Pakistan: Getting away with genocide

Anwar Hossain's photo of skull in 1971-Photo: Anwar Hossain

How the 195 Pakistani officers escaped prosecution for their war crimes

SALEEM SAMAD

Many believed that another Nuremberg trial would commence once Bangladesh accused 195 Pakistan military officers of war crimes and other related crimes.

Pakistan’s Attorney General, fearing for the officers, filed a petition, “Trial of Pakistani Prisoners of War” (Pakistan versus India) on May 11, 1973, seeking the intervention of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), in the Hague, Netherlands.

Pakistan instituted proceedings against India concerning the 195 POWs; according to Pakistan, India proposed to hand over to Bangladesh, who was suspected of acts of genocide and war crimes.

Pakistan’s application was filed in ICJ, instituting proceedings against India in respect of a “dispute concerning charges of genocide against 195 Pakistani nationals, prisoners of war, or civilian internees in Indian custody.”

India stated that there was no legal basis for the court’s jurisdiction in the matter and that Pakistan’s application was without legal effect. Pakistan hurriedly informed the court that negotiations had taken place, and requested to discontinue the application in July 1973. Accordingly, the case was removed from the list in December 1973.

On July 2, 1972 -- eight months after the POWs issue, Pakistan’s President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi signed the historic Simla Agreement. The crucial negotiation was held following the brutal birth of Bangladesh in 1971 and nearly 93,000 Pakistani forces and civilians were taken as POWs. The deal enabled India to agree to release all the POWs.

Earlier on Sheikh Mujib’s requests in March 1972 and for their safety and well-being, the POWs were transported to India. India treated the war prisoners in accordance with the Geneva Convention, 1925, but used this issue as a tool to coerce Pakistan into recognizing the sovereignty of Bangladesh after three countries reached a compromise in 1974.

Bangladesh was processing formalities to bring charges against the 195 prisoners for war crimes in their special courts established in Dhaka. To punish the 195 war criminals, Bangladesh enacted the International Crimes (Tribunals) Act (ICT Act 1973), to authorize the investigation and prosecution of the persons responsible for genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and other crimes under international law committed in 1971.

Once Mujib announced that Bangladesh would put the war crimes suspects on the docks, the military hawks in Rawalpindi interned almost all the Bangla-speaking officers and soldiers in the army, navy, air force, border guards, police, and civil bureaucrats as POWs.

Bhutto also announced that several officers and civil bureaucrats would be tried for sedition and other crimes according to the Pakistan Army Act of 1952. This news alarmed Mujib who immediately sought help from friendly countries to exert diplomatic pressure on Pakistan.

Thus, both Bangladesh and India succumbed to the political blackmail of Pakistan. The three countries signed a historic “Bangladesh-India-Pakistan: Agreement of Prisoners of War and Civilian Internees” on April 9, 1974.

Dr Kamal Hossain, then Foreign Minister of Bangladesh, stated in the agreement: “The excesses and manifold crimes committed by those prisoners of war constituted, according to the relevant provisions of the UN General Assembly resolutions and international law, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide, and that there was universal consensus that the persons charged with such crimes as the 195 Pakistani prisoners of war should be held to account and subjected to the due process of law.”

The negotiators of the Tripartite Agreement failed to have included a guarantee clause of the military trial of the war crimes suspects. Therefore, the 195 returned safely to Pakistan without being produced in any tribunal in Bangladesh nor were they charged under the Pakistan Military Act.

First published in the Dhaka Tribune, 23 March 2021

Saleem Samad is an independent journalist, media rights defender, and recipient of Ashoka Fellowship and Hellman-Hammett Award. He can be reached at saleemsamad@hotmail.com; Twitter @saleemsamad

Bangladesh: Visible Gains, Hidden Dangers

S. BINODKUMAR SINGH

On December 18, 2014, the International Crimes Tribunal-2 (ICT-2) indicted Forkan Mallik, an alleged Razakar (a paramilitary force organized by the Pakistan Army) commander from Mirzaganj sub-District in Patuakhali District, for his involvement in crimes against humanity during the Liberation War of 1971. The tribunal framed five charges against Forkan, a supporter of the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP).

On November 24, 2014, ICT-1 awarded the death penalty to Mobarak Hossain aka Mobarak Ali (64), former rukon (union member) of the Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI) and commander of the Razakar force. Mobarak was indicted on April 23, 2013, on five specific incidents of murder, abduction, confinement, torture and loot.

On November 13, 2014, ICT-1 sentenced Zahid Hossain Khokon alias Khokon (70), vice-president of BNP's Nagarkanda unit and a Razakar commander of Faridpur District, to death in absentia. Khokon was indicted on October 9, 2013, on 11 charges, including genocide, torture, abduction and confinement during the Liberation War. He is absconding and, while Bangladeshi authorities say they have no information regarding his whereabouts, reports suggest that he may be residing in Sweden with his elder son and daughter.

The War Crimes (WC) Trials began on March 25, 2010, and through 2014, the two ICTs indicted nine persons and delivered four verdicts. Thus far, the ICTs have indicted 25 leaders, including 13 from JeI, five from Muslim League (ML), four from BNP, two from Jatiya Party (JP) and one Nizam-e-Islami leader. Verdicts against 14 of them have already been delivered – 12 were awarded death sentence while the remaining two received life sentences. One of the 12 who received the death sentence has already been executed, while the remaining 11 death penalties are yet to be executed. The two persons who were awarded life sentences have already died serving their sentence. They were JeI Ameer (Chief) Ghulam Azam (91), who died on October 23, 2014; and former BNP minister Abdul Alim (83), who died on August 30, 2014.

