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Sunday, April 4, 2010

[ALOCHONA] Bangladesh's Quest for Closure



Bangladesh's Quest for Closure
 
JALALUDDIN HAIDER / DRIK / MAJORITY WORLD
 
Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's historic declaration of independence, 7 March 1971: "Our struggle this time is for freedom. Our struggle this time is for independence."
 
Can the execution of Mujib's assassins finally deliver the country from its darkest chapter?
By SALIL TRIPATHI
Published : 1 April 2010  
 
 
A
QUARTER CENTURY AGO I met a man who calmly told me how he had organised the massacre of a family. He wasn't confessing out of a sense of remorse; he was bragging about it, grinning as he spoke to me.

I was a young reporter on assignment in Dhaka, trying to figure out what had gone wrong with Bangladesh, which had emerged as an independent nation after a bloody war of liberation 15 years earlier, in 1971. The man I was interviewing lived in a well-appointed home. Soldiers protected his house, checking the bags and identification of all visitors. A week earlier he had been a presidential candidate, losing by a huge margin.

He wore a Pathani outfit that looked out of place in a country where civilian politicians wore white kurtas and black vests, and men on the streets went about in lungis. He had a thin moustache. He stared at me eagerly as we spoke, curious about the notes I was taking, trying to read what I was writing in my notepad. He sat straight on a sofa, his chest thrust forward, as if he was still in uniform. He looked like a man playing a high stakes game, assured that he would win, because he knew someone important who held all the cards.

His name was Farooq Rahman, and he had been an army major, and later, lieutenant-colonel. He had returned to Bangladesh recently, after several years in exile in Libya. Before dawn on 15 August 1975, he led the Bengal Lancers, the army's tank unit under his command, to disarm the Rokkhi Bahini, a paramilitary force loyal to President Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and his Awami League party. When he left the Dhaka Cantonment, he had instructed other officers and soldiers to go to the upscale residential area of Dhanmondi, where Mujib, as he was popularly known, lived. Soon after 5:00 am, the officers had killed Mujib and most of his family.

I had been rehearsing how to ask Farooq about his role in the assassination. I had no idea how he would respond. After a few desultory questions about the country's political situation, I tentatively began, "It has been widely reported in Bangladesh that you were somehow connected with the plot to remove Mujibur Rahman from power in 1975. Would you…"

"Of course, we killed him," he interrupted me. "He had to go," he said, before I could complete my hesitant, longwinded question.

REUTERS/ANDREW BIRAJ

The courtyard outside the jail where Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's killers were executed.
F
AROOQ RAHMAN BELIEVED he had saved the nation. The governments that followed Mujib reinforced that perception, rewarding him and the other assassins with respectability, political space, and plum diplomatic
assignments. One of Mujib's surviving daughters, Sheikh Hasina Wajed, who inherited his political mantle and who was to become the prime minister of Bangladesh, was marginalised for many years. She lived for a while in exile, and for some time, was detained. The political landscape after Mujib's murder was unstable. Bangladesh has had 11 prime ministers and over a dozen heads of state in its 39-year history. Hasina was determined to redeem her father's reputation and seek justice, and her quest has larger implications for Bangladesh's citizenry. Hundreds of thousands—and by some estimates perhaps three million—people were killed during Bangladesh's war of independence in 1971. Tens of thousands of Bangladeshis now wait for justice—to see those who harmed them and their loved ones brought to account. But the culture of impunity hasn't disappeared. It took more than three decades for Sheikh Hasina to receive some measure of vindication.

S
OMETIME IN THE AFTERNOON of 27 January this year, Mahfuz Anam received a call from an official, saying that the end was imminent. Anam was in the newsroom of Bangladesh's leading English newspaper, The Daily Star, which he edits. He knew what the message meant: perhaps within hours, five men—Farooq, Lt-Col Sultan Shahriar Rashid Khan,
Lt-Col Mohiuddin Ahmed, Maj Bazlul Huda, and army lancer AKM Mohiuddin— would be hanged by the neck until dead at the city's central jail. Anam told his reporters to be prepared, and sent several reporters and photographers to cover the executions.

"We had hints that the end was near, particularly when the relatives of the five men were asked to come and meet them with hardly any notice," Anam told me during a long telephone conversation a week after the executions. "The authorities had told the immediate families that there were no limits on the number of relatives who could come, and they were allowed to remain with them until well after visiting hours. We knew that the final hours had come."

Once the families left, the five men were sent to their cells. They were told to take a bath and to offer their night prayers. Then the guards asked them if they wanted to eat anything special. A cleric came, offering to read from the Qu'ran. Around 10:30 pm, a reporter called Anam to say that the city's civil surgeon, Mushfiqur Rahman, and district magistrate Zillur Rahman had arrived at the jail. Police vans arrived 50 minutes later, carrying five coffins. The anti-crime unit, known as the Rapid Action Battalion, took positions providing support to the regular police force to prevent demonstrations. Other leading officials came within minutes: the home secretary, the inspector general of prisons, and the police commissioner. Rashida Ahmad, news editor at the online news agency, bdnews24.com, recalls: "Many media houses practically decamped en masse to the jail to 'experience a historic moment' firsthand." Anam told me, "By 11:35 pm, we knew it would happen that night. We held back our first edition. The second edition had the detailed story."

Bazlul Huda was the first to be taken to the gallows. He was handcuffed, and a black hood covered his face. Eyewitnesses have said Huda struggled to free himself and screamed loudly, as guards led him to the brightly lit room. An official waved and dropped a red handkerchief on the ground, the signal for the executioner to proceed. It was just after midnight when Huda died. Muhiuddin Ahmed was next, followed by Farooq, Shahriar, and AKM Muhiuddin. It was all over soon after 1:00 am.

Earlier that day, the Supreme Court had rejected the final appeal of four of the five convicts. Shahriar was the only one not to seek presidential pardon. His daughter Shehnaz, who spent two hours with her father that evening, later told bdnews24.com, "My father was a freedom fighter; and a man who fights for the independence of his country never begs for his life."

Mujib's daughter, Sheikh Hasina, was at her prime ministerial home that night. She was informed when the executions began, and she reportedly asked to be left alone, and later offered namaz-e-shukran (a prayer of gratitude). Many people, most of them supporters of the Awami League, had gathered outside her house that night, but she did not come out to meet anybody. A few days later, she told a party convention that it was a moment of joy for all of them, because due process had been served.

REUTERS/RAFIQUAR RAHMAN

Former Lt-Col Syed Farooq Rahman, convicted in the assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, being led to court in a prison vehicle.
The mood was sober and subdued. Dhaka residents I spoke to told me the celebrations were only in certain localities. Ahmad, who was at her news desk until late at bdnews24. com, wrote to me, saying the mood was sombre, and many looked at it as a time for reflection, although that night and the following day there was muted rejoicing in some areas. Many could understand Hasina thanking God, and other politicians welcoming the closing of a dark chapter, but some felt it a bit much that parliament itself thanked God and adjourned for the day, she said.

The chapter is not yet closed. In early February, Awami League activists ransacked and set afire the home of the brother of Aziz Pasha, one of the self-confessed conspirators who had died in exile in Zimbabwe a few years ago. Six other conspirators remain at large, and the Government says it is determined to bring them back.

