Spotlight on Jamaat

The Jamaat-e-Islami contributed significantly to the creation of auxiliary forces during the Liberation War for combating unarmed Bangalee civilians in the name of protecting Pakistan, the International Crimes Tribunal-2 said yesterday.
"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," said the tribunal in its verdict in the case against Abul Kalam Azad.
"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 ascend of militancy, and destroyed the nation's constitution," the verdict added.
The then Pakistan government and the military setup a number of auxiliary forces such as Razakars, Al-Badr, Al-Shams and Peace Committee, according to the verdict delivered by the tribunal Chairman Justice Obaidul Hassan.
These forces were formed to collaborate with the Pakistani military in identifying and eliminating all those who sympathised with the liberation of Bangladesh, individuals belonging to minority religious groups, especially the Hindus, political groups belonging to the Awami League and other pro-liberation political parties, Bangalee intellectuals and innocent civilians.
People of the then East Pakistan wholeheartedly supported the war and participated in the call to free Bangladesh, said the verdict.
"But a small number of Bangalees, Biharis, other pro-Pakistanis, as well as members of a number of different religion-based political parties, particularly Jamaat and its student wing Islami Chhatra Sangha (ICS) joined and/or collaborated with the Pakistan military to actively oppose the creation of independent Bangladesh.
"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, near about a quarter million women raped, about 10 million people forced to flee to India and million others internally displaced, said the 112-page judgment.
Atrocious crimes were committed during the nine-month war, which resulted in the birth of Bangladesh.
The verdict said women were tortured, raped and killed. With the help of its local collaborators, the Pakistan military kept numerous Bangalee women as sex slaves inside their camps and cantonments. Susan Brownmiller, a US feminist, journalist and author who conducted a detailed study, has estimated the number of raped women at over 400,000.
The massacre began with Operation Searchlight, which was designed to disarm and liquidate Bangalee policemen, soldiers and military officers and to arrest and kill nationalist Bangalee politicians.
The operation was also aimed at arresting and killing professionals, intellectuals, and students. The Pak military actions in collaboration with Razakar, Al-badr and Jamaat were intended to stamp out the liberation movement and crush the aspiration of the Bangalee people.
The partition of British India based on the two-nation theory in August 1947 gave birth to two new states, one a secular state named India and the other the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. The western part was eventually named West Pakistan and the eastern part East Pakistan, which is now Bangladesh.
In 1952 the Pakistani authorities attempted to impose Urdu as the only state language of Pakistan ignoring Bangla, the language of the majority population of the then Pakistan. The people of the then East Pakistan launched a movement demanding that Pakistan's military government recognise Bangla as one of the state languages.
This language movement later turned into the movement for greater autonomy and eventually independence, the verdict reads.
In the general election of 1970, the Awami League under the leadership of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman won majority of the seats. But despite this overwhelming majority, the Pakistan government did not hand over power to the elected leader as democratic norms would require.
As a result, a movement started in the then East Pakistan and Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in his historic speech on March 7, 1971, called on the people of Bangladesh to strive for independence if people's verdict is not respected and power is not handed over to him, the verdict adds.
In the early hours of March 26, 1971, following the onslaught of Operation Searchlight by the Pakistani military on March 25, Bangabandhu declared Bangladesh independent immediately before he was arrested by the Pakistani authorities.
A renowned researcher on genocide, RJ Rummel, in his book "Statistics of Democide: Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1900" says: “In East Pakistan [General Agha Mohammed Yahya Khan and his top generals] also planned to murder its Bengali intellectual, cultural, and political elite. They also planned to indiscriminately murder hundreds of thousands of its Hindus and drive the rest into India. And they planned to destroy its economic base to insure that it would be subordinate to West Pakistan for at least a generation to come.”