Will these Bangladeshis ever get justice? Will Pakistani army people who are alive willever be tried for killing millions of innocent Bangalis?
Bangladesh independence veteran seeks justice for victims
5 hours ago
DHAKA (AFP) — The families of the captured men had gathered outside to plead for their lives, but even at the tender age of 17, Mozaffar Ahamed Khan didn’t hesitate to execute them.
“We couldn’t excuse them. I shot them personally,” the former Bangladesh freedom fighter said.
As members of the dreaded militias that backed the Pakistan army in its 1971 fight against Bangladesh independence, the seven men had committed atrocities against their compatriots.
“The families begged for them to be spared and we released most of them, but a few we could not because their crimes were so terrible,” he said.
Nearly four decades on, however, 53-year-old Khan is plagued with guilt over one of the men whom he later found to be innocent.
**
“They killed many freedom fighters, many Hindus, and raped many women. They were killers – and against the country. My role was correct, I have no regrets,” he said.
**
“But the one innocent person, I still feel sorry for him,” he said, adding that he had received “wrong information” implicating him in mass killings.
Bangladesh’s nine-month war of independence with Pakistan ended more than 36 years ago. But the country has never come to terms with its wartime past, in which some Bangladeshis sided with Pakistan to try to prevent the break-up of the subcontinent’s Muslim homeland.
The country had been formed following Indian independence in 1947 with its East and West wings (now Bangladesh and Pakistan) located more than 2,000 kilometres (1,200 miles) apart.
After the end of the war, leader of the Awami League party Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who had spearheaded the independence struggle, returned from jail in Pakistan and took power in the newly-established nation.
But from the start the country was beset by problems and the turbulent events surrounding Sheikh Mujib’s assassination in 1975 led to many alleged war criminals being released from prison without trial.
**
Earlier this year, Amnesty International backed calls for a truth commission as well as an investigation into war crimes allegations.
“This is a fresh call for justice… the best way to heal the wounds of this nation,” said the group’s secretary general Irene Khan, herself a Bangladeshi.
The idea of a truth commission cuts little ice with Mozaffar Ahamed Khan. Instead he has filed his own case against 13 people, including two former ministers, alleging they helped plan an army operation in his home district of Keraniganj close to the capital Dhaka.
Up to 12,000 people were killed, more than half of them women and children, he has alleged.
In another mass killing in Keraniganj, the former independence fighter witnessed the aftermath of a Pakistan army operation that wiped out some 10,000 people.
“The savagery was unimaginable. I cannot explain how terrible it was,” he said.
“I went there the next morning. The army had attacked the villages at night firing indiscriminately on the people. The ones that survived had been bayoneted. It was a massacre. Bodies were strewn everywhere,” he added.
A senior general in the Pakistan army later conceded that at least 30,000 people were killed during the conflict. Dhaka has always maintained that many more died in a brutal military campaign of murder, rape and arson.
**
Rather than pin his hopes on the distant prospect of government-led prosecutions, Khan filed his case with a Dhaka court late last year.
The court has since ordered police to investigate his allegations against the 13, who include Matiur Rahman Nizami, now leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami party and a former industries minister.
Three other high-ranking party officials including another former minister are also accused, although Jamaat has rejected the case as an attempt to defame the party.
Khan accuses Nizami and his 12 co-accused, some of whom have since died, of helping the Pakistan army and local militias plan massacres in three villages in Keraniganj on November 25, 1971.
He was head boy of his school when war broke out. Until then his ambition had been to secure a good job in order to provide for his impoverished family.
The intervening years, during which he worked as a small businessman, left him disillusioned at the way those who fought to establish Bangladesh have been treated.
Politicians in successive governments courted alleged war criminals for electoral gain while amassing vast fortunes through graft, he charged.
But he remains determined to keep up his fight for justice.
“Because most of the killings took place in villages, those who were victims were mostly very poor. They have never been able to protest or raise their voices,” he said.
“I still feel the pain of the events of November 25, 1971 and I have expressed my feelings by filing the case.”
He is not hopeful, however, that it will lead to trials and believes the accused are using their influence to prevent the facts being placed before the court.
The deadline for the police report to be submitted has already been postponed twice but he is adamant he will not be deterred.
“I want that they should be brought to justice,” he said. “Even after 35 years I want justice. Even if it was 100 years, I would still want it.”