Editorial
At last, justice has been done
It is an opportunity to reassert our values
NEARLY thirty-five years after the Father of the Nation, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, and his family, save the PM and her sister, were gunned down, thereby pushing the nation to an extremity of uncertainty, justice has been done to five of the men behind the monstrous deed. The execution of these men, brought about after a lengthy process of trial lasting as many as thirteen years, ought not to be a reason for a feeling of retribution to arise in anyone. It was for this nation, simply and very logically, a return to the great idea that rule of law matters, that justice is all, that anyone who commits a crime should not expect to get away with it. Indeed, now that the legal process has ensured a restoration of the principle of justice, it is time for all citizens, irrespective of political belief or party affiliation, to reflect on the dark shadows that for long impeded our march to a better and an egalitarian future.
The carrying out of the judicial judgement against the convicted killers of Bangabandhu has at long last lifted a huge moral burden from our shoulders. That we have waited this long for the rule of law to assert itself, that for more than two decades the assassins were protected by an infamous Indemnity Ordinance, that their trial, once it had begun, was subsequently suspended for a good number of years are matters that should give us pause. Beyond that, these thoughts should lead to others -- that never again must such gross injustice descend on our lives, that never again should conspiracy and its purveyors find it possible to overturn the constitutional scheme of things and push the country into the region of darkness. There can be no question that the assassinations of 1975 drilled huge holes in our politics and were instrumental in forcing the country away from the ideals and principles that led it to the War of Liberation in 1971. These assassinations and the subsequent reluctance of successive governments to bring their perpetrators to book systematically undermined our social and political values. The inability or the reluctance to prosecute Bangabandhu's killers was to lead to a devaluation of politics and a conscious stripping away of the historical truths on which we based our nationhood all through the course of our struggle for freedom.
Truth and justice have finally prevailed. And yet we cannot forget that six other assassins of the Father of the Nation need to be tracked down and made to face the process of justice. We expect the authorities to expend their energies on bringing those fugitives home through purposeful linking up with the governments of the countries where they have been hiding.
The execution of Bangabandhu's killers offers Bangladesh's citizens a chance to proclaim to the world that they have finally redeemed themselves, that henceforth no one in this land can flout the law and civilised behaviour with impunity. It is an opportunity for all citizens to ensure that no sinister forces in future will again rise to put our democracy at risk through assassination and through an extra-constitutional overthrow of elected government.
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