C
ALL IT JUSTICE, REVENGE, or closure. It has taken 34 years for this particular saga to reach its end. Khondaker Mushtaq Ahmed, who took over as Bangladesh's president after Mujib's assassination, had granted the officers
immunity and praised the assassins. General Ziaur Rehman, who later became president, con- firmed the immunity. A series of articles in August 2005 were published simultaneously in The Daily Star and Prothom Alo, commemorating the 30th anniversary of the coup d'état that killed Mujib and much of his family. Lawrence Lifschultz, an American journalist who had been South Asia Correspondent of the Far Eastern Economic Review in the 1970s, revealed that one of his principal sources, alleging CIA links with the political leadership of the coup, was the US Ambassador to Bangladesh, Eugene Boster.

While Boster sought anonymity during his lifetime, Lifschultz disclosed after Boster's death that the ambassador had in 1977 informed he and his colleague, the American writer, Kai Bird, that the US Embassy had contacts with the Khondaker group six months before the coup, and that the ambassador had himself ordered that all links with Khondaker and his entourage be severed. Boster claimed he learned later that behind his back the contacts continued with Khondaker's associates until the actual day of the coup.

In their book, Bangladesh: The Unfinished Revolution (1979), Lifschultz and Bird document Khondaker's prior links to a failed Kissinger initiative during the 1971 war. Khondaker's colleagues in Bangladesh's government-in-exile had discovered his covert contacts with Kissinger, and it ended with him being placed under house arrest in Calcutta. Four years later, Khondaker—who was in Mujib's cabinet—became president after the military coup, and once in office, he granted immunity to the assassins.

Later governments gave some of the assassins high-ranking posts, even though these men had conspired to eliminate the country's elected leader. Lt- Col Shariful Haq Dalim represented Bangladesh in Beijing, Hong Kong, Tripoli, and became high commissioner to Kenya, even though he had attempted another coup in 1980. Lt-Col Aziz Pasha served in Rome, Nairobi, and Harare, where he sought asylum when Hasina first came to power in 1996. She removed him; he stayed on in Harare, and died there. Maj Huda was briefly a member of parliament, and also served in Islamabad and Jeddah. Other conspirators served Bangladeshi missions in Bangkok, Lagos, Dakar, Ankara, Jakarta, Tokyo, Muscat, Cairo, Kuala Lumpur, Ottawa, and Manila.

The Oxford-trained lawyer, Kamal Hossain, who was Mujib's law minister, and later foreign minister, told me, "The impunity with which Farooq operated was extraordinary. When he returned to Bangladesh, the government facilitated him and President [Hussain Muhammad] Ershad, who wanted some candidate to stand against him in the rigged elections. [Ershad] let Farooq stand to give himself credibility."

© BEGART INSTITUTE / DRIK / MAJORITY WORLD

The flag of Bangladesh raised at Mujibur's residence on 23 March 1971, three days before the official independence from Pakistan.
It was clear that a trial of the assassins would only be possible if Mujib's party, the Awami League, came to power. That happened in 1996, and Mujib's daughter, Sheikh Hasina, became prime minister. The cases began and the court found all 12 defendants guilty. But Hasina lost the 2001 elections, and the process stopped, resuming only after her victory in the elections of December 2008. The government now wants to bring the surviving officers back to Bangladesh: Noor Chowdhury is reportedly in the United States; Dalim is in Canada; Khandaker Abdul Rashid, Farooq's brother-in-law, is in Pakistan; MA Rashed Chowdhury is in South Africa; Mosleuddin is in Thailand; and Abdul Mazed is in Kenya. Bringing all of them back may not be easy, because they will face executions. Canada and South Africa have abolished the death penalty, and Kenya put a stop to it recently, making it harder for those governments to extradite them.

How does a nation, whose independence was soaked with blood, which lost a popular leader of its freedom struggle in a brutal massacre, reconcile with that crime? What form of justice is fair? Does the death penalty heal those wounds?

Bangladesh thinks so. It is among the 58 countries (including India) that retain the death penalty, but it applies it only in rare cases, like murder. In 2008, five people were executed in Bangladesh. Many governments oppose the death penalty on principle, and the European Union appealed to the Bangladeshi government to commute the sentence of Mujib's assassins. The human rights group Amnesty International also sought clemency, while agreeing that the men should face justice.

Bangladeshi human rights lawyers have found it hard to challenge the death penalty because it is not controversial in Bangladesh. There are also political exigencies. One human rights activist told me, "We are against [the] death penalty but the dilemma is that we are in a country where life imprisonment really means imprisonment guaranteed until your party is in power. The death penalty is almost seen as the only way to guarantee justice for such a grisly crime." Grisly, it certainly was. This is what happened.

I N 1975, Dhanmondi hadn't changed much from how it looked at Independence, with roads lined with twostorey houses dating back to the 1950s. Today, there are multi-storey buildings, English-medium schools, new universities, shopping malls and hookah bars

to lure younger crowds. Back in 1975, the area was quieter. In the evening, people strolled along the periphery of the large lake in the middle of the neighbourhood and at night you could hear the tinkle of the bells of the cycle rickshaws plying the roads.

On 15 August 1975, before dawn, 700 soldiers with 105 millimetre weapons left their barracks and headed for the three homes where Mujib and his family lived. Everyone was still asleep at Mujib's home, number 677 on road 32 in Dhanomondi. Mujib's personal assistant, Mohitul Islam, was at his desk when Mujib called him, asking him to call the police immediately. Mujib had heard his brother-in-law Abdur Rab Serniabat's house at 27 Minto Road was being attacked. Serniabat was a minister in Mujib's government.

Mohitul—who lived to tell the tale—tried calling the police, but the phones weren't working. When he called the telephone exchange, the person at the other end said nothing. Mujib snatched the phone and shouted into the mouthpiece.

The guards outside were hoisting the national flag when the soldiers arrived. The guards were stunned to find army officers rushing in through the gate, ordering them to drop their weapons and surrender. There were a few shots.

A frightened servant woke up Mujib's son Kamal, who got dressed and came down when Maj Bazlul Huda entered the house with several soldiers. Even as Mohitul tried telling Huda that it was Kamal, there was a burst of gunfire; Kamal lay dead. Huda quickly went to the landing of the staircase when he heard Mujib's voice.

"What do you want?" Mujib asked Huda, whom he recognised.

The soldiers pulled their triggers, spraying Mujib with dozens of bullets. Before his burial the following day in his birthplace, Tungipara, the imam noticed at least ten bullets still lodged inside Mujib's body. When I visited the house in 1986, I saw dozens of bullet marks on the wall and staircase where he was killed. Mujib had collapsed on the stairs; his trademark pipe in his hands. He was dead by the time his body stopped tumbling down the stairs.

The killers then went inside the house, and one by one, killed everyone they could find: Mujib's wife Fajilutunessa, Kamal's wife Sultana, Mujib's other son Jamal and his wife Rosy, and Mujib's brother Naser, who was heard pleading, "I am not in politics."

Then they saw Russell, Mujib's ten-year-old son, who was crying, asking for his mother. He, too, was killed.

© RASHID TALUKDER / DRIK

Sheikh Hasina was inconsolable when she returned to her homeland in 1981, after six years in exile.

Around the same time, another group of soldiers had killed Mujib's brother-in-law, Serniabat at his home, and a third group had murdered the family of Fazlul Haque Moni, Mujib's nephew, an influential Awami League politician who lived on road 13/1, about two kilometres away from Mujib's home. At that time, Mahfuz Anam was a young reporter at the Bangladesh Times. He lived across the Dhanmandi Lake, and had a clear view of Sheikh Moni's house. "I saw what happened," he recalled. "Early that morning I was awakened by the sound of firing. I got up. My room was on the side of the lake. I ventured out to the boundary wall. I saw troops enter Sheikh Moni's house. I heard plenty of firing, followed by screaming. I heard shots—some random, some from sub-machine guns. I saw the troops leave the house. It was all over in four to six minutes. I could hear the people inside groaning; it continued for some time."