Sheikh Hasina Wajed’s Awami League (AL)-led Government, which retained power winning the 10th General Elections held on January 5, 2014 in the face of a comprehensive Opposition boycott, has enormously consolidated its secular commitments and kept its promise to punish the perpetrators of the 1971 genocide. By bringing the war crimes' perpetrators to justice, Dhaka has also succeeded in minimizing the threat of Islamist extremists within the country, both because they have become conscious of the clear intent of the incumbent Government, and because many of their top leaders are among those arraigned or convicted for the War Crimes.

The Government also remained determined in its approach to dealing with JeI, the country's largest right-wing party and main Islamist extremist troublemaker. Law Minister Anisul Huq, speaking at Dhaka city on December 7, 2014, announced, "The Draft Bill to ban JeI will be placed in the Cabinet this month and it is expected to be passed in the first session of the Parliament in 2015." Notably, in a landmark ruling, the Dhaka High Court, on August 1, 2013, had declared the registration of JeI as a political party, illegal. A three-member Special Bench, including Justice M. Moazzam Husain, Justice M. Enayetur Rahim and Justice Quazi Reza-Ul Hoque, passed the judgment, accepting a writ petition challenging the legality of JeI's registration as a political party.

Further, in a major blow to JeI, Election Commissioner Shah Nawaz, on November 7, 2013, declared that the party could not participate in the General Elections of January 2014, in line with the High Court order. JeI was, of course, one of the Opposition parties that boycotted the Election.

Significantly, Security Force (SF) personnel arrested at least 1,757 cadres of JeI and Islami Chhatra Shibir (ICS), the student wing of JeI, through 2014, in addition to 4,038 such arrests in 2013. 

Nevertheless, disruptive elements led by the BNP-JeI-ICS combine, continued to engage in violent activities through 2014. According to partial data compiled by the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP), a total of 60 people, including 29 civilians, nine SF personnel and 22 extremists, were killed in incidents related to Islamist extremism in 2014 (data till December 21), in addition to 379 persons, including 228 civilians, 18 SF personnel and 133 extremists, killed in 2013.

As the Government continued with its policy of checking the growth of Islamist extremist forces led by the BNP-JeI-ICS combine, it deprived the Islamist terrorist formations of any opportunity to revive their activities within the country, despite sustained efforts, through 2014. The Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) arrested JMB chief coordinator Abdun Noor and four of his close aides from the Sadar Sub-District Railway Station of Sirajganj District, on October 31, 2014, and recovered 49 detonators, 26 electronic detonators, four time bombs, 155 different kinds of circuits, 55 jihadi books, and a power regulator. During preliminary interrogations, the JMB operatives confessed that they were planning to carry out large-scale bomb attacks across the country, particularly in Dhaka city.

In a disturbing development, the Detective Branch (DB) of Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) arrested two cadres of the Ansarul Bangla Team (ABT), Tanjil Hossain Babu (26), who had some technological expertise, and Muhamad Golam Maula Mohan (25), a Computer Sciences and Engineering graduate, along with a plastic frame of a drone, electronic devices and some books on jihad, from Dhaka city's Jatrabari area on December 16, 2014. After their interrogation, Joint Commissioner Monirul Islam of DB claimed, "They reached the final stages of making the drone after a six-month planning and research. Once completed, the drone could be flown up to around 25th floor of a building to launch an attack." ABT is an al Qaeda inspired terrorist formation that crystallized in 2013 from the remnants of the Jamaat-ul-Muslimeen.

Nevertheless, under the sustained pressure exerted by Security Forces, the country did not record a single major terrorist incident (resulting in three or more fatalities) by any Islamist terror outfit through 2014. In fact, only one violent incident involving such groups was reported through the year. On February 23, 2014, a Police Constable was killed and another two Policemen were injured, as an armed gang of 10 to 15 unidentified terrorists ambushed a prison van that was carrying three convicted Jama'at-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) terrorists in the Trishal Sub-District of Mymensingh District. All the three convicts managed to escape during the ambush. Though Police arrested one of them soon after, the whereabouts of the other two remain unknown.

On the other hand, a total of 96 terrorists were arrested through 2014, adding to the 163 detained in 2013. Of these 96, 43 belonged to JMB, 25 to Hizb-ut-Tahrir (HuT), 12 to Harkat-ul-Jihad-al Islami Bangladesh (HuJI-B), six to Kalamaye Jamaat, five to ABT, three to Hizb-ut-Towhid (HT), and one each to Kalema Dawat and Islamic State.

Dhaka has also continued its campaign against an incipient Left Wing Extremist (LWE) movement in a somewhat one-sided battle. Through 2014, 16 LWE cadres were killed - 11 of the Purbo Banglar Communist Party (PBCP), three of the Purbo Banglar Sarbahara Party (PBSP), one of the Biplobi Communist Party (BCP), and one unidentified. No civilian or SF fatality took place in LWE-linked violence through 2014. In 2013, a total of 25 fatalities were connected to LWE violence, including four civilians and 21 militants.

The nation, however, continues to face a significant threat from Islamist extremism. India’s National Investigation Agency (NIA), investigating the October 2, 2014, accidental blasts at Burdwan in West Bengal, uncovered a plot by JMB to assassinate Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed and BNP Chairperson Begum Khaleda Zia.

