Critics, however, say the tribunal could be compromised by its blatant use as a political bludgeon. Don Beachler, an associate professor of political science at New York’s Ithaca College, says the government has set up the tribunal in order to tar Jamaat-e-Islami as allies of the Pakistani army and ‘enemies of the Bangladeshi people.’ The fact that Jamaat ruled in coalition with the Bangladeshi Nationalist Party—a key rival to the Awami League—from 2001 to 2006 provides an ‘extra motive’ to pursue the Islamist movement, he says.
Many also agree that Nizami and other Jamaat leaders have reason to be concerned. Beachler says Nizami founded and led the Badr militia, which committed numerous acts of violence against civilians in support of the Pakistani army’s campaign to repress Bengali nationalism. ‘Nizami was active against independence and advocated violence against Hindus who were seen as the source of Bangladeshis’ alleged betrayal of Pakistan and Islam,’ he says. ‘On the merits and the politics Nizami has much to fear.’
Following their arrest, Jamaat’s leaders have pledged to fight the charges in court, accompanying it with ‘peaceful’ street protests. Earlier this month, Khaleda Zia, the BNP president whose party ruled the country in coalition from Jamaat from 2001 to 2006, demanded the immediate release of its leaders, terming the arrests ‘a heinous example of political repression’.
Jamaat, which has close links to its more powerful namesake in Pakistan, has more than ten million followers, and any attempt to prosecute its leaders could provoke a social upheaval. After Nizami’s arrest on June 29, for example, violent street riots erupted and injured more than 80 people—a foretaste of what could greet the opening of the trials.
‘The Bangladesh government can expect major violence and/or law and order problems at home, with serious destabilising effects caused by militant members of Jamaat and its allied organisations,’ says Rafiqul Islam, a professor of international law at Macquarie University in Sydney, adding that militant help may also come from Pakistan and Afghanistan. ‘This is a price that the government and people of Bangladesh have to pay for this trial.’
There are also questions about the manner in which the trials are going ahead. Nizami—along with his deputy Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mujahid and top preacher Delwar Hossain Saydee—were arrested on charges of ‘offending religious sentiment’ after they compared their persecution by the Awami League government to the sufferings of the Prophet Mohammed. Only once they were in custody did the government move ahead with questioning on war crimes-related charges.
In an editorial in the country’s Daily Star newspaper on July 14, human rights advocate Mozammel H. Khan wrote that their arrest on such ‘trivial charges’ could undermine the credibility of the government’s case against them. ‘It might create a boomerang effect,’ he wrote, ‘for the government in their pledge to bring the alleged war criminals, of which the three arrestees are believed to be leading members, to book.’
Islam predicted that while the current government would reap political capital from the trials, they could damage relations with Middle Eastern countries with close links to Jamaat. On July 2, The Daily Star reported that the tribunal had proceeded ‘on assurance from influential countries in the West that they would tackle any backlash from Middle East countries against the arrests of Jamaat leaders.’
In spite of the political machinations surrounding the trials, Alam expresses hope that they will at least see some manner of justice done. ‘In this country, if you go into each and every village you will find war victims,’ he says.
He says that for most Bangladeshis, the desire for vengeance is less important than the desire to see justice done: ‘I don’t expect that these gentlemen should be hanged, but the gentlemen should be tried,’ he says. ‘I’d like to see it in my lifetime.’
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Ashrafuzzaman Haider
Ziaur Rahman is the biggest imposter in contemporary history. He is a disgrace for all freedom fighters.This man was responsible for hanging innocent soldiers and Muktijoddha army officers in thousands through mock summary trial courts at night inside the prisons. This man was basically a butcher. Morally, he should be tried as the worst war criminal and mass murderer posthumously.
After being an active member in the assassination plot of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman he released over 10,000 war criminals undergoing trial from different jails in Bangladesh. Then he appointed some infamous collaborators like Shah Aziz and Abdul Alim as ministers in his ragtag illegal cabinet. Zia and his collaborator friends also destroyed many rare documents from the national archives to wipe out the true history of our War of Independence in 1971.