The junior officers' coup had proceeded exactly as planned. There had been no resistance from the moment Huda and his team had reached Mujib's home. After taming the Rokkhi Bahini, Farooq arrived at Mujib's gate, eager to know what had happened at Mujib's home. Huda told him calmly, "All are finished."

When we met a decade after those killings, I asked Farooq, one of the leading conspirators, "And the ten-year-old boy: did he have to be killed?"

"It was an act of mercy killing. Mujib was building a dynasty; we had to finish off all of them," he told me with a degree of finality, his arm slicing ruthlessly in the air, as if he was chopping off the head of someone kneeling in front of him. There was no mercy in his eyes, no remorse, only a hint of pride.

They had tried killing the entire family, but they could not get Mujib's two daughters, Hasina and Rehana, who were on a goodwill tour in Europe. Hasina was in Bonn, Germany, where her husband, MA Wazed Miah, a nuclear scientist, was a researcher at a laboratory (He died in May 2009). Kamal Hossain, Mujib's cabinet minister, was on an official visit to Belgrade. Speaking a week after the executions of Mujib's killers, he told me, "I first heard there had been a coup. Later, at the home of the Bangladesh Ambassador to Yugoslavia, we sat listening to French radio, and more information began coming out. We heard about Mujib's death, then we heard about the other family members. My first thought was Hasina's safety." He met her in Bonn and decided to sever his relations with the new government. He handed in his official passport to the ambassador, and left for England, which had better links with Bangladesh, and where getting information would be easier. Hasina, too, decided there was no need for her to go back. She was granted asylum in India and lived in New Delhi with her husband until 1981. Hossain returned to Dhaka in 1980.

I N OCTOBER 1986, I visited Mujib's house, the mute witness to the ghastly events of that dawn. As if to ensure that no one will forget the tragedy, Hasina, who showed me around, had made only minimal changes to the house, preserving the crime scene. The bare walls bore bullet marks. Shattered glass lay on the ground of what was once Mujib's library. On the

staircase on which Mujib was shot, and on the wall which he tried to grip for support as he fell, darkened blood stains were still visible.

© BABY MOUDUD COLLECTION / DRIK

Sheikh Hasina, 10, with her younger sister Sheikh Rehana and younger brothers Sheikh Kamal and Sheikh Jamal in 1957. The two brothers were killed during the 1975 coup.

Mujib was 55 when he was killed. He had been in and out of Pakistani jails, and was widely regarded—and initially revered— as Bangladesh's founding father. At the time of Partition, what is now known as Bangladesh formed the eastern wing of Pakistan. The two parts of Pakistan were divided by thousands of kilometres of Indian territory. Islam united the two, but culture, language and the idea of nationhood divided them. The eastern half was more populous, and should legitimately have commanded greater resources, but the generals and politicians in power in the western half disregarded eastern demands, responding to eastern claims with contempt, if not repression. Punjabis dominated the Sindhis, Baluchis, and Pathans in the west, and they had even less regard for their Bengali compatriots.

Things came to a head in 1970, when in nationwide elections, Awami League secured a majority. Mujib should have been invited to become Pakistan's prime minister, but the generals and politicians in the west thought differently. Mujib's negotiations with Gen Yahya Khan, Pakistan's ruler, and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, leader of the Pakistan People's Party which had won a large number of seats in the west, continued interminably. Meanwhile, Yahya Khan sent Gen Tikka Khan to Dhaka. Many Bangladeshis remember planeloads of young men arriving on flights from the west. They were military men but not in uniform, and they did not carry weapons. Meanwhile, Pakistan's navy was shipping weapons through ports like Chittagong, keeping Bengali officers in the dark, and secretly arming the men who had landed in Dhaka.

The crackdown began on 25 March 1971, as the Pakistani army brutally attempted to crush Bengali aspirations. Mujib was jailed in West Pakistan. In the east, hundreds of thousands were killed, and millions of refugees made their way to India. A civil war followed, and India aided the Mukti Bahini, as Bangladeshi freedom fighters were called. In early December, Pakistan attacked India on its western front; India retaliated, and its troops defeated Pakistan on both fronts within a fortnight. Indian troops entered Dhaka, and thousands of Pakistani troops surrendered. A few weeks later Mujib returned to the Tejgaon airport. A sea of humanity greeted the leader of the new nation, Bangladesh.

Three and a half years later, Farooq and his men annihilated most of Mujib's family. "Even dogs didn't bark when we killed Mujib," Farooq told me.
 
T HE SHEIKH MUJIBUR RAHMAN of 1975 was not the Sheikh Mujibur Rahman of 1971. He squandered his unprecedented goodwill for two reasons. First, he could not meet the phenomenal expectations Bangladeshis had in his leadership. Lifschultz, who
was based in Dhaka in 1974, remembers the day when Pakistan's Prime Minister, Zulifikar Ali Bhutto, visited Bangladesh for the first time since its independence from Pakistan. As Bhutto's motorcade moved from the airport into central Dhaka, a section of the crowd lining the street shouted, "Bhutto Zindabad (Long Live Bhutto)."

Lifschultz thought this was rather bizarre. He told me there were conflicted feelings among some Bangladeshis who in 1974 were living through the first stages of a severe famine. Clearly, some believed their hopes had been belied, but to him, the cheering of Bhutto seemed particularly perverse, given the circumstances of Bangladesh's emergence.

B ANGLADESHI FRUSTRATION with Mujib was understandable. By mid-1974, Bangladesh was reeling from a widespread famine that experts believe was at least partly due to political incompetence. Citizens were also stunned by the ostentatious weddings of Mujib's sons at a time of economic crisis. Food distribution had failed, and people were forced
to sell their farm animals to buy rice. Thousands of poor people left their villages looking for work in the cities. Irene Khan, who was until recently the Secretary-General of Amnesty International, was a schoolgirl in the early 1970s. She recalls hungry voices clamouring for food outside the gates of her family home every day.

With public criticism over the mass starvation growing, Mujib clamped down on dissent. He abolished political parties and created one national party called Bangladesh Krishak Shramik Awami League (BAKSAL); removed freethinking experts who did not agree with his policies; nationalised newspapers (closing most), and allowed only two each—in Bangla and in English. He stifled dissent within the party, suspended the constitution, and declared himself president. Now editor of The Daily Star, Anam calls those measures the greatest blunder Mujib made. "It is still a mystery what led him to do that. He had it all. There was nothing, nobody in the parliament opposed to his policies, except for a few voices. He was the tallest man in the country. Why did he do it? It was in total contrast to his political heritage. It was a dramatic transformation from a multiparty system to a one party state."

© BAL KRISHNAN / DRIK / MAJORITY WORLD

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman with his elder daughter Sheikh Hasina during happier times. Hasina became Prime Minister in 1996.
The only time I met Farooq, in 1986, he expressed outrage at those changes, "How do you pass an amendment in Parliament which abolishes party membership in just 11 minutes? No discussions, nothing!" Bangladesh, in his opinion, was becoming a colony of India, and as a freedom fighter, he thought he had to stop that. "I tried to save the country," he told me, his tone rising, "Mujib had changed the constitution so that the court could not do a thing. All power was with the president."