According to revelations made by arrested accused in the case, JMB was planning to establish an 'Islamic state' in Bangladesh through armed struggle. The projected 'Islamic state' was also intended to incorporate the Districts of Murshidabad, Nadia, and Malda in West Bengal. Referring to the development, Bangladesh's National and Security Intelligence (NSI) Director General, Mohammad Shamsul Haque, observed, on December 15, 2014,

We have largely neutralized radical groups like the JMB or HuJI-B, but now they seem to have found sanctuaries across the border. If we think we have neutralized a group and sit easy, it is (a) big mistake. There is no room for complacency. We need to closely monitor their activities even if a few terrorists are left in the fray. Because they may well set up bases across the border, make fresh recruitment, acquire weapons and plan attacks.

Further, on September 5, 2014, Asim Umar, the leader of the newly formed al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) based in Pakistan, incited Muslims to engage in the global jihad (holy war) and expressed his group’s determination to extend the fighting from Pakistan to Bangladesh, Myanmar and India. Further, a video released on November 29, 2014, and attributed to the 'Bangladesh division' of AQIS, encouraged Bangladeshi Muslims to come to the jihadi battlefield and included glimpses of a base of fighters in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region.

Threats from the Islamic State (IS, formerly the Islamic State of Iraq and al Sham, ISIS) are also very much a reality. On September 29, 2014, a 24-year-old British citizen was arrested in Dhaka city on suspicion of recruiting people to fight alongside IS cadres in Syria. When asked about Bangladesh’s position on the IS and the Syrian crisis, Foreign Minister A.H. Mahmood Ali disclosed, on September 30, 2014, “We have not heard about any presence of the [ISIS] group, but a British citizen of Bangladeshi origin was arrested.”

Bangladesh’s achievements on the counter-terrorism and internal security fronts through 2014 have been remarkable. Further, over the last few years, the WC Trials have also progressed quite well. A note of caution, nevertheless, remains to be sounded, as the residual capacities of subversive and extremist elements, prominently including JeI-ICS, are still significant, and their alliance with BNP remains sound. Further, surviving fragments of a range of other outfits, including JMB, HuT, HT, HuJI and ABT, also have a potential for regrouping and fomenting violence. In the unstable environment of South Asia and the wider Asian region, there is little space for complacence.

First published in South Asia Intelligence Review, Weekly Assessments & Briefings, Volume 13, No. 25, December 22, 2014

S. Binodkumar Singh is Research Associate, Institute for Conflict Management, India

War crimes trials are a defining moment for Bangladesh

In Bangladesh, a moderate Muslim nation of 160 million people, a revolution is unfolding to keep the country’s secular character alive.

MOZAMMEL H. KHAN

In Bangladesh, a moderate Muslim nation of 160 million people, a revolution is unfolding to keep the country’s secular character alive. For two months now, hundreds of thousands of people from young men and women, aging former guerrilla fighters and grandmothers who still carry the scars of genocide, have occupied Shahbag Square in the capital, Dhaka. The collective anger of a nation, simmering below the surface for more than 40 years, has been called the country’s second war of liberation.

The roots of this resentment lie in the genocide of the Bengali people (of the then-East Pakistan, separated from West Pakistan by 1,600 km) that started in March 1971. The Pakistan Army wanted to overturn the verdict of the only general election in Pakistan, won by the East Pakistani party led by the charismatic leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.

The Pakistani occupation army and its accused Bengali collaborators, the mullahs of the Jamaat-e-Islami party, imposed a nine-month war of horrors on the Bengalis. The Bengalis fought back in what they saw as a war of liberation. The genocide resulted in an estimated 3 million killed and 200,000 women raped by the occupation forces and their Bengali accomplices, before the Pakistani Army’s humiliating surrender to combined Indian and Bangladeshi guerrilla forces in December 1971.

The government of the newly created state, Bangladesh, started trials of the Bengali collaborators, mostly members of the Jamaat-e-Islami, under a newly enacted law, the International Crimes (Tribunal) Act of 1973. However, the trials were stopped following the tragic assassination of the president and founding father in 1975.

It was not until 2008 when the current Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, Rahman’s daughter, campaigned on a promise to set up tribunals to try the 1971 collaborators for war crimes. She was swept into power in the fairest election in the country’s history, winning all but 30 seats in a 300-member parliament. In 2010 the war crimes trials finally began.

Among the first to be convicted was a senior leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami, Abdul Quader Mollah (incidentally my own roommate in college days). But instead of the death sentence, Mollah was given life imprisonment with the possibility of a future pardon, if a change of guard takes place at the helm of the state. Hearing that his life had been saved, Mollah turned to the news cameras and, with a huge grin on his face, waved a victory sign to the crowd.

While Mollah was euphoric, liberal and secular Bangladeshis were infuriated. How could a man pronounced guilty of war crimes, accused of raping and shooting 344 civilians to death during the 1971 war, not receive the maximum punishment, the death sentence?

Within hours of the judgment, which was handed down on Feb. 5, ordinary students and bloggers used Facebook and Twitter to rally their contacts. Soon an impromptu gathering of hundreds, then thousands, and soon hundreds of thousands collected at Dhaka’s Shahbag Square.

