Debt of honour
When individuals lie, as they often do, we as members of the civil society cry shame on them and condemn them as liars because as a nation we would like to see truth prevail over untruth and justice over injustice. But when the state lies, it hurts the nation most grievously. It makes a whole rends the fabric of the very soul of the statethe ethos and the lofty ideals on which rests our claim on statehood and nationhood.
This state of ours which we all created in 1971 with the singular aim in view of upholding the principals of truth and justice in this country lied for the first time when in the early hours of August 15, 1975 the state-controlled radio and television went on the air and kept misinforming the people of the catastrophe that had befallen the people in these words: "Mujib, the tyrant and the traitor, has been removed."
The truth was that Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the most benevolent and beloved leader of Bangladesh, had been brutally assassinated together with his entire family including his minor son Russell by a few misguided elements of the army at the behest of the then Awami League leader Mostaque Ahmed as a part of an international conspiracy to rob this country of enlightened leadership and take the country back to pre-March 26, 1971.
The state lied for the second time when it secretly enacted the infamous indemnity law to indemnify the killers of Bangabandhu and his family members and kept the entire nation in the dark about it. The truth was that these self confessed killers had not only been indemnified against any prosecution and trial but rewarded as well by job secured in the country's diplomatic service for the crime they had committed.
The fact that a man like Sheikh Mujib, who is the very epitome of Bangladesh, was brutally murdered together with almost his entire family in his own home and in his own country and by his own countrymen principally for his leading role in carving out an independent and sovereign Bangladesh and that the men guilty of this gruesome murder were indemnified and rewarded by no less a man than Ziaur Rahman, a gallant freedom fighter, will remain a stigma for this nation for years to come. It pains me to think that the conscience and the soul of this nation was in limbo all these years when these killers and their patrons lived in dignity in this country as if they committed no crime by doing what they did.
Leave aside Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and Jamaat-e-Islami who have been the major beneficiaries of the August 15 tragedy. What about other political parties, the judiciary, the bar, the intelligentsia, the learned and educated segment of our people, the Islamic clerics who speak of justice and human rights?
Did they ever feel any shame by remaining silent spectators of the ballyhoo of the state condoning murder so gruesome and dastardly when it was their moral duty to raise their voice in favour of justice and truth?
No. We are all ashamed as a nation because of our collective inaction. But the shame did not stop here. It continued even after the AL government of Sheikh Hasina succeeded in bringing this murder case for trial in 1996 because the trial remained stalled for over six years since 2001 for want of sufficient number of judges who could constitute a three-member bench of the Appellate Division to hear the petition for leave to appeal against the High Court verdict of death sentence in this murder case.
As per law those of our learned judges who had felt "embarrassed" in the past to hear and those who have already heard this case can not sit on the bench. The British left this country and the subcontinent some 60 years back but the colonial legacy left behind in our judicial system continues even now because it suits our judiciary and our government of the day to stall or deny justice to our people.
With this military-backed interim government headed by Dr. Fakhruddin Ahmed and the new look judiciary under the stewardship of Chief Justice Muhammad Ruhul Amin in place things look to have brightened up both at the administrative and the judicial level in the context of the nation's perception on Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and his murder case as we go through the annual rituals of commemorating the tragedy of August 15, 1975 this year. There is visibly a sea change in the matter of our appraisal on Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman as an icon and as a man who loved his people so passionately as no other man or woman would ever do.
The government move is afoot to correct whatever distortions have been made in the history of this country by the immediate past BNP-Jamaat alliance government and accord Sheikh Mujib his rightful place in our history. And most importantly the long awaited bench in the Appellate Division to hear the petition for leave to appeal against the High Court verdict of death sentences in the Bangabandhu Murder Case has been set up and hearings have already begun.
This government with no political axe to grind has to its credit a number of laudable achievements during its seven months tenure. It has hauled up political big wigs and high profile criminals who have so long defied the law and continued plundering and looting our state property on a scale beyond comprehension. It has successfully recovered much of the looted money and property. It has begun the process of bringing these criminals to justice as per law. It has revived our faith in democracy and our ability and commitment to govern to the benefit and welfare of the teeming millions of our people. It has succeeded in large measure in depoliticising the various national institutions and restoring their lost dignity and commitment to serve the cause of justice and service to the people and the country. It has been successfully facing the challenge of the ongoing flood. Together with the armed forces it has stood by the flood affected people, almost half the population and given them shelter, food and medical care while the "Awami" and "Jatiyatabadi" politicians have been safely ensconced in their luxurious homes in Dhaka.
Going by the records of good deeds done by this government so far, it will be in the fitness of things that the trial of Bangabandhu Murder Case is brought to a speedy and just conclusion during the tenure of this government. Let there be no more dilly-dallying and foot dragging in administering justice in this case. The image of our judiciary has already sunk very low together with the sagging image of this country during the undemocratic and anti-people rule of the immediate past BNP-JI alliance government. While it is a truism that justice delayed is justice denied, nothing is more profane and sinister than when not only the guilty is not punished but the guilty is not tried to be punished. When we speak of the independence of the judiciary as mentioned in Article 94(4) of the constitution, we do so because nothing bolsters the image of the country and that of its judiciary better than vindication of justice and truth at the hands of the judiciary. Let our judiciary come out of the dark clouds which have been obscuring its vision for a pretty long time and deliver justice and justice alone.
As long as the national flag of Bangladesh will keep fluttering at the United Nations and at our missions abroad and at important public buildings within the country, it will continue to remind us of the debt we owe to this legend and iconBangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman who led us to freedom from Pakistani rule in 1971.
Now that he is no more with us, the best tribute we can pay to his memory is by upholding the principles of democracy, secularism, national unity and cohesion, communal harmony and Bengali nationalism that he held close to his heart till the last moment of his life and by bringing to justice those who murdered this great man in cold blood during the wee hours of August 15, 1975.
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