None of Farooq's explanations justified the terrible manner in which he and his family were killed, but the famine and his increasingly authoritarian rule partly explains why there was little outward expression of grief after his assassination. At the same time, it was not just Mujib's killing, but the brutality of it, that many Bangladeshis felt justified the death penalty for the assassins.

Justice moves slowly in Bangladesh. According to a recent study, Bangladesh's jails can hold only 27,000 prisoners, but there are some 70,000 inmates in jail, and some 47,000 are still awaiting trial, according to the inspector-general of prisons. One reason for the backlog is the shortage of judges. The other is that some defendants are too poor to afford legal help.

The trial of Mujib's assassins falls under a different category. There was little political will to try the assassins. That changed when Hasina came to power. The five of- ficers were sentenced to death as early as 1998. They appealed, but higher courts upheld the sentence in April 2001 and November 2009 respectively. They sought a Supreme Court review, and later, four of the five applied for presidential pardon. While the government meticulously followed the constitutional procedures, many have noted the speed with which the final appeals were dealt with.

A four-member special bench of the Supreme Court's appellate division met at 9:25 am and issued a verdict at 9:27 am, on 26 January 2010, rejecting the review petition. Senior civil servants of the law and home ministry met at noon, and discussed the issue for three hours. Farooq, who had resisted writing his mercy petition, did so that afternoon. Officials received and dispatched his petition within minutes, as they were all in one room with colleagues whose approval was needed. A report on bdnews24.com said that President Zillur Rahman rejected the petition at 7:30 pm (the hangings occurred soon after midnight).

The quick turnaround of the documents was remarkable. One lawyer told me, "What you saw wasn't due process; it was process with undue speed."

T HERE IS A SENSE IN DHAKA NOW, that the executions have brought the tragedy to a close. Perhaps; but many other wounds continue to fester. On the day of Mujib's killing in 1975, the officers had also arrested Tajuddin Ahmed, Nazrul Islam, Kamaruzzaman, and Mansur Ali—four leading Awami League politicians suspected of being pro-Mujib. On the
night of 3 November 1975, soldiers came to the jail, and asked for the four to be brought to one cell. The jail authorities tried to find out what was going on, when a call from the president asked them to cooperate. The soldiers then took out their weapons, and, without reading out any charges, without any trial or any authority, sprayed bullets on them, killing them instantly. Mosleuddin, involved with the 15 August killings, proudly claimed to have played a role in the jail killings. Khondaker gave the killers immunity. Some pro-Mujib of- ficers overthrew Khondaker two days later. A counter-coup followed, and the situation was stabilised weeks later when Gen Ziaur Rahman took over, ending the pretence of civilian rule. Tajuddin's daughter, Simeen Hossain Rimi, has compiled her father's writings and sought justice. The government has said it will pursue that case, too.

And then there are the war crimes.

When Hasina came to power in 2008, one of her electoral promises was to seek justice for the victims of the 1971 war. Without getting into the technical debate over whether what happened in Bangladesh in 1971 was a genocide— which is a legal term with a precise meaning in international law—there is enough evidence to prove that both war crimes and crimes against humanity were committed in Bangladesh. Many of those who committed those acts are still free: some live abroad, some in Pakistan and some in Bangladesh, living with the same impunity as some of Mujib's killers did until recently. These individuals resisted an independent Bangladesh, and successive governments in Bangladesh haven't pursued the matter. Some governments lacked the political capital and will, some had little moral authority, and some have even been complicit with some of the crimes.

That context has changed with Hasina's recent victory. Irene Khan, who worked for many years at the UN High Commission for Refugees before leading Amnesty International, told me:

You can have debates about whether particular acts constitute war crimes or genocide. You can debate whether what happened was a war or an internal con- flict. But they were crimes against humanity. There was obviously culpability and collusion of some locals with the Pakistani army. For instance, in December 1971, before the formal handover to the Indian army, there was a whole list of intellectuals who were picked up and killed. These were not political cases; these were civilians. Those crimes have remained uninvestigated; it is extremely important that there is a commission of inquiry, if Bangladesh is to put a closure to this chapter of its history. Even if you will have only a limited number of prosecutions, you need a full record of what happened.

Pakistan's own war inquiry commission report of 1974 mentions that tens of thousands of civilians were killed, and many women were raped. Bangladeshis find that report incomplete because it barely scratches the surface of what happened.

Justice for those crimes against humanity won't be easy. At the time of the final handover of Pakistani prisoners of war, India and Bangladesh signed a tripartite treaty with Pakistan, which effectively granted immunity to Pakistani soldiers. While Bangladesh passed a law subsequently to try war criminals, that law only focused on Bangladeshi collaborators, leaving out the Pakistani army. "That issue has always been brushed under the carpet," Irene Khan told me. "The real question is: can an international treaty sign away the rights to justice of victims? The treaty absolves the Pakistani army and political leaders."

Realpolitik may have prevented going after Pakistanis, and domestic politics made targeting local collaborators complicated. Hasina's rival was Khaleda Zia, Ziaur Rahman's widow. She led the Bangladesh National Party, which has had an electoral alliance with Jamaat-i-Islami, a fundamentalist party. Some of the Jamaat's leaders and many followers are accused of being collaborationists.

The Bangladeshi government had said it would commence trials in March. A tribunal was expected to be set up in Dhaka by 26 March, Bangladesh's Independence Day, but nobody has been indicted yet, no prosecutors or investigators have been appointed, and only Bangladeshi 'collaborators' will be tried. Some observers fear that the process will be seen as an attack on Jamaat-i-Islami. If the initial indictees are only from the Jamaat, they will claim they are being victimised, and the credibility of the process will suffer. A fair process would also investigate the conduct of the Mukti Bahini, the Bangladeshi freedom fighters who are alleged to have committed atrocities against Urdu-speaking Biharis, many of whom supported Pakistan.

And all this, to what end? It is a people's quest for justice; a society's desire to break the imposed silence. It is to reassert the norms that govern a nation, to re-establish the foundations on which civilisation can rest.

Irene Khan is not sure if the recent executions will help turn the tide against the culture of impunity. "This is a systemic problem in Bangladesh," she says. "There is impunity from the local policeman who beats up a suspected thief, to the security forces who tortured and killed suspected mutineers in interrogation cells." She refers to the failed Bangladesh Rifles mutiny last year. Guards of Bangladesh Rifles objected to army officers commanding them, so they held officers hostage, killing many of them and ransacking the barracks, before surrendering. Hundreds of mutineers were tortured later, and over 60 died.

T HE CULTURE OF IMPUNITY runs deep. Hasina may think of reaching closure for her personal grief. For millions of Bangladeshis, that remains an elusive goal. Projonmo 71 is a social movement, bringing together the children of those who died during the independence war. Staunchly Bengali in their nationalism, many of its members are secular.
Meghna Guhathakurta, an academic who taught international relations at Dhaka University and is now the director of Research Initiatives, a development think tank, is one of them.

She vividly remembers the midnight of 25 March 1971. Her father, Jyotirmoy Guhathakurta, who was a professor of English at Dhaka University, was correcting examination papers. Schools and colleges were closed, as Bangladeshis had embarked on a non-cooperation movement. She feared her father would get arrested, and they had been warned.

An army convoy came to the campus. There were six apartments in the building. The soldiers began banging on the doors. An officer and two soldiers entered their ground floor apartment through the back garden. The officer asked in Urdu, "Where is the professor?" Her mother asked why they wanted to meet her husband. The officer said they had come to take him away.