Ziaur Rahman’s undeducated wife who had her birth and academic certificates certificates faked not once but several times kept the tradition going by inducting nefarious collaborators and war criminals Nizami and Mujahid in her cabinet giving vital ministries like Industries and Agriculture to them.
Abu Musa
Ziaur Rahman will go down in history as just another despot like Mobuto, James Taylor,Ben Ali or Gaddafi for various time span who tried to become statesmen overnight through intrigue, conspiracy and coups but was eventually thrown into history’s heaps of garbage as failed overambitious military thugs.
Ziauddin Khan
In any successful revolution it is imperative that the victor rout out the last remnants of the perished demons. Even in today’s world this is evident in case of Iraq and Libya. The victors made sure that the core behind despot and tyrant madman Gaddafi did not survive to emerge later as counter-revolutionaries to spoil the booty of the revolution. The same had happened in Russia and China. But unfortunately, exactly the opposite had happened in Bangladesh. The war criminals, especially the Islamic fascists the Jamaat-e-Islami top brass including collaborator and killers Golam Azam, Nizami, Mujaheed and many others survived and soon staged a counter-revolution with help from pseudo-freedom fighters like Zia and collaborators like Shah Azizur Rahman and Jadu Miah. Zia ur Rahman was a blockhead brutal dictator who had been responsible for killing thousands of army officers and soldiers due to his unconstitutional lust for power. He even had his friend colonel Taher, a decorated war of independence veteran hanged just the way he betrayed the founding father of the nation in August, 1975. The savagery in the second half of 1975 allowed the defeated forces to quickly reorganise under direct patronage of the Pakistani army’s fundamentalist ISI wing and countries like Saudi Arabia and Libya who were spending petrodollars madly in the seventies to fund most of the dreaded terrorist organisations and assassins worldwide. Its fallout could be felt many decades later in what Laden achieved in the gruesome inhumane 9/11 massacre. Despicable madman Gaddafi is known to have given millions of dollars to Bangladesh’s founding father Mujib’s assassins from the Bangladesh army many of whom are now in the US, Canada, and, also in hiding in India and Pakistan using the ill-gotten wealth they amassed from Arab leaders and the ISI of Pakistan.
But times have changed for good. The Arab Spring has brought down some of the most fascist brutal dictators and more are likely and surely to be toppled ushering in an era of democracy for all including women in the repressive Arab world. Dictators and despots like Gaddafi had sucked the oil rich economies for generations depriving those people of basic human rights while promoting Islamic terrorism abroad to brand Islam as a terrorist religion in the minds of Westerners. Pakistan too is cornered and the ISI is a major suspect under strict surveillance. This has had a devastating effect on the billions of dollars that the Arabs poured into the coffers of Jamaat-e-Islami of Bangladesh who now own many of the banks, insurance companies, media, business, hospitals in Bangladesh. The Jamat-e-Islami has heavily infiltrated the government and army during Ziaur Rahman and especially Khaleda’s ten year rule. The worst war criminal Golam Azam has said recently that Khalrda’s party BNP owes its survival to Jamaat-e-Islami. The Jamaat also tried to wipe out all secular personalities and even launched a grenade attack with surgical precision on the Awami League leadership but astonishingly Hasina and her top aides survived that carnage. The Jamaat-e-Islami is a tool for the terrorist wing of ISI to convert Bangladesh into a fascist fundamentalist terrorist state. Jamaat-e-Islami in Bangladesh is using BNP (an intellectually hollow political entity) to further Jamaat’s hidden agenda. Khaleda Zia is a pawn in the hands of Jamaat. She and her two sons have already been indicted for terrorist acts and money laundering in Sngapore and the US. This also exposes the hypocrisy of Jamaat trying to cast itself as a Islamic party that was behind illegal weapons shipment to rebels in India.
