Bangladesh: Failure of law to hold convicted war criminals
Countries around the world are still looking for Nazi war criminals. Time, however, is running out. Even the youngest 1971 war crimes criminals are approaching their final years and some of those who are being hunted may already be dead.
( December 21, 2017, Dhaka, Sri Lanka Guardian) The worst case of genocide since World War II took place in Bangladesh in 1971. The International Crimes Tribunal in Bangladesh (ICT of Bangladesh) is a domestic war crimes tribunal in the country set up in 2009 to investigate and prosecute suspects for the genocide committed in 1971 by the Pakistan Army and their local collaborators, Al-Badr and Al-Shams and Razakars during the Bangladesh Liberation War. During the 2008 general election, the Awami League (AL) pledged to try war criminals. The government set up the tribunal after the Awami League won the general election in December 2008 with a landslide victory in parliament. Barrister Tureen Afroz, a prosecutor with the ICT in Bangladesh has written, “The ICT is putting Bangladesh on a path toward healing. Without these trials, the world would have long forgotten the dark shadow that will forever linger over Bangladesh, a shadow filled with the perpetrators and their atrocious crimes, and more importantly, the pain and suffering of the victims and their families. The ICT’s presence on the world stage communicates a strong message that genocide and war crimes will not be tolerated, and that’s justice in itself.”
Countries around the world are still looking for Nazi war criminals. Time, however, is running out. Even the youngest 1971 war crimes criminals are approaching their final years and some of those who are being hunted may already be dead. To prosecute and bring to justice the remaining of those responsible for the worst crimes – genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes in our glorious Liberation War in 1971 are the crying need of the hour.
Government is the main promoter of important public values, such as justice, that are essential to a good society. Without a strong public sector, life in Bangladesh would be less just, less free, more unequal, and more insecure. It should be as the champion of justice, equality, freedom, and security. The overall point is this: to the extent that we cherish important public values like justice and equality, we need a public sector strong enough and well-funded enough to make these things a reality. Conversely, attacks that weaken government also weaken it as a force for good in our society. Criminal cases are brought to court when a person is accused of breaking the law. Without courts it would be difficult to insure that justice is served when people are accused of breaking the law. Without a court system to deal with those suspected of crimes we have problems as well. A fair and honest court system is designed to take a look at all the evidence in a calm and rational manner and give an unbiased opinion. You may have heard the term, “judge, jury and executioner”, which describes someone given extreme power to determine guilt or innocence and to deliver punishment. It is important to hand down punishments to people who choose to break the law.
Until these criminals are made to publicly face up and accept the evil of what they did, then there is nothing they can be forgiven for. We cannot learn from history if the truth is not disclosed.
The ICT trials in Bangladesh have established that all of humanity would be guarded by a legal shield. This new momentum has reflected widespread agreement that ICT court(s), with fair trial for the accused, should be created as an essential component of a just world order under law. After several years of work and struggle, the promise of a Criminal Court like ICT with jurisdiction to try genocide, war crimes and Crimes against Humanity has become a reality. The Court (s) holds a promise of putting an end to the impunity that reigns today for human slaughtering and bringing us a more just and more humane world. The evidence, based in large part on captured records, is overwhelming that crimes of the greatest cruelty and horror were systematically committed. The findings and judgment of the ICT (s) have helped to usher in a new era for the legal protection of victims’ rights. We must envision a society where the universal principles of equality, fairness and justice prevail.
But the truth of those responsible for planning and executing these crimes must come to light for us to be able to move forward. Until these people are made to publicly face up and accept the evil of what they did, then there is nothing they can be forgiven for. We cannot learn from history if the truth is not disclosed. The ICT in Bangladesh shows one way in which the crimes can be acknowledged and condemned. A crime against humanity has to remain that – a crime against the whole of humanity and therefore, we all have to stand up for the names of our murdered brethren “humanity”. Maybe, this is a time to remind everyone, especially those who want these alleged criminals to go free, that there are numerous suspected criminals living in this country as well as in foreign countries guilty of involvement in the Genocides in Bangladesh in 1971. Let them see we will stand up for humanity even if our senior people failed to bring justice promptly which would have been admittedly a better example to all.
Crime is crime; criminals are criminals, what’s more basic than that? If they committed the crime, they should pay for that. Time does not forgive mass murder and genocide. Bring the fleer war criminals back alive to justice because the punishment is not over yet. People of Bangladesh and the government are driven by a single purpose i.e. to establish justice. It is not avenge, revenge or cobra bite as has been telling by the mango-twigs of the war criminals. The war criminals have rightly been tracked to prosecute who have evaded justice for decades. It is a mission. It is not wise and humane to let such matters rest without a harsh challenge. It has taken us about four decades to bring some of the king pin war criminals to justice. By this long time, many people died, and some of the best cases could not be brought to justice. It was a real tragedy in all respects. Between 2010 and now, many have been tried and convicted; some of them were hanged for their unspeakable barbarity.
Dehradun Military Academy first batch trained guerrilla freedom fighter Md. Mujibur Rahman says, “If you allow people who have committed terrible crimes to live in your midst without taking legal action against them, you are basically saying it doesn’t matter.” Some people deliberately and some unknowingly try to say very often so many years have passed away, the suspects themselves are probably sorry. But this is more wishful thinking on their part than actual reality. And the bad news is that they have never expressed regret or remorse for the grave atrocities they committed to the freedom loving people during our glorious Liberation War in 1971. Alexander Hamilton reminds us, “I think the first duty of society is justice.”
