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