Jamaat-e-Islami is the biggest threat to democracy in Bangladesh and if they succeed in grabbing power in Bangladesh through their implants in the army Bangladesh is likely to be another thorn and if not a raging inferno in Asia for the rest of the world after Afghanistan. During BNP-Jamaat`s rule the minorities were treated like filth and terrorized.
But for the last five years Jamaat`s fundamentalist terrorist acts have been defanged and Bangladesh is slowing moving to its original secular foundations of the 1972 constitution that have been raped by most of the post- 1975 regimes. It is necessary that the war criminals of 1971 are tried once and for all and the gestapos, goebbels, himmlers and goerings of the 1971 genocide hanged.
Karim Ullah
The biggest problem in Bangladesh is that most people blame Sheikh Mujib or General Zia for all the problems. Most are blinded by these two leaders. Both of course did some great things however, both also did some terrible things as well.
Both party supporters can’t find any faults with their own party, and this is causing huge problems for the people of Bangladesh.
The best way to make Bangladesh prosperous, is to have a stable political climate. The population are quite capable of doing some excellent things however, they are prevented from doing so because of the law and order situation. This can only be fixed by a good government. Sadly, Bangladesh hasn’t had one since independence. Not Awami League, not BNP or even Jatiyo Party were doing their best for the country. Until these people who support the two leading parties start finding faults and asking for change, Bangladesh will never be a proper democracy. Worse still, it will be a failed state, and that would be its biggest tragedy.
Rislam
Sebastian Strangio in the above article has exaggerated the potential socio-political unrest as a result of Jamat leaders and the influence of the Middle East on Bangladesh. If it is violent and terrorist act he is referring to, then the whole world, not only Bangladesh,is facing that unrest from religious extremists. Awami League government is mandated to try and punish the 1971 war criminals and it is a national agenda, which is long overdue. Bangladesh as well as Jamat leaders/followers who did not commit war crimes in 1971 or born after i971 cannot have a dignified existence unless alleged criminals are identified. The trial is in the best interest of Jamat itself in the long run. Trials must be held. If there are issues of due process and procedures, they are independent of the obligation to try.
The comment 1 above on the virtues of Zia appears belated. It should have been presented in 2005 before the Supreme Court (Mrs Zia was the Prime Minister of BNP led government), which held the Zia regime illegal. Zia was a politicised and ambitious military dictator camouflaged himself in so-called democratic outfits, a kind of military oligarchy that pushed Pakistan to its present state. Inherited from Pakistan, Zia attempted in vain to establish a military oligarchy in Bangladesh. The international identity of Bangladesh and its people will remain, notwithstanding some people’s misguided anti-Indian hysteria and confused Bengali identity.
abuusa
Awami Mohajote Government is very hastily back-gearing the country to 1972 status
of “Shader Nao Banailee More Bangalee.” ‘Bangladeshi Identity’ was a definite development othe people of land which has been known as Bangladesh since 1971 December. And late president Zia’s visionary leadership has enabled us to reach to such respectful status of this long left out populace of this land. Contrarily Bangalee was never a complte respectful ID. That’s why Bengal’s literary lord or God Rabi Thakur has to remorse saying ” K BangJanani Dash Koti Adam Shantanere Rekhecha Bangalee Korey Manush Koronee.” So Bengali reflects a language, a culture and sometimes a curse and never had been a respectable national ID.
Late president Zia has relieved us from that malice and now Awami’s prime agenda is to change that. If it happens, there will be a new ID problem and perhaps, it will let us lose our international distinct ID and respect. Then people will start to think which Bangalee we are Indian Bangalee or Bangladeshi Bangalee. We thave to change passport of millions of people. We will lose our job market in the middle east and other parts of the world. And that may turn the country to fully-failed state and again go back to a country of “ola Beheen Jury/Bottomless Basket”
So the government should think once, twice and many times before taking a hasty decision of colossal mistake, unless they are the agents of our exotic enemies.