"Where?" she asked. The officer did not reply.

Guhathakurta told me what followed in a calm voice:

My mother called my father. The officer asked my father if he was the professor. My father said yes. 'We have come to take you,' he said. Meanwhile, several other professors were being brought down. Some families tried to hold them, but we told them—'let them go, otherwise they will shoot you.' We turned around, and we heard the firing of guns. And we saw all of them lying in a pool of blood. Some were shouting for water. We rushed out to the front part of our compound. I saw my father lying on the ground. He was fully conscious. He told me they had asked him his name and his religion. He said he was a Hindu, and they gave orders to shoot him. My father was hit by bullets in his neck, his waist, and it left him paralysed. The soldiers had run away. We took my father to the house. We could not take him to the hospital because there was a curfew.

He remained in pain, and they could only take him to the hospital on 27 March, when the curfew was lifted. He died three days later.

I asked her about the executions of Mujib's assassins. "I am against impunity, and I am very much happy justice has been met," she said. "But I am not happy that we have the death penalty. Not every crime has been tried yet."

She is a peace activist and has thought of forgiveness, but there is a moral dilemma around that idea. British writer Gillian Slovo, who was born in South Africa, had faced such a moral quandary in the years after apartheid was lifted. During apartheid, Slovo's father, Joe, led the South African Communist Party, and he and her mother, Ruth, first lived in exile in Mozambique, from where they carried on their anti-apartheid activism. They were among the few whites to take on the South African regime (her mother had been detained without trial in 1963, and the couple fled South Africa after the African National Congress leadership was rounded up). Tragedy struck in Mozambique, when agents of apartheid sent her a letter bomb, which exploded, killing her.

Slovo ended up confronting the man responsible for sending that lethal parcel to her mother. She discovered a copy of her book, which she had autographed, had ended up with that man. I met Slovo in late 2008, soon after the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, and I asked her if it was possible to forgive. After all, South Africa had astounded the world with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which offered a non-violent way in which the oppressor and victim could resolve differences face to face. Slovo told me, "Lots of countries like truth commissions because they look at South Africa and think of the miracle. But I am not sure if it was entirely miraculous; it had its flaws, too. The commission was a compromise to stop people from fighting. People need to see if the two sides want to stop fighting first. It is impossible to otherwise start a process that goes so deep. There is a difference between individual and collective responses. South Africa's experience reflected the thinking of an archbishop [Desmond Tutu], whose church believed in forgiveness."

Guhathakurta had studied at a convent, and the Christian ideas of mercy were ingrained in her as a child. She was 15 when her father was murdered, and the impression of those school lessons was strong. She told me, "I remember the first thing I did was to say: I forgive those who killed my father. But in a multicultural system it doesn't always work. Not all religions are about forgiveness. Revenge is permitted in many religions. Human beings have a primordial urge to take revenge."

Many years later, Guhathakurta was interviewing victims of 1971 for a film. She was talking to those who escaped from killing fields, and families of people who were victims. That's when it occurred to her: trauma never really ends. Her nightmares will always stay. She acknowledged her anger. She did not want revenge; she wanted justice. She said:

For me, justice would be when the Pakistani government realises what it did. But they have not even recognised the genocide. For me, justice means something like Berlin's Holocaust Museum is constructed in Islamabad. I want to see signs where they say that such an event took place, and it was our fault, because we did it, and we are sorry. You can't ask the daughter to forgive the murderer of her father. Revenge doesn't make sense, either. Just because my father died doesn't mean yours has to die. But recognition, that something took place, and the fact that it should not take place again— that's justice. The Holocaust museum says it happened, therefore it can happen again.

Slovo had put it slightly differently: Real reconciliation only happens when the terrible is acknowledged, so that you can't say it did not happen.

T OWARDS THE END of the Pakistani writer Kamila Shamsie's novel, Kartography, Maheen tells her niece Raheen, "Bangladesh made us see what we were capable of. No one should ever know what they are capable of. But worse, even worse, is to see it and then pretend you didn't. The truths we conceal don't disappear, Raheen, they appear in
different forms."

Bangladesh abounds with victims—each family has a horror story of its own, where a loved one has been hurt grievously, and the ones who have committed those atrocities have not faced justice, nor expressed remorse. It is impossible to heal everyone. But honest accounting of what happened would be a good start. Trying Mujib's killers, seeking the extradition of those living abroad and solving the mystery of the jail killings are useful steps in making sense of their warped politics, where individuals bragging about killing defenceless people were being rewarded.

Removing the culture of impunity will be a small step towards justice—not necessarily through death penalties, but through remorse, forgiveness, and reconciliation. Until that happens, the question Projonmo 71 left inscribed on the plaque commemorating the martyred intellectuals at Rayer Bazaar in Dhaka will continue to resound across the wounded rivers and valleys, awaiting an answer: "Tomra ja bolechhiley, bolchhey ki ta Bangladesh?" (Is Bangladesh saying what you had wanted to say?)
 


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[ALOCHONA] Ruling party MP on corruption in Water Resources Ministry



Ruling party MP on corruption in Water Resources Ministry
 


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[ALOCHONA] PM’s warning sounds empty as BCL scales newer heights of criminality



Editorial
PM's warning sounds empty as BCL scales newer heights of criminality

WHILE the Bangladesh Chhatra League scales new height of criminality, assault on woman in public being the latest addition to its ever-growing list of misdeeds (and there have also been allegations against some BCL leaders of using students of a women's college for partisan purpose), the prime minister seems to believe sporadic articulation of stern warnings is enough to rein in the student front of the ruling Awami League. That is the impression one may get from her statement at a meeting in Sylhet with the local members of parliament and leaders of the party, and elite at the circuit house on Saturday. According to a report front-paged in New Age on Sunday, she said, 'I see news about Chhatra League and others indulging in such activities [extortion, tender manipulation, etc]… I don't want to see that news anymore.' Given the increasing ferocity and frequency of BCL atrocities across the country, her tough words could be regarded as an exercise in futility at best and political theatrics, geared at covering up the government and the ruling party's inability or unwillingness to rein in the Chhatra League, at worst.
   
Ever since the AL-led government assumed office in January 2009, the Chhatra League has consistently hogged the headlines, needless to say, for the wrong reasons. Initially, it was violent ouster of political opponents from the campuses of different public universities and colleges. Then there were clashes between rival BCL factions, which earlier this year caused the death of a non-partisan student at Dhaka University. Subsequently, the Chhatra League forayed into extortion, tender manipulation, admission business, etc. In March, following a factional clash at Eden College, it was reported in the media that the skirmishes erupted over alleged use of female students by some BCL leaders of the college for partisan purpose. On April 1, a BCL activist assaulted a female student of Rajshahi after she had spurned his proposal for love. The delinquent, who had also assaulted the young woman, was subsequently expelled from the organisation and detained by the police but was released two hours later.
  
 What the Chhatra League has been doing at different educational institutions across the country since the assumption of office by the AL-led government – violence, extortion, tender manipulation, admission test, etc – is not just breach of organisational discipline but criminal offence as well. While there have been a few instances of expulsion of BCL leaders and activists for breach of organisational discipline, there has hardly been any legal action against the offenders. Such a virtual absence of organisational and legal action seems to have generated a sense of impunity in the Chhatra League, so much so that it no longer appears to be unduly perturbed by the tough words of the AL leadership, including those of the prime minister herself.
   