For weeks, they have been there and despite the gruesome murder of one of the leaders, have kept their movement peaceful. The protesters wanted the government to amend the law to make it possible for the prosecution to appeal the decision of the tribunal, which the parliament did, to bring equity to the law, since only the defendants were able to appeal. In addition, they want a ban on Jamaat-e-Islami as a collaborator that took active part of the genocide.

The mullahs of the Jamaat-e-Islami, on the other hand, label the leaders of the uprising as atheist and anti-Islamic, even though religion and personal faith have no part in the current resurrection of patriotism.

For the first time ever in the Muslim world, there has been a popular uprising against the fascism of an Islamist party that garnered only 3 per cent of votes in the last general election. One would have expected the western intelligentsia to be thrilled at this development and for the media to report from the square. Instead, there have been many distorted reports criticizing the war crimes trials in such major publications as The Economist of London.

The uprising back home has touched the hearts and souls of Bangladeshis around the world, including the estimated 50,000 people of Bangladeshi origin who live in the Greater Toronto Area. Over the past few weeks, rallies organized by Bangladeshi students and attended by hundreds have been taking place in Toronto every weekend to support the historic demonstrations in Shahbag Square, where the spirit of the liberation war is being rekindled.

First published in TheToronto Star, April 16 2013

Mozammel H. Khan teaches engineering at the Sheridan Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning and is the Convener of the Canadian Committee for Human Rights and Democracy in Bangladesh

From Boston to Bangladesh: 'My heart hasn't stopped breaking'

MONI BASU, CNN iReport, CNN's Saeed Ahmed contributed to this article

Somewhere high above the clouds over Africa, in seat number 17K, Laura Sherburne learned the awful news of the Boston bombings.

She was supposed to have been there, right at the finish line, captain of a team of volunteer nurses who triage exhausted runners in medical tents. She'd done it last year and signed up again.

But shortly before the race, Sherburne learned she had won an international fellowship and would have to be on a plane the day of the marathon. She cajoled her friend Jane Keefe Chiang to take over the nurses team.

Panic set in on that never-ending Emirates flight from New York after she caught a news flash on an in-flight channel. "Deadly explosion at Boston Marathon finish line."

There was so little information at first. She imagined the worst.

The ache turned to guilt that she wasn't there to help -- guilt squared because she was a nurse.

As her plane landed, Sherburne's head was an emotional cocktail: grief, anger and anxiety, mixed with excitement of being in a foreign land.

It was all about to magnify.

She'd arrived in Bangladesh, one week before that nation's worst industrial tragedy. She did not have to witness the horror in her hometown. But 8,653 miles away, she would not be spared.

A medical mission half a world away

Sherburne, 25, made the journey to Bangladesh with Maryanne Meadows, a neurosurgery nurse she'd befriended at Simmons College in Boston. After nursing school, the two women went to work at Massachusetts General Hospital, where many of the bombing victims were treated.

The pair were part of a rotating team the hospital has been sending to Dhaka to help set up the first bone marrow transplant unit in Bangladesh. Massachusetts General has 60 health projects in 40 countries. The Bangladesh government had approached the hospital to help set up the facility, scheduled to open around August.

Sherburne had never traveled to South Asia before. She experienced the shock that almost every Westerner does after leaving the airport. The assault of hot, heavy, damp air. The unsightly piles of garbage tossed in heaps in open lots, their stench mingling with the heady smells of mustard oil and onion from cooking on the streets.

At her apartment, palmetto bugs scurried across the living room floor and geckos shuttled along the walls.

She might have been reeling from it all had Boston not filled her mind.

After she saw the news on the plane, she'd woken up Meadows, and the two immediately purchased in-flight Wi-Fi so they could get on e-mail and Facebook and check on their friends and family.

Luckily, everyone seemed to be fine.

"It was really hard. I was just trying to focus, but it just kept getting worse," she said. Her brother lives in Watertown, where police finally caught up with bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

Through it all, Sherburne was so immersed in the news that she almost forgot she was not actually in Boston. That she hadn't just had a Dunkin' Donuts coffee or gone for a jog along the River.

In her first post on her new blog, "What Would Flo Do?" (named after Florence Nightingale), Sherburne wrote this:

"Given the horrific scenes of Monday, followed by the conclusive events on Friday, my head and heart are still somewhere lost over the Atlantic," she wrote. "I hope, however, to slowly drift back to the Bay of Bengal shores and the work at hand."

Welcome to Bangladesh

She and Meadows settled into their apartment in the neighborhood of Baridhara, which Sherburne described as the Beacon Hill of Bangladesh. It lacks the swank of blue-blood Boston but for Dhaka, it is a luxury. She even has remote-controlled air conditioning and a maid, Shilipi, who cleans and cooks for the two Americans.

Her father had worried so much about his daughter traveling to Bangladesh. The worries heightened after deadly riots erupted over a war crimes tribunal trying Islamist leaders for crimes committed during the nation's 1971 war for independence, when it was known as East Pakistan. Still, he'd been glad to hear his daughter's voice from the other side of the world. Thank God she wasn't on the finish line that day in Boston.

On some days, Sherburne and Meadows found themselves in lockdown in their new home because of security concerns. The opposition party, allied with Islamists, has been calling for nationwide strikes, and tensions have led to violent clashes on the streets. But the nurses were eager to get started with the work at hand.

The challenge of launching a bone marrow transplant unit seemed even greater when Bangladesh decided to put it in a public institution: Dhaka Medical College Hospital.

