Jalal Alamgir and Tazreena Sajjad,
9 February 2010
OPEN DEMOCRACY
http://www.opendemocracy.net/jalal-alamgir-tazreena-sajjad/bangladesh-quest-for-justice
The search for accountability for the genocide in Bangladesh in 1971 needs international support, say Jalal Alamgir & Tazreena Sajjad.
About the authors
Tazreena Sajjad is a doctoral student at the American University,
Jalal Alamgir is assistant professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts,
If asked to identify the five most known 20th-century genocides, most informed citizens would probably start with the Nazi holocaust and go on to name Cambodia, Rwanda, Armenia, and Darfur. There is little likelihood that they will include the 1971 genocide in
It is an extraordinary act of forgetting. For the bloodbath in March-December 1971 - when the Pakistani army massacred a largely unarmed Bengali population in the then integral part of Pakistan's state known as "East Pakistan", in an effort to quash the region's demand for autonomy - was at the time the biggest story in the world's media.
The killing-spree began with the slaughter of around 10,000 civilians within three weeks; by June 1971, headlines in the Sunday Times and New Statesman in
The treatment of women was horrific. An estimated 200,000 to 400,000 were raped and sexually violated. Many, including girls below 10 years of age, were kept as sex-slaves in military camps.
An accurate count of the victims has never been established; but it is estimated that these nine months saw at least 1 million people slaughtered, and perhaps as many as 3 million. Even the lower figure would make
An elusive accounting
Bangladeshis achieved their independence in 1971, but in subsequent years they were unable to find psychological or emotional "closure" on the violent birth of the new state.
There was an initial effort to establish a process of accountability, when - within six weeks of independence - the post-liberation government announced the Bangladesh Collaborators (Special Tribunals) Order. This was followed in July 1973 by the passing of the War Crimes Tribunal Act which allowed for the prosecution of individuals for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. In these early years of the new state, the government also arrested several thousand individuals suspected of war crimes. But in November 1973, amid fear of turmoil if the issue was pursued, prime minister Sheikh Mujibur Rahman abruptly issued an amnesty order that released most alleged collaborators and made no further provision for ensuring accountability.
The decision to permit the re-entry of the Jamaat-i-Islami into
The party took advantage of its restored status to position itself as a kingmaker. It made an alliance with the rightwing Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), gained the support of key military generals, and in 2001 saw its leaders inducted into the ruling cabinet. It eventually became the third most powerful party in the country, and used its strong links to the middle east to import radical ideas into
The impunity of the collaborators had a profound effect on
The politically-driven attempt to minimise the scale and horrors of the genocide by those directly complicit was vigorously opposed by the combatants of the 1971 war and their frontline commanders. They launched a nationwide movement demanding trials for the war criminals, and won strong support from human-rights organisations, intellectuals, journalists, and families of the dead and disappeared. The centre-left Awami League (AL) endorsed the idea and included the prosecution of war crimes as a manifesto pledge in the December 2008 elections. Its landslide victory, and the crushing defeat of the Jamaat, provided an opportunity to reopen histories, memories and court proceedings (see "
An unfinished history
But a rushed and expedient process has brought problems. The government did not consider adequately the opinions of legal experts and advocacy groups which pointed out that the act's definition of key concepts (war crimes, rape, command responsibility) is incomplete or inadequate. There remain questions about procedural transparency, the independence and gender composition of the judiciary, and the expertise of prosecutors in criminal and international law. In addition, many survivors of the genocide are dismayed that the trials will focus only on local collaborators and will not allow the pursuit of Pakistani commanders.
The international challenges are also daunting. The United Nations has pledged technical assistance, and recommended four of its war-crimes experts to work with
The
Nonetheless, it is imperative that even limited justice is served for one of humanity's worst massacres. This will provide closure to a scarred populace; it will morally discredit entrenched policies of immunity; it will help strengthen the rule of law; it will mitigate persistent conditions for future conflict; and it will allow Bangladeshis at last to fulfill their core responsibility towards the dead - and the living.
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