LAST week in Mitford, Dhaka, a horrific video made rounds on social media: a man was beaten to death with stones in broad daylight while hundreds of people stood by — watching, recording whispering — but doing nothing. Some even filmed the killers as they danced on the lifeless body. According to reports, members of the Ansar were nearby. Yet, they too did not intervene.
As usual, political parties began spinning the event into partisan capital. What’s missing from public discourse, however, is the most alarming question: how did an entire crowd — ordinary people and trained forces — become passive spectators to a public lynching?
This isn’t the first time a crowd failed to act. And it won’t be the last unless we confront the deeper psychology behind bystander inaction, particularly in fragile political environments like post-authoritarian Bangladesh.
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Psychology of bystanders
ACADEMIC research offers unsettling insights. Social psychologists Bibb Latané and John Darley famously demonstrated that the more people witness a crime, the less likely any one person is to help — a phenomenon known as the bystander effect. As group size increases, responsibility diffuses. ‘Someone else will do something,’ people think. But no one does.
Yet the Mitford incident goes beyond classic bystander apathy. This wasn’t an ambiguous emergency. This was public, prolonged and brutal. The killers had no guns. They were a small group. They took their time — not just to kill — but to desecrate. The opportunity to intervene was ample. So why didn’t anyone — including trained security personnel — act? Because the bystander effect doesn’t operate in a vacuum. It intersects with fear, learned helplessness and political context.
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Civilians in fear, civilians conditioned
IN TODAY’S Bangladesh, public trust in justice has deteriorated. Over the past year, under the interim government, we have witnessed growing tolerance towards mob violence and extrajudicial actions. People have been taught, whether explicitly or implicitly, that stepping in can cost them everything, even after the fall of authoritarian government. In transitional Bangladesh, where the rule of law is erratic and allegiance to the wrong party can still land you in prison, the instinct for self-preservation overtakes the moral urge to act.
Moreover, the constant politicisation of violence has created moral fatigue. When every crime becomes a political football, ordinary people become emotionally desensitised. They stop seeing victims as human beings and start seeing them as members of opposing groups — or as cautionary tales.
In such a society, people don’t just fail to act — they fear to act.
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When the law watches
Perhaps even more troubling than public inaction is the silence of law enforcement. According to eyewitness reports, members of the Ansar were nearby. The killers were not invisible or in a hurry. The officers had time. So why didn’t they step in?
In transitional states emerging from authoritarianism, law enforcement agencies often inherit the institutional memory of complicity. Their role under an autocracy was not to protect citizens, but to preserve the regime. As the regime shifts, confusion and passivity often follow. Officers operate in a grey zone — uncertain about who gives orders, uncertain about the political cost of acting. Worse, some may silently endorse mob action as an informal tool of ‘justice’ in the absence of state clarity.
When law enforcement becomes a bystander, it sends a message: law is optional, violence is permissible.
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The real crisis
THE man in Mitford wasn’t just murdered by a few violent individuals. He was killed in front of hundreds of witnesses — and symbolically, by every person and institution that chose silence over resistance. This is the crisis of selective solidarity. When we decide whom to help based on group identity, political affiliation, or fear of retaliation, we erode the very foundation of a moral society. As Bangladesh navigates its post-authoritarian moment, this case must serve as a wake-up call. The greatest danger is not just the violent few — it is the silent many. Because when a state normalises passivity in the face of injustice, it doesn’t just fail its people — it teaches them to fail one another.
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Responsibility must begin at the top
THE path out of this bystander crisis must begin with the government. When government officials and political leaders justify or downplay mob violence, they do more than abandon victims — they sow the seeds for future bloodshed. By attempting to normalise public aggression in political speeches, the government has signalled to potential perpetrators that impunity is possible. This not only emboldens criminals but also leaves law enforcement agencies confused about their mandate. If the state redefines violence as patriotism or resistance, even trained officers hesitate to intervene.
The government must now take full responsibility for accelerating this culture of public violence. It cannot merely condemn brutality after the fact; it must actively rebuild a norm of intervention — one that encourages both civilians and security personnel to stop violence in its tracks.
But if the state refuses to lead, then the people must. I call on the young generation, the same youth who rose in July 2024 when truth and justice were threatened, to rise again — not in anger, but in moral clarity. Let them resurrect our collective conscience every time silence becomes complicity. Because peace is not the absence of conflict — it is the courage to act when violence erupts. As Martin Luther King Jr reminded us, ‘In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.’
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Tasnia Symoom is a political scientist and postdoctoral researcher at the University of Kentucky. Her work focuses on authoritarian regimes, political behaviour and governance in Bangladesh and the Global South.