Regrettably, however, neither the ruling party nor the government appears unduly perturbed by the insouciance of the BCL. If the prime minister is serious about reining in the BCL, she needs to ensure that the offenders are not only disciplined organisationally but punished legally as well.
 
 
BCL men assault 2 newsmen at Shahbagh in front of the Shahbagh police station
 
Ahmed Foyez, staff correspondent, Weekly Budhbar and Anis Rayhan, staff correspondent, Weekly Saptahik


Chhatra League activists beat up two reporters of two weekly newspapers after an altercation in front of the Shahbagh police station on Sunday evening, witnesses said. The injured Ahmed Foyez, staff correspondent of the Weekly Budhbar and Anis Rayhan, staff correspondent of the Weekly Saptahik were being treated in Dhaka Medical College Hospital.

Witnesses said a group of activists of the Chhatra League, the Awami League's associate body of students, led by Sadid Jahan Saikat, Salimullah Muslim Hall unit Chhatra League president in Dhaka University, assaulted the two about 8:15pm when they went to the Shahbagh crossing.

Saikat, who was riding a motorcycle with a young woman, hit the two journalists, said the Weekly Saptahik chief reporter, Mohiuddin Niloy, quoting Anis.When the two protested at the incident, the Chhatra League leader asked for their identities. Saikat then asked them to show their identity cards. Saikat then took away the cards,Niloy said.Saikat slapped them and called in his associates over mobile. About a dozen people reached the place immediately and beat them up until they collapsed on the road at the entrance to the Dhaka University campus.

Local people and general students took the two to Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University from where they were shifted to Dhaka Medical College Hospital.
 
 
 


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RE: [ALOCHONA] LAND AND PEOPLE





Kudos to Rahnuma Ahmed for writing this article. It gives an accurate historical perspective and explains the cause of our minorities very well.
 
Thanks,
Reza


 



To: dhakamails@yahoogroups.com
From: bdmailer@gmail.com
Date: Fri, 26 Mar 2010 16:18:57 +0600
Subject: [ALOCHONA] LAND AND PEOPLE

 
LAND AND PEOPLE
De-colonising the national imagination
by Rahnuma Ahmed

The settlement policy whipped up populist sentiments in the rest of Bangladesh: 'If someone from the CHT can settle in Rangpur, if he can buy land there, why can't someone from Rangpur go and live and work in the CHT? It's one country, after all.' The settlement policy seeped into public discourse, it helped re-define Bengali nationalism on territorial lines—as all nationalism is, is bound to be—but the new sense of territory/nationalism was not of the resisting kind, of the kind that grows out of an urge for self-defence (like 1971), but one which encroached.


I SEE no reason not to be worried.
   For we have, over the years, begun mimicking our erstwhile Pakistani rulers when it comes to explaining what went wrong in the Chittagong Hill Tracts.
   The 'tribals' want to secede. They want to break up the nation. The loyalty of the 'tribals' has always been suspect, in 1947, they didn't want to join Pakistan, they had wanted to be part of India. The Shanti Bahini was aided and abetted by anti-Bangladesh forces outside. It is an Indian conspiracy to destabilise the country. Agreeing to the 'tribal' demand for autonomy diminishes the sovereignty of the Bangladesh state.
   And what had our Pakistani rulers said both before and during 1971?
   
The Bengalis want to secede. It's an Indian conspiracy. Our mortal enemy India wants to break up Pakistan. These Bengalis began agitating from the word go, first they wanted their own language, 1949, 1952, and then, from 60s onwards, they began demanding regional autonomy. Those in the Mukti Bahini are India's paid agents. The Bengali Muslims are Hindus, anyway. They listen to Rabindra sangeet, the women wear saris, they put teep on their forehead. Agreeing to the Bengali demand for autonomy will be a threat to the sovereignty of the state of Pakistan.
   There are other reasons to be worried, too.
   
There are some similarities in the responses of both sets of rulers: a militaristic response. In the case of ekattur (our liberation war), this was accompanied by Lieutenant General Tikka Khan's declaration, 'I want the land, not its people.' Tikka was the architect of Operation Searchlight, launched on the night of 25th March 1971. We will always remember him as the Butcher of Bengal. A military commander, deluded into thinking that his efforts would save the nation.
   
The Awami League government had initiated and eventually signed a peace treaty with the PCJSS (Parbatya Chattagram Jana Sanghati Samiti) in 1997. A few weeks after the signing of the treaty, Khaleda Zia, as leader of the opposition, had declared: it will lead to the setting up of a parallel government. Others said, it was signed to please the Indian government. Writ petitions have been filed since, challenging the validity of the peace treaty. During a recent court hearing, the petitioners listed some of the reasons: the former chief whip of the parliament had no authority to sign the treaty. He was not authorised by the president. A treaty can only be signed between two governments, the CHT people are not only not a government(!), they are 'controlled by an Indian intelligence agency.' They are not indigenous to the land, 'they' are settlers, etc, etc (New Age, March 17).
   
As things stand, some may think that the Awami League, by virtue of having initiated and signed the peace treaty, wants peace in the hills, while the BNP (and its bed-fellow, Jamaat), doesn't want peace in the hills. There may be some truth in it.
   But there's more truth in what Bhumitra Chakma, a Jumma academic who teaches politics at the University of Hull, says: the recent attacks, on February 19 and 20, carried out by Bengali settlers in Baghaichari, backed by the armed forces, prove yet again that unless the Bangladesh state addresses the structural roots of violence, the 'cycle of violence' will continue (Economic and Political Weekly, March 20).
   'At the core of the problem,' writes Chakma, is the Bangladesh government's 'politically-motivated Bengali settlement policy' aimed at changing the 'demographic character of the CHT, which inevitably leads to clashes over land.'
   
The Bengali settlement policy, in my mind, was diabolical. By selecting 'landless' Bengalis, it seemed that the military government was concerned about the futures of those who are poor, it helped hide the fact that their landlessness and abject poverty made them more amenable to military direction and control; that, as far as the military leadership was concerned, they were civilian subalterns/canon fodder. The settlement policy whipped up populist sentiments in the rest of Bangladesh: 'If someone from the CHT can settle in Rangpur, if he can buy land there, why can't someone from Rangpur go and live and work in the CHT? It's one country, after all.'
   
The settlement policy seeped into public discourse, it helped re-define Bengali nationalism on territorial lines—as all nationalism is, is bound to be—but the new sense of territory/nationalism was not of the resisting kind, of the kind that grows out of an urge for self-defence (like 1971), but one which encroached.
   I am persuaded that this newly developing form of nationalism was distinct to the nationalism of the Mujib era (1972-1975). When Sheikh Mujib had exhorted the indigenous peoples 'to forget their ethnic identities', to merge with 'Bengali nationalism', what lay behind his words was a heady cultural arrogance, deeply entwined with feelings of racial superiority.
  
 Bengali nationalism as encroaching, in a territorial sense, one which could be implemented through the planned deployment of coercive power, came later. After 1975.
   I am inclined to think that it was at this historical moment that we, i.e. the Bengalis as a nation, began to sound like our erstwhile rulers.
   The latter, according to us, were colonisers.
   
   Colonial orientation to land, and its people
   ONE of the greatest liberal philosophers, John Locke, analysed English colonialism in America in terms of his theory of man and society. I present Locke's arguments below, based on a discussion by Bhikhu Parekh (The Decolonization of Imagination, 1995).
   
