War criminals deserve no mercy
It has been exactly 36 years since Bangladesh, a small South Asian nation of approximately 55,000 square miles of land successfully separated itself from the nation of Pakistan - a geopolitical absurdity until 1971. In the process, the people of Bangladesh known as Bengalees paid a heavy price for liberating their country and becoming a sovereign nation. Husbands were killed, wives and daughters were raped and tortured, children were thrown into raging fires, and houses were burned down to ashes by the members of Pakistani armed forces. People who were fortunate enough fled to the countryside and ran from one village to another just to stay ahead of Pakistani occupation forces. It was their sheer luck and the topographical features of our land that saved many lives, not the mercy of Pakistani soldiers. Another chunk of Bengalees, almost 10 million, took refuge in the neighbouring Indian states of West Bengal and Assam.
For many, who were old enough to remember Senator Edward Kennedy's famous visit to India or the Concert for Bangladesh (the first humanitarian rock concert) promoted by Ravi Shankar, George Harrison and others, did provide the western world with a vivid picture of human sufferings in Bangladesh and the refugees in India. We salute you, Senator Kennedy, Ravi Shankar, George Harrison, Eric Clapton, Joan Baez and others who, as always, used their oratory or the strokes of their guitar to change the world. It was a different time all together.
For me, it was a different time altogether. I am an eye witness to the events of 1971. I had seen how a Pakistani soldier looked like in their riot gear and camouflage aiming a Chinese Rifle at someone. I know how they interrogated Bengalees and then sorted them outside the interrogation room into two batches, “kill” and “no-kill“. I know how it feels not to know the whereabouts of one's father and many close relatives for months. I know how it feels to be dragged down from a bus and lined up with other people, waiting to be killed or not-killed. I know how a Bengali collaborator, otherwise known a Razakar, Al-Badr, or Al-Shams look like, because they came to my house to look for my father. I even know how a “death warrant” written by Al-Badr looked like, because they wrote one to my uncle. I know the odour of a decomposed human body. I know how it looks like when it is floating in the water as it travels from one place to another. I saw the weary eyes of a father with six teenaged daughters who were praying for a saviour and at the same time counting days when the Pakistani army would snatch his daughters from him. The Bengalee war criminals or the “Peace Committee” members next-door did not look very much different from my other neighbours except for the fact that the person had a torture chamber on the 2nd floor of his house. What I saw through my window is not suitable for print - I wish I had not seen it all, but I was only 6 or 7 years old.
Now for a moment, forget about my own encounter with the times in 1971, think about a mother who had no choice but to ask her sons to join the liberation war, because she thought that was the only way she could save her college-going young sons. Think about a father who saw his children tortured with a bayonet then killed, who saw his beloved wife raped over and over in his own courtyard. For a moment think about the Hindu professional who converted to Islam and maintained a different religious identity other than his own, just to save his family from being interrogated and taken away by Pakistani soldiers and their local Bengalee collaborators. Think about the wife of a brilliant university professor, an eminent physician, or an avid journalist who saw her husband being interrogated by his own students and taken away in a camouflaged public bus to a death camp in old Dhaka. There are millions of people like these wives who have eye witness accounts of murder, torture, rape, and arson during the liberation war in 1971.
What happened in Bangladesh does not need any “further investigation”, it does not call for a “judicial review”, it does not require anymore “fact findings”. We have procrastinated a lot over these legal jargons. Let’s get up and ask the government to try the Bengalee war criminals who had taken part in the genocide, torture, rape, and arson in 1971. Let's not forget that we ought to try these criminals both individually and collectively. We must try the rank and file members and the leadership of the political parties and groups who took part in the genocide. No one had extended them a general amnesty for these crimes - the people of Bangladesh were the ultimate victims of these war crimes and they have neither forgotten nor forgiven the Razakars, Al-Shams, and Al-Badr, let alone extending a general amnesty. Let us put them through a special tribunal in Bangladesh and at the same time try the war criminals in the International Court. The time has come to correct the past, let us not procrastinate anymore.
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