Insight into character comes from listening intently to the spoken word
by Anwar A. Khan
The International Crimes Tribunal of Bangladesh is a domestic war crimes tribunal in Bangladesh set up in 2009 to investigate and prosecute suspects for the genocide committed in 1971 by the Pakistan Army and their local collaborators, Jamaat-e-Islami, Al-Badr and Al-Shams and Razakars, during the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971.
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| International Crimes Tribunal-1 |
On 27 June 2019, the International Crimes Tribunal-1 (ICT-1) in its 235-page judgment sentenced war criminalMahbubur Rahman to death for the murder of Tangail philanthropist Ranada Prasad Saha, his son and 58 others during the 1971 Liberation War beyond any doubt and imposed the maximum penalty for each count.
This great philanthropist's spirit lives among his successors and people knew him well.
The ICT trial must continue until the last remnant of the war criminals is reduced to ashes.
If we reckon: Islam is our Holy religion. Payjama, Punjabi, Cap and Beard are all symbols of our highest respect and when we see all these valuable, noble and distinguishing features of personal nature in any human being, an inner feeling of high regard automatically arises in our hearts towards him. And this is quite natural for Muslims like us. But if some people use our Holy Religion-Islam to achieve their ugly means and wears the above Muslim dresses; and keep beards to camouflage them from committing their grave misdeeds and sins, like mass killing, genocide, blazing, looting, raping and the likes, will you keep silent against them? Will you accept when these culprits give us Islamic sermons in the media, in the public meetings and even in our Holy Mosques?
I am talking about the kingpin war criminals belong to the terrorist political party- Jamaat-e-Islami. Whatever grave crimes these griffins committed to our people during our glorious Liberation War in 197, they did using the name of our Holy Religion, Islam. During that time, they boastfully declared that Pakistan is the Holy Place of Islam. Look at their foul utterance and audacity! Only these types of third rater of highwaymen could only pronounce so much lie. 44 years, a very long time, have gone by, by this time; we see that all war criminals have now resorted to deception to the lowest ebb once again. Keeping white beards, wearing Payjamas, Punjabis, Caps and are using the name of our Holy Religion, Islam, they are trying to prove that they are all saintly characters. Do they really so? But we all know very well who were/are they?
They insulted our Holy Religion and our most revered Nabiji’s (SM) Sunnat during our Liberation War in 1971 and they did never feel to express any remorse for the grave misdeeds they committed to our millions of people in 1971. Are they human beings? Definitely not! They are sub-humans or griffins; and worst war criminals! In 1971, these criminals slaughtered our people pronouncing in a louder voice “Naray-e-Takbir, Allahu Akbar, Pakistan Zindabad” and did never allow the murdered bodies of those innocent people for burial. Instead, they enthusiastically allowed the dogs, jackals, vultures and other human flesh eaters to eat those dead bodies. Look at their magnitude of barbarous acts. Can anyone pardon them for the cruelties in the highest form they did to us?
These petty men are still eager to make boasts, yet desire that others should believe in them. They enthusiastically engage in deception, yet want others to have affection for them. They conduct themselves like brutal animals, yet want others to think well of them.
Insight into character comes from listening intently to the spoken word. The physical person, their Islamic dresses and Islamic dramatic flair is more often used to persuade people, as they use these stealth tools of disguise and deception.
According to Robin Marantz Henig,“the English language has 112 words for deception, according to one count, each with a different shade of meaning: collusion, fakery, malingering, self-deception, confabulation, prevarication, exaggeration, denial” and these cruel griffins possess all such disgusting wickedness and immorality in their souls and they acted or act accordingly to achieve their cruel goals.
Everything about them is manipulation and lies. Everything is 'Wag the Dog.' Everything is a structured deception in them.
Golam Azam, the mastermind of plotting to kill us indiscriminately, has betrayed us knowingly. Every notorious Al-Badr/Al-Shams commander as if took this oath:
"I pledge eternal allegiance to MollahMaududi and self-declared Professor and mastermind of all killing at the time of birth of Bangladesh, Golam Azam. I pledge unconditional obedience to these brutal criminals and the murderers during our Liberation War appointed by Golam Azam and his gangsters."