Locke had argued that since the American Indians roamed freely over the land and did not enclose it, since they used it as one would use a common land, but without any property in it, it was not 'their' land. That the land was free, empty, vacant, wild. It could be taken over without their consent. The Indians of course knew which land was theirs and which was their neighbours, but this was not acceptable to Locke who only recognised the European sense of enclosure.
   
However, there were native Indians living by the coastline, who did enclose their land. English settlers were covetous of these lands; they wanted these lands for themselves as it would help them avoid the hard labour of clearing the land. They argued that the native Indian practice of letting the soil regenerate its fertility, to let the compost rot for three years, meant that the natives did not make 'rational use' of it. Locke agreed with them. Even enclosed land, he said, if it lay without being gathered, was to be 'looked on as Waste, and might be the Possession of any other.'
   
Some Indians, however, not only enclosed the land, they also cultivated it. But they were still considered guilty of wasting the land because they produced not even one-hundredth of what the English could produce. The trouble with Indians was, according to Locke, they had 'very few desires', they were 'easily contented'. Since the English could exploit the land better, 'they had a much better claim to the land.' It was the duty and the right of the English to replace the natives, and, as long as the principle of equality was adhered to, no native should starve, nor should she or he be denied their share of the earth's proceeds, English colonisation was infinitely more preferable. It increased the inconveniences of life. It lowered prices. It created employment.
   
The culture of indigenous peoples the world over, as has been noted by many political theorists, is inextricable from their culture. Take away their land, and you take away their culture.
   Land in the Chittagong Hill Tracts belongs to the paharis. It is their land. A refusal to understand this means opening us to the allegation of whether our nationalism is their colonisation.
   Bhumitra Chakma speaks of the 'cycle of violence'. It is a cycle that is embedded in larger cycles. Nationalism. Colonialism.
   My Bengali sense of freedom surely cannot be paid for by the blood of others?
   
   A genuine leap of the national imagination
   GEORGE Manuel, Secwepemc chief from the interior of British Columbia (Canada), indigenous activist and political visionary whose work on behalf of indigenous peoples spans the globe, writes:
   
When we come to a new fork in an old road we continue to follow the route with which we are familiar, even though wholly different, even better avenues might open up before us. The failure to heed (the) plea for a new approach to…[Bengali-pahari] relations is a failure of imagination. The greatest barrier to recognition of aboriginal rights does not lie with the courts, the law, or even the present administration. Such recognition necessitates the re-evaluation of assumptions, both about [Bangladesh] and its history and about [Jumma] people and our culture-…Real recognition of our presence and humanity would require a genuine reconsideration of so many people's role in [Bangladeshi] society that it would amount to a genuine leap of imagination. (Cited by Paulette Regan, Canada, January 20, 2005, by making the replacements in square brackets I have taken a liberty for which I hope I'll be forgiven).
   
Are Bengalis capable of making a genuine leap of imagination? However hard, however difficult, we must. For the sake of the nation. For the sake of ekattur.
 



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[ALOCHONA] WCFFC hands over list of war crimes suspects



WCFFC hands over list of war crimes suspects

The War Crimes Fact Finding Committee on Sunday handed over a list of 1,775 people, suspected to have been involved in committing crimes against humanity in 1971, to the government probe agency.

MA Hasan, convener of WCFFC, handed over the documents to Chief Investigator MA Matin at Old High Court building office to assist in proving crimes against humanity committed in 1971. He also handed over 18 books, names and addresses of 1,775 alleged war criminals and detailed accounts of crimes including murders during the liberation war.

Talking to the reporters after handing over the list, the WCFFC convener said the list includes Jamaat-e-Islami chief Matiur Rahman Nizami, its former chief Golam Azam, Secretary General Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mojaheed and Assistant Secretary General ATM Azharul Islam.

Hasan further said there are names of some ruling party men on the list too. But he declined to disclose the names for the sake of the investigation.

Replying to a question, he said BNP Standing Committee Member Salauddin Quader Chowdhury too made his mark on the suspected war criminals' list.

The WCFFC also provided a sketch map of mass killing grounds in Dhaka, forensic exhibits including bones, earrings and parts of dresses of the victims to the investigators.The investigation agency on March 30, visited the Liberation War Museum in city's Segunbagicha and collected 10 books, booklets and two CDs on crimes against humanity committed during the liberation war in 1971.

After obtaining evidence of crimes against individuals, the seven-member investigation agency will file a case with the International Crime Tribunal and then start further field level investigation.Earlier on March 25, the government announced a special tribunal, prosecution team and the investigation agency to try the crimes against humanity committed during the Liberation War of the country in 1971.



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RE: [ALOCHONA] Not Just Those Collaborators, Baksalite and the Rakhkhi-Bahini Elements Too



why can't we try sk. moni + gen. shafiullah + gholam musata ( blanket chor)...and few other historical

figures too.

don't you think..we have devised a wonderful style to talk about " rajakars " loudly, to conceal crime
of other AL linked thugs/

and whenever AL thugs are exposed....they ' cry wolf '. What a wonderful ritual!

may allah bless us all.

and give us wisdom to be more caring, honest and responsible citizens.
Khoda hafez.







To: alochona@yahoogroups.com
From: nistabdhota@yahoo.com.au
Date: Mon, 29 Mar 2010 11:06:57 +0000
Subject: [ALOCHONA] Not Just Those Collaborators, Baksalite and the Rakhkhi-Bahini Elements Too



Not Just Those Collaborators, Baksalite and the Rakhkhi-Bahini Elements Too

 

Jalal Uddin Khan, PhD

Professor of English

E-mail: jukhan@gmail.com

 

Didn't we forfeit our right to seek trial of war criminals of 1971, morally untenable as it is now? Still, if they are to be tried, why not the Baksalite and Rakhkhi-Bahini elements for their excesses during 1974-5 too? Even some members or isolated groups of Mukti-Bahini (Liberation Forces) brutally killed many innocent people out of their personal vendetta in 1971. Don't we need to bring them to justice as well? It is a shame that when thousands of freedom fighters and their families across the country have been ignored and forgotten and have been living a miserable and neglected life without any taste of the freedom they fought for, Awami League and Associates including the newly-born Sector Commanders' Forum are out demanding the trial of those who should be ignored and forgotten in the broader and higher agenda of unifying and taking the country forward. Hey, Sector Commanders, where have you been for the last 35 years? Busy forging marriage of political convenience as it suited you according to the winds of time? National unity and national reconciliation are much more important than low and divisive politics of fishing in dirty waters.

Let's think again before we start chasing only one group and not the other. Or let's drop the decades-old thing altogether and move forward on the path of economic development and national unity. Old wounds, whether of Jamati or Baksalite/Rakhkhi-Bahini origin, are sometimes best left behind to recover on their own through a natural course of time as the best healer. "Better late than never," as some people would argue, is not a uniformly and universally applicable panacea or always the best proposition and should not be used in such a politically incorrect and in fact potentially explosive issue. It is neither necessary nor appropriate to open old wounds now when it is too late. This nation is already fraught with too many miseries and problems that need our immediate, continued and constant  attention; it is already sinking under the weight of chronic and ubiquitous corruption, top-heavy and backward bureaucracy, poverty, illiteracy, overpopulation, acrimonious and intolerant partisanship, wide disparity between the rich and the poor, high and low, and so on. The nation should be working to see the light at the end of the long and dark and deep tunnel with the larger and nobler ideals and visions to look forward to—those of unity and progress, reconciliation and development, peace and prosperity. It must not allow itself to be overpowered, overwhelmed and bogged down by the cheap shots of the liberal and libertine elements of the media and their self-conceited, jack-of-all-trades-and-master-of-none semi-intellectual coolies.   

