Bangladesh observes December 14 as Martyred Intellectuals Day, when it remembers scores of academics, litterateurs and journalists whom the Pakistani army and its collaborators, as they faced defeat in the 1971 war, rounded up and shot dead. From memorialising intellectuals, Bangladesh is now arraigning them in fake cases of genocide and crimes against humanity, even arresting some on these charges.

A degree of anarchy was expected as Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina fled Bangladesh, on August 5, because of the student uprising. Riding high on their success, mobs of students compelled, according to one newspaper estimate, 150 teachers countrywide to resign in the first month of Hasina’s fall. The persecution of intellectuals, instead of abating, has become systematic, and sinister, under the interim government of Muhammad Yunus.