Killing an Admiral

From Ian Smillie's history of BRAC, Freedom from Want, on how things work in Bangladesh:

Few governments welcome criticism, and bad governments are especially hostile to it. Voltaire’s famous line in Candide resonates. "Dans ce pay-ci, il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un admiral pour encourager les autres” (In this country, it is good to kill an admiral from time to time to encourage the others). Voltaire was referring to the unfair trial and execution of an exemplary British naval officer. The quote is often used to illustrate overly harsh political punishment that aims, like the mafia, to punish one and teach many. The Bangladesh NGO community received a taste of this in 1999 when the government initiated an inquiry into the financial operations of Gonoshahajjo Sangstha (GSS), an outspoken and highly successful NGO working in the field of education. GSS argued that donor funding delays had created a payroll crisis, but the cause of the problem was lost in the ensuing fracas while the government investigated and imposed a caretaker management. In the end, GSS was obliged to fire 6,000 staff and shut down 750 primary schools. More to the point, however, it was also forced to disband a network of 600 lawyers who were providing legal aid to women and the landless poor.In 2001, another large NGO [and microcreditor], Proshika, was proscribed from receiving foreign contributions. Its senior managers were arrested and charged with varying degrees of financial mismanagement and fraud, perhaps, as it was widely believed, because it had displayed an ill-considered friendliness toward the recently defeated Awami League government [the political party led by current Prime Minister Hasina]. The harassment of Proshika, the arrests and extrajudicial violence continued for years, leaving a once-vibrant organization crippled and bleeding.