It is true that German Nazis of WWII are still being pursued and hunted down and brought to justice but their case is completely different from the argument of those who are calling for the trial of the war criminals of 1971 and cannot be applied to the latter, simply because the Nazis, unlike Jamat, were always shunned by all quarters without exception and were never recognized, rehabilitated, legitimized, befriended, and reconciled to in the political process of their own country (Germany) or any corner of the world. So those who are excitedly drawing an analogy between the Nazis and the Jamatees, gloating over the possibility of finally bringing some Jamat elements to what they view as "justice" are utterly wrong and fundamentally mistaken. Their argument is misplaced and it is unacceptable because it is politically incorrect. 

About four decades after the liberation, Awami League and some other political parties are still bickering over an empty anachronism—over what should not have been an issue at this stage in the history of the country—the issue of the political participation of Jamat. They are still deadlocked in their demand for trial of some Jamat elements thought to have committed crimes during the liberation war. Such a demand, subject to ample dispute at this moment in time, may plunge the country – already polarized and divided and partisan – into a potentially dangerous situation. By no means can the country afford to slip into yet another rocky and bumpy terrain for a long time to come. The political parties with a demand for trial of war criminals are doing so not in the best and highest interest of the nation. They are doing so not to unite the country but to divide it; not to lead the country forward but to make it lag behind and drag it into the conflict and violence of the past, to score a myopic political mileage of immediate convenience and not to win a democratic ideal of vision, reconciliation, and statesmanship.  

It is a fact that Jamat's current standing is that it is a recognized and lawful political party with considerable public support and parliamentary representation and that it was legitimized and rehabilitated by the successive ruling parties including Awami League from the beginning. When Awami League formed the first government of the country following independence, its great leader Sheikh Mujib, big-heartedly and broad-mindedly, offered amnesty to anti-liberation elements in a gesture of reconciliation. It was a wise decision by a bold and courageous leader to bring the country together. Later when the party was in the opposition, it even formed an alliance (albeit of cynical exploitation) with Jamat and became politically reconciled with Jamat, however short-lived that reconciliation was, to the pleasant surprise of many, and sealed a marriage of political convenience, directly or indirectly, during the 1990s.

When Zia, another great son of the soil and a liberation hero, came to power in mid-70s, he also took steps to rise above the bitter partisanship by taking with him some pro-Jamat/anti-liberation elements at the helm of the government. Later, BNP also, which was his creation, did the same thing--forming political alliance with Jamat when necessary and even including them in the 2nd Khaleda-led BNP government, treating Jamat with a great importance and taking into consideration the significant political role Jamat was playing in the politics of the country. It was a political party with substantial following needed to win the election and broker a balance of power.

All this had greatly contributed to the legitimacy and establishment of Jamat as a significant political force, far from neutralizing or marginalizing its presence in the political landscape of Bangladesh. It is, therefore, simply not right to oppose the participation of Jamat in the political process of the country and, for that matter, in any national issue or dialogue with the end of fostering unity, democracy, democratic equality and democratic majority, and thereby bringing and building the country together. Walling Jamat out would be a part of the problem, not a part of the solution. Walling them out would be detrimental to the cause and interest of a unified and reconciled nation and in all likelihood may lead to unnecessary debacle and disintegration.

If Jamat made a mistake in 1971 by supporting the then united Pakistan (which it had every right to do since we were after all one country then), it was purely a political mistake which any party under similar circumstances is likely to do out of its ideological principle or strategy. Didn't Awami League make a mistake in 1975 by creating BAKSAL and torturing people to death using the vicious Rakhkhi-Bahini elements for which they are yet to apologize to the nation?  It was a "leap in the dark"—to borrow a phrase from a sensible journalist who used it to describe Adolf Hitler's rise to power. Like Hitler's Nazi party, Baksalites and Rakhkhi-Bahini members used violence to silence their opponents and resorted to coercion to push them into enforced political conformity. It was a time of shocking and shivering moral trauma as it was at the time of the Nazis. Like the Nazi past, it still haunts us and seizes us with fear and anxiety. If Jamat and its sister organizations were responsible for many senseless deaths in 1971 – sad and cruel as they must have been—just as those committed by some Mukti-Bahini elements in some localities, weren't Awami League and its affiliated wings equally responsible for many horrendous activities and much destruction in the post-independence Bangladesh as well?

While I do not support or condone what Jamat did then, I would like to say that if Jamat was wrong (yes, certainly it was), at least we understand why it was wrong. In the history of the world every country's struggle for cessation and independence was bloody and violent. No country's road to liberation was ever rosy. No government, however democratic, let alone dictatorial, did or would ever let go easily part of the country it was / is governing.

Post-independence failures and betrayals of the leading pro-independence political parties such as Awami League were and still are more harmful and more destructive than those of the anti-independence elements before independence. Whereas Awami League as the major political party under whose banner the country was able to successfully fight the liberation war and which therefore formed the first government of Bangladesh should have lived up to the expectations of the tired, war-torn, starving people, it miserably failed to do so—to provide leadership, security, rule of law, and economic stability. Instead, they were responsible for rampant chaos, corruption, and misrule, for which the country is still suffering and paying a heavy price indeed. Had Awami League been able to "lead" in the true sense of the term and not turned the country into a bottomless basket and not created an atmosphere of anarchy in which all the relief blankets including the one that on head count might go to Sheikh Mujib were stolen, Bangladesh today would have been an Asian tiger too--like Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, South Korea—economically developed and politically stable. If Jamat elements are to be tried in the court and declared ineligible to stand in the election for their reprehensible evil deeds, Awami elements should be identified and tried too for their equally dire and devastating misdeeds.

AL-led hue and cry over the issue of religion-based parties and war criminals after decades into the history of the nation will only create further instability and violence. It is prone to mischief with an undemocratic hidden agenda of "divide-and-rule". When they thought they could use and exploit Jamat as a political weapon, to their advantage, against BNP, they did not hesitate to do so, thereby legitimizing the political existence of Jamat and improving Jamat's standing as a political force; now that AL sees that BNP and Jamat have some kind of political alliance and that they might not get Jamat votes any more, they are crying foul against Jamat and trying to break the alliance and weaken the strength of the BNP-Jamat alliance. When it comes to AL's gaining of political mileage and advantage, they do not have any scruple to be allied with any religion-based parties, be it Jamat or Islami Oikkyo Jote or Islami Shashontantro Andolan of Shaikhul Hadith Azizul Haq. But when the same parties side with BNP, BAL immediately get bitter and biased and start railing and writhing and recoiling, calling for a ban on Islamic parties. We would like to see an end to this stark hypocrisy and glaring double standard in the least!  It is BAL who are openly exploiting the people's religious sentiment by raising the slogan, "La Ilaha illallah, Noukar malik tui Allah."

Finally, the nation will surely be better off and would have much to gain if it extends an olive branch of blanket forgiveness on behalf of the victims' families and sees the whole thing with an eye to bridging the gulf and unifying the country and moves forward on the way to economic development and stability. Yes, to complete the process of moral fence-mending and national healing, the nation can, however, ask for an unconditional public apology from those who may have been involved in the killing and torturing of innocent people, in 1971 and 1974-75, while it should be left to the conscience of the perpetrators to repent and ask for forgiveness from God.





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