Sherburne had signed up to do this because she wanted to be out of her comfort zone and to be able to remember always how lucky she was to be at Massachusetts General.

She was reminded the moment she walked into Dhaka Medical.

The hospital has 1,700 beds but on any given day, there could be as many as 4,000 patients sharing beds and spilling into hallways and stairwells. That's not uncommon for public hospitals in this part of the world. They are the only places where desperately poor people can afford medical care.

Sherburne's skills might even make her a doctor at the Dhaka hospital. Some nurses are barely one step above a maid. That's what a doctor told Sherburne upon her arrival.

She'd never been in a hospital so ill-equipped to treat severe cases. In Boston, she changed her latex gloves after seeing each patient. In Dhaka, the hospital could not afford so many gloves, so the nurses used one pair on several patients.

She was appalled by the workload of the nurses; each averaged 25 to 30 patients. In America, that number would likely be somewhere between four and eight.

Sherburne and Meadows began their lectures and their clinical training of 10 nurses.

A horrific industrial accident

On the morning of April 24, the two American women were advised to stay at home. A hartal, the Bengali word for a strike, had been called for that day, and there was potential for more strife.

But the employees at the garment factories housed in Rana Plaza in suburban Savar were exempt from the strike. They were ordered to work, even after an inspection the previous day found cracks in the nine-story building and the structure was deemed dangerous.

Shortly after thousands of men, women, boys and girls showed up that day, the building came tumbling down. They were trapped under a crush of mangled concrete and steel.

Sherburne received a U.S. State Department alert about the building collapse.

"When Boston happened, it was so hard not to be at the scene," she said Thursday from Dhaka. "When this happened, I said, 'Take me to the hospital.' "

But she couldn't leave because of the security risks. Stuck in her home, she watched tragedy unfold again on television.

"My heart hasn't stopped breaking," she said.

She watched as rescue workers pulled out survivors, as time grew short. She knew that after 72 hours, there was little chance of a person surviving without food and water. The death toll would eventually rise to more than 500.

She watched as the plight of the workers became public again; how so many worked under terrible conditions for paltry salaries.

And she watched as a 17-year-old girl was interviewed on a TV station. Rescuers had to amputate her arm to slide her out of the rubble.

When Sherburne was 17, she dreaded Saturdays when she worked a four-hour shift at a dry cleaning shop and made $40. Now, it was difficult to watch the teenage survivor.

"The station called her lucky, and I went numb thinking how at age 17, I would have defined lucky," Sherburne wrote.

"It would have incorporated more than a minimum wage of $38 a month, it would have indicated that if a building was deemed unsafe on a Tuesday, I would not have been forced to return on a Wednesday, and without question it would have included two hands."

Later she questioned why tragedy in her hometown was incessantly on the news but the headlines from Bangladesh had already started to fade even before the rescue operation was over.

"I could tell you more about how much the Boston Marathon bombers' mother shoplifted from a Natick, Massachusetts, mall than how many factory workers were still missing."

Finally released to help

Five days after the catastrophe, Sherburne was allowed out of her house. She went to Dhaka Medical, which had taken in so many of the injured, some now without limbs, some still in life-threatening situations.

She was about to see what she didn't have to in Boston.

She walked into a ward with 53 female patients, their beds pressed together to make room for them all. It was 101 degrees that day, and the electricity was off because of a national grid problem. Some parts of the vast hospital were dark; others parts were dimly lit by emergency generators.

Sherburne wanted to change the patients' dressings, but there wasn't enough bandaging material to do that. So she did what nurses are trained to do. She sat on their beds and comforted them, speaking through a translator.

"How's your pain?" she asked.

"No pain," one said. "Nice to meet you."

For Sherburne, it was another reminder of human resilience.

Each patient mumbled a number. Three. Five. Eight. At first Sherburne didn't understand why.

Then it hit her. They were telling her which floor they had been on when the building hurtled toward the earth.

She reached out and held a woman's hand and noticed they were both wearing the same shade of pink on their nails. They even had identical chips in the polish.

"That's when it stopped seeming American to Bangladeshi and (it) was just a young woman to (another) young woman," Sherburne wrote.

She walked out with the realization that the clothes she was wearing might have been made in one of those factories that collapsed.

She remembers someone asking her if she wanted to see the dead -- the ones who had been brought to hospital but did not survive.

Sherburne declined, politely, but caught a glimpse of a lifeless body being wheeled away. She figured the woman was around her own age.

First appeared in CNN.com, May 3, 2013

Follow Moni Basu on Twitter

Bangladesh: Justice and Blood

SANCHITA BHATTACHARYA

ON FEBRUARY 5, 2013, at least three people were killed and another 35 were injured when cadres of the Jamaat-e-Islam (JeI) and its student wing, Islami Chhatra Shibir (ICS), protesting against the ongoing War Crimes (WC) Trial, clashed with the Police during the party enforced country wide dawn-to-dusk hartal (general shut down) in Chittagong District. Two ICS cadres (Imran Khan and Afzal Hossain) and Shafiqu, a factory worker, were killed during a clash with Police. Police later arrested 15 ICS cadres from the same District. Protests and demonstrations, disrupting normal life and commercial activities, were also reported from other Districts, including Dhaka, Comilla, Rajshahi, Khulna, Sylhet, Satkhira, Bogra, Natore, Bhola, Chuadanga and Dinajpur, in which at least another 65 persons were reported injured.

