Chuknagar mass grave
Chuknagar mass grave

The London-based magazine in its March 23 issue has come up with a comparison of trial of war crimes to slam the Bangladesh trials that have been underway after 37 years of another trial of collaborators, widely known as “razakars”. The stunning like a knife headline and the stand-first have put the government and the trial supporters on the dock for fascist activities, also claimed by Jamaat and BNP: 

Justice in Bangladesh: Another kind of crime

Bangladesh’s war-crimes tribunal is sullying its judicial and political systems

They compared in a way that it seemed like the Bangladesh government and the pro-liberation protesters of Shahbagh and elsewhere are holding a kangaroo trial in a secret place and hanging the razakars without a trial. They highlighted the holes in the process to favour the Jamaatis, although they say “The Economist has no sympathy for the views of Jamaat or its backers.” They also warned that “… Bangladeshis will also come to recognise this and demand a proper accounting. But by then it will be too late. The war-crimes tribunal is poisoning the well from which Bangladesh will one day want to drink.”

The first two paras:

“IN 1961 Israel kidnapped Adolf Eichmann from Argentina and put him on trial for crimes committed 20 years earlier. Eichmann had been secretary at the Nazis’ Wannsee conference that led to the Holocaust. His trial in Jerusalem was a model of meticulous process. The prosecutor was Israel’s attorney-general; the defence lawyer, a leading German attorney; the proceedings were broadcast. They were everything the Holocaust was not: open, subject to evidence and challenge, and legal.

Now consider the trials under way at the International Crimes Tribunal in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. There too, men are being tried for dreadful crimes committed many years ago, in this case in 1971, during Bangladesh’s war of independence from Pakistan. The defendants have been accused of genocide, mass murder, mass rape and attempting to exterminate whole groups of people. But their trials have fallen a long way short of Israel’s model of due process.”

I couldn’t stop commenting and expressing my concerns: JUSTICE FOR VICTIMS FIRST!!!

Hmmm… Good points indeed to question the trial process. But as a pro-liberation citizen, I’m extremist (!) and ignore the slightly partisan but much liberal trial [flaws you say] since I consider JUSTICE for the VICTIMS first. JUSTICE had been denied for long 37 years, since 1975, after the death of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. The trial of 11,000 collaborators was stopped as the Act was annulled and all the detainees released. Later the masterminds of collaborators and their followers in razakar, al–badr, al-shams and peace committee were allowed to form political parties based on religion, conduct businesses, engage in mosques and madrasas, and the kingpin of collaborators and the armed anti-Bangladesh elements [we term them DEMONS, traitors or ‘mirzafar’ in Bangla] Ghulam Azam was allowed to enter independent Bangladesh! These are the worst part of Bangladesh’s history of birth.

Actually, I think the war has not been won yet since the anti-Bangladeshi elements are operating in Bangladesh when some of the top leaders are very dominant in politics and business, thus, having influence over many things, including media.

The Economist can indeed observe the trial process as a neutral (!) observer and they evidently won’t feel the plights of the VICTIMS of the nine-month-long war since, I suppose, they didn’t read the newspaper clippings-books on 1971 war, didn’t watch the wartime news reports or the documentaries or films and didn’t hear stories from the freedom fighters still alive. [Oh! Now we’ve freedom fighters of different political ideologies ;)]

The Economist, the Jamaat-Shibir supporters and their allies in Bangladesh politics are now the losers or aggrieved side of the WAR CRIMES TRIAL; and the pro-liberation people and parties, the Awami League-led government are the (expected) winning party.

Good News 1: The AL government will be compelled to try the identified collaborators (dead or alive) in its party and others after the trials of the TOP [influential] demons.

Good News 2: The 195 Pakistan army officers who were released and sent back to their country in exchange of some 200000 Bangladeshis through a tripartite treaty can be tried now, since the Pakistan government didn’t hold trials as per the conditions of the treaty. So, according to the tribunal’s recent verdicts, Bangladesh can defy the treaty, which was made effective through an executive order, and try those KEY WAR CRIMINALS. The main opposition BNP and Jamaat should be happy to know these news 😀

I waited for long for this day when the pro-liberation citizens would be able to demand justice for the VICTIMS of 1971 genocide-rape-loot-arson by the Pakistan army and their collaborators in Bangladesh. We’re not afraid anymore to speak out loud. We’re majority!

RESPONDING TO ECONOMIST ARTICLE ON SAYEDEE VERDICT

ALJAZEERA’S ACTING AS JAMAAT MOUTHPIECE; SHAHBAGH FIRM

ALJAZEERA: WE’RE IN SHAHBAGH TO HANG WAR CRIMINALS

JAMAAT-SHIBIR-ISLAMISTS ATTACK MOSQUES, FLAG, MONUMENT, SHAHBAGH STAGES

JAMAAT’S ADMITTING GENOCIDE IN BANGLADESH, AND CORRECTION!