The Ticking Clock

"Nothing is forgotten, nothing is forgiven"

THE subject is well known, extensively debated and beset with a lot of unanswered questions and a few controversies as well. Nearly 38 years after those heinous and grisly crimes were committed, the issue has surfaced once again, largely because the party which had led the national war of liberation of Bangladesh in 1971, the Awami League and its allies, have now come to power through a massive mandate. This has raised hopes and expectations that the long aborted trials would finally be successively concluded.
The Sector Commanders' Forum, the civil society, the Ghatak Dalal Nirmul Committee, the combined cultural ensemble, the Muktijuddho Jadughar and other pro- liberation progressive forces have all along been demanding trials for the atrocities committed by the Pakistani forces and their collaborators in the strongest possible language. The previous BNP-led 4-party alliance government (2001-2006) was quite indifferent to these demands and did not even bother to concoct reasons or arguments to evade the issue. Their reasons for ignoring the issue are not very difficult to surmise.
I have heard comments and observations that "all" past governments had failed to act to resolve this issue. This is not correct and I would like to put on record the initiatives taken by the Mujibnagar and the subsequent Awami League government (1996-2001) to put the criminals of 1971 on trial for committing war crimes like genocide, treason, waging war on Bangladesh, etc. Those were timely and effective steps but the sudden and violent changes in the political scenario in 1975 did not allow them to come to fruition. The political landscape of Bangladesh changed dramatically thereafter.
The Mujibnagar government had made a full list of all war criminals (zone-and sector wise) with records of their crimes and evidence thereof, including eyewitness accounts. A blueprint for the trials was also prepared. After liberation on December 16, the government enacted the Collaborators' Order of 1972, a special law to try those who had committed a) murder; b) rape; c) arson; and d) other cognisable offences as defined in the Penal Code. The one offence which was not listed or defined in the Code was "collaboration with the occupation forces of Pakistan and their lackeys." This was done to keep things simple and manageable from a legal point of view.
The criteria for identifying the collaborators and the procedure for their trials were clearly outlined in the Order. This was a stringent law and there was no provision of bail for the accused. The trials were to be in civil courts and conducted by special tribunals which were also duly constituted. Hundreds of cases were filed against the collaborators and war criminals of 1971 in the 20 administrative districts of Bangladesh. I was Deputy Commissioner of Chittagong district in 1972 and, if I remember clearly, more than 100 cases were registered under the Collaborators' Order against perpetrators of war crimes in that district. These cases were duly investigated and charge sheets filed. However, while this complex and lengthy process was unfolding, the whole political scenario changed on August 15, 1975, with the staging of a military coup in which the prime minister, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, along with nearly all the members of his immediate family, were brutally assassinated. This coup d'etat and subsequent events were, in fact, largely responsible not only for the stagnation in the trials but the political rehabilitation of many of the war criminals who were, at that time, in jail awaiting trial. The Collaborators' Order was repealed, and all cases filed under its jurisdiction, dismissed. The war criminals were garlanded like heroes as they came out of the jail gates!

For the full version of this article please read this month's Forum, available free with The Daily Star on December 7.

Syed Abdus Samad is a freedom fighter and former Private Secretary to Prime Minister Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and Principal Secretary to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. He was a Zonal Administrative Officer in the Mujibnagar Government in 1971 and is now a Professor of Economics at an Asia-Pacific University in North-east Asia. The views expressed in this article are his own.