Earlier, on January 31, 2013, six persons, including four JeI-ICS cadres, one Policeman and a civilian, had been killed during nationwide protests and demonstrations. In Bogra town (Bogra District), four JeI-ICS cadres were killed in a clash with Police; while another clash in the Manirampur sub-District of Jessore District saw one Police Constable killed. In Feni District, an auto rickshaw driver succumbed to his injuries after his vehicle was attacked by JeI-ICS cadres. In Jessore District, 20 people, including Policemen, were injured in clashes. Protests and demonstrations, disrupting normal life and commercial activities, were also reported from the Districts of Dhaka, Jhenaidah, Sylhet, Chittagong, Lakshmipur, Barisal, Moulvibazar and Sirajganj.

Since the constitution of International Crime Tribunal (ICT), on March 25, 2010, Bangladesh has experienced a resurgence of street violence and protests, resulting in the death of 13 people, including seven JeI-ICS cadres, five civilians and one Policeman, and injuries to another 818, including 404 Policemen, according to partial data compiled by the Institute for Conflict Management. As many as 2,691 JeI-ICS cadres have been arrested for their involvement in violence over this period.

Significantly, protests and demonstrations, culminating in street violence, have intensified in the aftermath of recent judgments pronounced by the ICT-2 against two of the seven JeI leaders indicted for war crimes during the Liberation War of 1971.

On January 21, 2013, a death sentence was meted to JeI leader Moulana Abul Kalam Azad aliasBachchu, by ICT-2 (constituted on March 22, 2012), for war crimes. The prosecution had stacked eight charges against the expelled JeI leader including: abduction and torture of Ranjit Kumar Nath; abduction and torture of Abu Yusuf Pakhi; murder of Sudhangshu Mohan Roy; murder of Madhab Chandra Biswas; rape of two Hindu women; murder of Chitta Ranjan Das; genocide of Hindu majority in Hasamdia village of Faridpur District and abduction and torture of an unnamed Hindu girl. Azad was found guilty on seven of the eight charges, including ‘genocide’, and was sentenced to be hanged by the neck till dead. However, the judgment noted, “Since the convicted accused has been absconding the ‘sentence of death’ as awarded above shall be executed after causing his arrest or when he surrenders before the Tribunal, whichever is earlier.”

Azad had escaped from Dhaka city on March 30, 2012, and went into hiding seven hours before an arrest warrant was issued by ICT-2, on April 3, 2012. According to an unnamed official of Detective Branch of Police, Azad fled to India crossing the Hilli border in the Dinajpur District of the Indian State of West Bengal illegally, and proceeded to Karachi, the provincial capital of Sindh in Pakistan, where he is currently believed to be staying. He was, however, indicted in absentia by ICT-2 on November 4, 2012.

Following the judgment, Bangladesh Foreign Minister Dipu Moni, on January 25, 2013, declared, “You know he (Bachchu) has been awarded death penalty… he’ll be brought back home as soon as possible through diplomatic efforts after being sure of his hideouts… We are carrying our coordinated efforts to that end.”

Meanwhile, on February 5, 2013, ICT-2 awarded life term imprisonment to another JeI leader Abdul Quader Molla on war crimes charge. Molla, who was arrested on July 13, 2010, in a criminal case and on August 2, 2010, was shown arrested in connection with War Crimes, was indicted by ICT-2 on May 28, 2012. The ICT-2 convicted Molla on five charges including the murder of a student, Pallab, of Bangla College; the murder of pro-Liberation poet Meherun Nesa, her mother and two brothers in the Mirpur area of Dhaka city; the murder of Khondoker Abu Taleb, also in Mirpur; the murder of 344 civilians in Alubdi village, in Mirpur; and the murder of Hazrat Ali, along with five members of his family in Mirpur area. The final verdict found the accused guilty of ‘crimes against humanity’ and sentenced him to imprisonment for life and for a second sentence of 15 years which was, however, ‘merged’ into the sentence of life imprisonment.

War crime trials for another seven indicted persons continue. They include five JeI leaders – nayeb-e-ameer (deputy chief) Delawar Hossain Sayeedi (indicted on October 3, 2011); former JeI chief Golam Azam (indicted on May 13, 2012); present JeI chief Motiur Rahman Nizami (indicted on May 28, 2012); JeI ‘general secretary’ Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mojaheed (indicted on June 21, 2012); JeI ‘assistant secretary’ Mohammed Qamaruzzaman (indicted on June 4, 2012); as well as two Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) political figures and lawmakers – Salauddin Quader Chowdhury (indicted on April 4, 2012) and Abdul Alim (indicted on June 11, 2012).

Conspicuously, reiterating that the ongoing WC trials cannot be stopped by the anti-Liberation forces by unleashing attacks and enforcing hartals, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed on January 31, 2013, categorically reiterated that the war criminals would not be spared. Sheikh Hasina said the present Government is pledge-bound to try the war criminals responsible for killing three million people and shaming many women during the Liberation War. Sheikh Hasina declared, “We’ve got a verdict against one war criminal…the verdicts against the other war criminals will come one after another and no war criminal would be spared.”

