government into positive action to create a positive image of the county abroad is now a million dollar question.
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