PKKH Editorial
Bangladesh has now witnessed several months of constant protests striking up due to the government’s current scheme of digging up graves from the 1971 war against Pakistan. This dormant virus of hate has now surfaced and is causing turmoil in the country, encircling innocent religious scholars in a false cloak of hypocrisy and extremism.
Prominent leaders of the Jamaat-e-Islami are being sentenced to death on a check-list basis, without any reasonable evidence. Abdul Razzaq, the defense attorney to the JI has called it a “witch-hunt” and a “Political vendetta.”
The government on the other hand, calls it a necessity to bring the criminals of the 1971 war crimes to justice. Ironically, they chose perhaps the most influential party in the country for this trial, and failed to provide satisfactory evidence to back their motive.
The Jamaat leaders are being linked to the Al-Badr group that was supposedly involved in war crimes and was dissolved the same year Bangladesh won independence.
However, it is reasonable to question why, 40 years after the War crimes took place, is the government finally deciding to take action? Apparently, the International Crimes Tribunal (Act) was founded in the 1973 for the purpose, and was meant for:
“providing the substantive law, definition of crimes, procedures to follow, provisions of evidence, constitution of the Tribunal, obligation of the Judges to be independent and to ensure fair trial standards, including the rights of the accused, rules to monitor investigations and interrogations, supervising arrest and viability of continued detention, rules to protect the witnesses and victims, rules regarding appeal after conviction, and the rule making authority of the judges etc.”
But, it wasn’t until 37 years later, that the The War Crimes Fact Finding Committee, which had been given the task of examining and finding evidence, finalized their report in 2008 and handed a list of 1600 names to the ICT. The government, in 2009, finally decided to bring to trial, the names that were stated in the list.
In this case, it is the right of the people to demand evidence such as is causing the state to take harsh actions against their leaders; a right that in spite of remonstrations across the country, the government has failed to deliver.
In 2012, The Economist published a report that leaked out a conversation between Chief Justice Muhammad NizamulHaq and Ahmed Ziauddin. According to the Wall Street Journal, the e-mails and Skype calls showed that Ziauddin was playing an important part in the proceedings and that considerable pressure was being exerted by the Bangladeshi government to secure a quick verdict. Using the judiciary forcibly for this purpose is not only an act of extremism in itself, but also speaks of the dual policy buried beneath the demand of selective justice by the state.
Now using the army to suppress protests, the present condition is going haywire in the country, killing several and disabling the running system.
In this process, the government’s real face is being unveiled as its actions speak of defaming not only religious organizations, but at the same time taking the unwise approach of forcing the masses to bow down to a precedence towards a secular stance in national ideology.