Significantly, massive and sustained protests, which commenced just hours after Molla’s sentencing, and that are still continuing, were initiated against the ‘leniency’ of the sentence imposed, and demanded the death sentence for the accused. By February 8, 2013, in what has been described as ‘Bangladesh’s Tahrir Square’, nearly 100,000 people had gathered in the Shahbag Avenue of Dhaka, demanding the death penalty for Molla. On February 10, Bangladesh Foreign Minister Dipu Moni joined the ongoing popular pro-WCT protests, even as protestors submitted a six-point demand, including the death penalty for Molla and all other war criminals, to the Speaker of the National Parliament, Abdul Hamid.

The six point demand also included trial of all political parties, forces, individuals and organisations trying to save war criminals and conspiring to foil the WC trials; and revocation of the state's power to declare general amnesty for the persons convicted by the tribunals. Earlier, on February 6, 2013, residents of Thakurgaon, Chandpur, Nilphamari, Lalmonirhat, Mymensingh, Rangpur and Manikganj Districts formed human chains and took out processions demanding capital punishment for Molla.

With their very existence at stake, anti-Liberation forces can be expected to continue their efforts to discredit and subvert the WC trials and decisions. The country can, consequently, be expected to experience cycles of disruption and violence, certainly till general elections that fall due between October 26, 2013, and January 24, 2014. However, the recent and protracted mass demonstrations in favour of the trials and protesting against the ‘light sentence’ of life imprisonment imposed on the second convict, Abdul Quader Molla, have set a new dynamic into motion, and will give the Sheikh Hasina Government greater strength. The outcome of the elections of end-2013 or early 2014, however, will remain pivotal: if a hostile regime is, once more, elected, it would be likely to allow the WC trial process to fall into neglect, and to reverse the present judgments – unless the process of appeals and execution of sentences has already been completed by this stage. The present sentences are, of course, major milestones in the long, slow journey to justice for the atrocities of the 1971 Liberation War, but they are yet to secure their legitimate goal, and bring closure to this hideous phase of Bangladesh’s history.

 

First published in South Asia Intelligence Review, Weekly Assessments & Briefings, Volume 11, No. 32, February 11, 2013

Sanchita Bhattacharya is Research Associate, Institute for Conflict Management

Bangladesh War Crimes Trial: Healing the wounds

Sheikh Hasina went ahead with the trial single-mindedly

HAROON HABIB

The International Crimes Tribunal in Bangladesh gives its first verdict in the crimes against humanity committed during the war of liberation in 1971.

FOR BANGLADESH, which was born out of a bloodbath and which has been through repeated political shocks, the trial of those accused of crimes against humanity during its war of independence against Pakistan in 1971 is the biggest challenge. On January 21, the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) in Bangladesh in its first verdict awarded the death penalty to Abul Kalam Azad (65), a former leader of Jamaat-e-Islami’s infamous students’ wing. Azad, also known as “Bachchu Razakar”, was found guilty of murdering 14 people, raping scores of women, and torturing villagers and setting their homes ablaze when he was the local commander of the Razakar, an auxiliary force of the Pakistan Army.

The judgment of the ICT-2, one of the two courts trying 12 top war crime suspects, turns the spotlight on the nine-month-long war during which the marauding Pakistan Army, along with its local cohorts, killed three million people and violated an estimated 400,000 women.

“We should not forget the millions of victims who wanted their tormentors held accountable,” Justice Obaidul Hassan, the chairman of the tribunal, and his two fellow judges, Justice M. Mozibur Rahman Miah and Justice M. Shahinur Islam, observed while pronouncing the historic verdict. “The passage of time does not diminish the guilt. Justice delayed is no longer justice denied,” they said.

The trial was long overdue. In fact, the process started way back in 1972, but was frustrated by General Ziaur Rahman after the assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the founding father of Bangladesh, in 1975. On March 25, 2010, the government of Sheikh Hasina formed a tribunal on the basis of the country’s International Crimes (Tribunals) Act, 1973. The Act was amended in 2009 and 2012. The second tribunal was formed in March 2012.

Azad was tried in absentia as he had reportedly fled the country hours before a warrant of arrest was to be issued against him on April 3, 2012. He used to appear regularly on a television channel to deliver religious sermons.

The ICT-2 held Azad guilty on seven out of eight counts including genocide and rape. It noted that the accused deserved imprisonment for three offences but it decided not to award separate sentences as he had already received the death sentence. The court awarded him the death penalty, to be carried out by hanging under the International Crimes (Tribunals) Act, 1973.

Azad was involved with the Islami Chhatra Sangha, the then militant student wing of the Jamaat-e-Islami, and was a close associate of Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mojaheed, the then president of the wing in former East Pakistan. Mojaheed, who is also facing war crime charges, is now the Jamaat’s general secretary. As an active accomplice of the Pakistan Army, Azad was directly involved in the killings, genocide and instances of rape in Faridpur and its neighbouring areas. Before going into hiding, he was the chairman of the Masjid Council, a non-governmental organisation, founding general secretary of the Council for Interfaith Harmony, country representative of the Islami Fiqah Academy of Jeddah and the editor of Jiggasa.

Since the tribunal enjoys the legal status of a High Court, a convict has the right to file an appeal with the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court within 30 days of the judgment. Azad will not have the right to appeal unless he surrenders or is arrested within 30 days. But some legal experts say that if he is arrested or surrenders after the 30-day period and seeks the permission of the Appellate Division to file an appeal, the apex court has the special power to consider it. Given the human tragedy that preceded the formation of Bangladesh, many people were unable to control their tears when the 112-page verdict was read out. One of the victims’ son, Gopal Das, said: “My father’s soul will now rest in peace. Like me, thousands of sons, daughters and family members of martyrs are waiting to see other war criminals walking to the gallows.”

