Pak diplomat summoned over minister's comments
Dhaka yesterday summoned the acting high commissioner of Pakistan and strongly protested Islamabad's reaction to the recent verdict of war criminal Motiur Rahman Nizami, terming it "direct interference" in the internal affairs of Bangladesh.
In an aide-memoire to the envoy Ahmad Hussain Dayo, the government deplored the comments made by a senior and important cabinet member of Pakistan government regarding the verdict by the International Crimes Tribunal, Bangladesh without appreciating the true perspective.
Dhaka, while conveying its disappointment, asked the government of Pakistan to take serious note of the protest.
Pakistan's Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan in a statement on November 1 expressed concern over the death sentence to Jamaat-e-Islami chief Motiur Rahman Nizami.
Nisar said, "Though what happened in Bangladesh was that country's internal matter, yet Pakistan could not remain divorced from references to 1971 and its aftermath."
Terming the comments as unwarranted and inappropriate, Additional Foreign Secretary (Bilateral) Mizanur Rahman said they amounted to directly interfering with the internal affairs of Bangladesh.
He added that vested quarters in Pakistan were advised to mind their own business and set their house in order rather than try to interfere with the matters which fell within Bangladesh's domestic jurisdiction.
The additional secretary pointed out that the trials enjoyed support of the mass people in Bangladesh and the wider international community to break the culture of impunity for the crimes against humanity and genocide in 1971.
"It was only through ensuring justice that the wounds and trauma inflicted by those crimes in our national psyche can be healed and put behind."
Noting the holding of demonstrations and provocative statements by Jamaat-e-Islami in Pakistan, Mizanur Rahman further stated that Bangladesh expects that as a friendly neighbour, Pakistan would refrain from such activities as those may hurt the sentiments of the people of Bangladesh and suggest misplaced sympathies for otherwise undeserving entities.
The ICT-1 on October 29 awarded death sentence to Nizami for committing crimes against humanity during the liberation war.
The Pakistan interior minister in his reaction said it was highly unfortunate that almost 45 years after those tragic chain of events, the Bangladeshi government still seemed to be living in the past and totally ignoring the time-tested virtue of forgive and forget.
He said he was deeply saddened to receive this shocking news and believed that the Bangladesh government had misused the process of law as a political tool against the Jamaat leader.
Earlier on December 17, 2013, Dhaka summoned the Pakistan High Commissioner Afrasiab Mehdi Hashmi Qureshi and deplored the resolutions adopted by the Pakistan National Assembly and Punjab Provincial Assembly expressing concern over the execution of war criminal Quader Mollah.
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