What these men have overlooked is that notorious Golam Azam and his gangsters’ acts were/are their acts. It was these men among many others, and it was 'these men leading many others, who built up Golam Azam and vested in his psychopathic personality not only innumerable lesser decisions but the supreme issue of brutal murders. They intoxicated him with power and adulation. They fed his hates and aroused his fears: They put a loaded gun in his eager hands. It was left to Golam Azam to pull the trigger, and when he did they all at that time approved. His guilt stands admitted on several valid grounds but he was awarded less punishment whereas he should have been hanged to death. Look at these so-called people who murdered our millions of people in 1971 in connivance with the brutal Pakistani Army. But his guilt is the guilt of the whole dock, and of every man in it. He did not carry all responsibility to the grave with him. All the guilt is wrapped in Golam and his gangsters’ shroud.
It was these dead (Golam Azam, AKM, Yousuf and the likes) whom these still living (e.g. Nizami, Mir Kashem, Sayedee, Azhar………) chose to be their partners in this great conspiratorial brotherhood, and the crimes that they did together they must pay for one by one.
There are way too many unethical and inhumane acts they committed. Frankly, I think I can logically argue that it would be in the best interests of mankind that whenever there is a statement by these culprits towards anyone or anything it should be blotted out permanently.
The 1971 war has left a legacy of dead which number more than all the armies engaged in any war that made ancient or medieval history. No a half-century ever witnessed slaughter on such a scale, such cruelties and inhumanities, and annihilations of innocent people. Their terror deeds are the overshadowing historical facts by which generations to come will remember this decade. If we cannot eliminate the causes and prevent the repetition of these barbaric events by giving highest punishment to these criminals, it is not an irresponsible prophecy to say that this Twenty First Century may yet succeed in bringing the doom of civilization of Bangladesh.
Fairness is not weakness. The extraordinary fairness of the hearings in the ICTs and our Apex Court are attributes to our strength. But still then, we must say the government should not have gone through a very long process of trials for these war criminals. Instead, the summary trials should have been adopted for speedy disposal of all such cases.
In the words of my friend and veteran freedom fighter Shafique Islam, "A thousand years will pass and this guilt of Jamaat-e-Islami and it’s the riches and the nobs will still not be erased."
Their killing was clearly and deliberately planned. Nor were the war crimes and the crimes against humanity unplanned, isolated, or spontaneous offenses.
Each part of the plan fitted into every other. Notorious Golam Azam and his gangsters have betrayed our people knowingly. But let me for a moment turn devil's advocate. I admit that he was the chief villain.
"For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that plays it is lost."
The ghoulish defence that the war criminals’ camp is entitled to retribution only from the cadavers is an argument worthy of the crimes at which it is directed. Nor is the lie direct the only means of falsehood. They all speak with a Jamaati doubletalk with which to deceive the unwary. In the Jamaati dictionary of sardonic euphemisms "Final solution" of the Bangladesh problem for them was a phrase which meant extermination.
Besides outright false statements and doubletalk, there are also other circumventions of truth in the nature of fantastic explanations and absurd professions presented by the lawyers of the war criminals. These are all like: He •begged of the widow, as they beg of you: "Say I slew them not." And the Queen replied, "Then say they were not slain. But dead they are ……, If you were to say of these men that they are not guilty, it would be as true to say there had been no war, there was no slain, there had been no crime, Bangladesh has not born.
GoalmAzam, the sinister figure, who had charge of the extermination programme of the Bengalis in 1971, fulfilled his brutal prophecy from the beginning of the war till Bangladesh came into being.
The Appellate Division of Bangladesh Supreme Court has started hearing former Jamaat-e-Islami leader ATM Azharul Islam’s appeal that challenged his death sentence for 1971 war crimes. It is reported that another 28 cases of war criminals have been lying pending with the Appellate Division for disposal for a very long time. This is not worthy of acceptance or satisfactory. People anticipate that the appeal hearings of all those worst criminals must begin sooner to inflict due punishment to them.
We now have before us the tested evidence of criminality and have heard the flimsy excuses and paltry evasions of the defendants. The time has rife enough for final judgment of the rest war criminals. They and their accomplices should be driven out from the club of humanity……Because the “black will take no other hue” and “the devils would not listen to the Scriptures”. Gallows is the right answer to them. We must give some solace to the families of victims of 1971 martyrizes. We must hail ICT-1, the prosecution lawyers and most especially the present government under the dynamic and bold leadership of PM Sheikh Hasina for making an impossible black chapter of our history into a glorious one.
-The End –
The writer is a senior citizen of Bangladesh, writes on politics, political and human-centred figures, current and international affairs. Views expressed in this essay are the author's own.
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