In all, 22 prosecution witnesses, including some victims, victims’ family members and the investigation officer of the case, testified against Azad. The state-appointed defence counsel failed to produce any witnesses because of the “non-cooperation” of Azad’s family members.

Generally, people welcomed the verdict and thanked the court for bringing to justice one of the notorious Razakars, whose hands were stained with the blood of innocent people. They demanded that Pakistan extradite the convict who is widely believed to have fled to that country.

Tribunal’s Observation

The tribunal held that Azad was “guilty of crimes against humanity beyond a reasonable doubt” and that “evading trial for the offences of which he has been charged with signifies his culpability”. Law Minister Shafique Ahmed said a red alert would be issued through the Interpol to have the convict brought back home.

“Undeniably the road to freedom for the people of Bangladesh was arduous and torturous, smeared with blood, toil and sacrifices. In the contemporary world history, perhaps no nation paid as dearly as the Bangalees did for their emancipation,” the tribunal observed. “The perpetrators of the crimes could not be brought to book, and this left a deep wound on the country’s political psyche and the whole nation. The impunity they enjoyed held back political stability, saw the ascent of militancy, and destroyed the nation’s Constitution.”

The judgment said: “And most of them committed and facilitated the commission of atrocities in violation of customary international law in the territory of Bangladesh.” As a result, three million people were killed, about a quarter million women raped, about 10 million people forced to flee to India and millions of others internally displaced. The verdict said women were tortured, raped and killed. With the help of its local collaborators, the Pakistani military kept numerous Bangalee women as sex slaves inside their camps and cantonments.

The Jamaat-e-Islami had not only opposed the creation of Pakistan in 1947 but also the independence of Bangladesh in 1971. It was the brains behind the creation of auxiliary forces such as Razakar, Al Badars and Al Shams to help the Pakistan Army. These forces were formed to collaborate with the Pakistani military in identifying and eliminating all those who supported with the war of independence, individuals belonging to minority religious groups, especially the Hindus, nationalists, secular intellectuals and “unarmed” civilians.

Gravest of crimes

As the trial faced political criticism at home and hostile propaganda abroad, the judges also gave their views on some questions. The tribunal pointed out that Nazi war criminals of the Second World War were still being tried, and the trials of genocides committed during the 1973 Chilean revolution and the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia in the 1970s were still going on. Besides, neither the Genocide Convention of 1948 nor the Geneva Conventions of 1949 contain any provision on statutory limitations to try war crimes and crimes against humanity.

“In the absence of any statutory limitation, as a procedural bar, only the delay itself does not preclude prosecutorial action to adjudicate the culpability of the perpetrator of core international crimes,” the judges observed. Crimes against humanity and genocide, the gravest crimes of all, never get old. “In Bangladesh, the efforts initiated under a lawful legislation to prosecute, try and punish the perpetrators of crimes committed in violation of the customary international law are an indication of valid and courageous endeavour to come out from the culture of impunity,” the tribunal stated.

The tribunal has also dwelt on the country’s failure to try the 195 listed Pakistani war criminals as they were released, thanks to the tripartite agreement between India, Pakistan and Bangladesh signed in 1974. “Such tripartite agreement, which is merely an executive act, cannot liberate the state from the responsibility to bring the perpetrators of atrocities and system crimes into the process of justice.”

Even though the verdict has come four decades late, Bangladesh badly needed a closure of its historic wounds. The Islamists and their patronisers dubbed the trial as the fulfilment of a political agenda of the ruling Awami League. Sheikh Hasina, whose government is facing stiff opposition from the Jamaat-e-Islami and the major opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) to abandon the process, remarked: “Today is a special day for the nation. We have pledged to try the war criminals to free the nation from a stigma. And through the verdict the process of implementation of the pledge has started.” Except Begum Khaleda Zia’s BNP, which described the trial as a “political agenda”, the people of Bangladesh and all major political parties have welcomed the verdict. The political parties insisted that the verdict be executed soon. The war veterans of 1971, the families of the victims and the new generation of Bangladeshis have expressed happiness at the fulfilment of one of their long-cherished dreams. They felt that the trial was transparent and conducted under the due process of law.

Attention is now focussed on the cases involving other top Jamaati leaders, who include Ghulam Azam, the founder of East Pakistan Jamaat, Matiur Rahman Nizami, the current chief of Jamaat, Delwar Hossain Sayedee, Abdul Quader Molla, Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mujaheed, and Kamaruzzaman. The cases of Salahuddin Quader Chowdhury and Abdul Alim, the two widely suspected war criminals who later joined the BNP, are also in their final phases. Three other suspects—ATM Azharul Islam, Mir Kashem Ali and Abdus Subhan—all belonging to the Jamaat-e-Islami, are awaiting charge sheets.

The verdict will surely go down in Asia’s history as the first judicial order on heinous crimes on humanity and remove the stigma that the nation had to bear for four decades. Despite various limitations and shortcomings, the Sheikh Hasina government single-mindedly went ahead with the trial.

First published in FRONTLINE magazine, India, Vol 30 - Issue 03, Feb. 09-22, 2013

Haroon Habib, Bangladesh correspondent of The Hindu, a prestigious Indian daily and General Secretary of Bangladesh Sector Commanders Forum, an alliance of liberation war veterans of 1971