If we can’t bring them to justice, we feel we are betraying our fallen heroes and their families. We are leaving them in the pits. But it is prosecution that has the greatest impact in terms of helping a society faced in the past. The war criminals against which trials are continuing in connection with a massacre that wiped out three million of our population. But we should never say you will remain off the hook. Hence, the hunt for the war criminals must go on. These criminals as we find they had lack of tolerance for them who did not fall in their support, not to speak of people of any religion.
It was a million dollar question how one has deal with the numerous obstacles obstructing justice and the frustrations of seeing so many war criminals of our 1971 history who committed terrible crimes and whom we were finally able to track down and expose, escape trial and punishment due to lack of political will or because of illness and/or death.
The wheels of justice for the victims of the war criminals’ crimes move in a zigzag way and at a frustratingly slow pace
It is with great trepidation that the people of Bangladesh will be waiting to hear judgment of ICT and SC. Valiant freedom fighter Syed Hafizul Hoque reminds us, “The obligation we owe the victims, the responsibility to make a serious effort to track down those who turned so many innocent men, women, and children into victims, simply because they were classified as enemies belong to Jamaat-e-Islam, other religion trade based political parties and their notorious Pakistan.” The freedom fighters’ words and gratitude underscore for us one of the main motivations to keep trying to bring the 1971 war criminals to justice. So, when the going gets rough, and the frustrations mount, we should think back to the words of the aforesaid veteran freedom fighters and remember that one of the greatest good deeds a Bengali can do is to fulfill that obligation to as many of the victims as possible.
The wheels of justice for the victims of the war criminals’ crimes move in a zigzag way and at a frustratingly slow pace, even at this late date in time, when every day that passes can spell the difference between a perpetrator being convicted and punished and cases being dropped for reasons of death while trials were going on and death penalties to some accused were commuted on physical or mental infirmities. For us who saw the 1971 struggle of our proud history, the genocide of three million of our people is a living memory, not only because survivours of that tragedy, our parents, uncles and aunts, are still among us to testify and remind us of the horrors that they survived, but also because of our more recent history that some foreign and local mango-twigs of the war criminals are out to save them from the hangmen’s nooses, and that we remain the target of genocidal threats.
Martyrs Intellectual Day in Bangladesh is probably the most solemn day on the country’s calendar, a day of mourning and reflection, a day to commemorate the victims, but also to ponder our current situation and try and comprehend how all this fits in to the continuity of Bangladesh’s history. The arrest in Germany of three men aged 88, 92 and 94, who served as guards at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, has once again raised the issue of the ongoing prosecution of elderly Holocaust perpetrators, almost seven decades after the end of World War II. Why shall we consider age, health ground and so on in case of the 1971 war criminals? Thus the moral, legal and philosophical arguments for continued prosecution remain the same, and can be summarised as follows:
Firstly, the passage of time in no way diminishes the guilt of the killers. If a person committed murder many years ago and has still not been held accountable, he or she is no less guilty today, just because many years have passed since the crime was committed.
Secondly, old age should not afford protection to murderers. Reaching an advanced age does not turn a murderer into a righteous among the Nations.
Thirdly, every one of Bangladesh’s’ victims deserves that an effort be made to find the person(s) who turned them – innocent men, women, and children – into victims.
Fourth, the ongoing efforts to bring 1971 war criminals to justice sends a powerful message, that if one commits such heinous crimes, even decades later the search to hold such persons accountable continues. In this regard, the fact that so many of those who perpetrated the crimes of the Holocaust were able to escape punishment only made it easier for subsequent tragedies to occur. It must be as clear as possible, that committing such crimes will almost certainly result in swift and severe punishment. “Justice is conscience, not a personal conscience but the conscience of the whole humanity. Those who clearly recognize the voice of their own conscience usually also recognize the voice of justice” – these words of Alexander Solzhenitsyn are to the point here.
Fifth, trials of 1971 war criminals continue to prove helpful in the fight against Holocaust denial and the recent efforts in Bangladesh, to rewrite the narrative of 1971 war to hide or minimise the role of local collaborators in Holocaust crimes.
It is important to note that we have never encountered a single Holocaust perpetrator who ever expressed any regret or remorse. If anything, just the opposite, they are still proud to this day of the crimes they committed, which many continue to portray as their duty. And that is why, we continue time after time to remind the skeptics, that the criminals being brought to justice are the last people on earth who deserve any sympathy since they had no mercy on their innocent victims, some of whom were even older than they are today.
So, when you see one of these war criminals on TV or in the media in the coming weeks, don’t be taken in by their frail, sickly appearance. Think of them as they were in the prime of their youth and physical strength, when they devoted all their energy to helping run the largest mass murder factory in the history of mankind. It is outrageous that almost 100 convicts, accused are still fugitive. It is very painful that the concerned government agency puts less emphasis on aggressive action to put them into custody. We can cite a few examples hereunder:
1.Abul Kalam Azad ((Bachchu) is war criminal of 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War. He was the first war criminal to be convicted for crimes against humanity, including murder of unarmed civilians and rape committed during the War. On 21 January 2013 Azad was sentenced to hanging for his crimes, but he was on the run.
2.M.A. Zahid Hossain Khokon, of the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party, is a fugitive war criminal, convicted to death penalty and believed to be in Sweden. He was convicted of leading the killings of people, looting and arson attacks during the war.
3.Syed Mohammad Hasan Ali, 68, was found guilty on five charges out of six and International Crimes Tribunal handed down the death sentence to him. He is believed to have fled the country as the trial process was initiated but 26 witnesses testified against Ali during the trial.
4.Sakhawat Hossain, an ex-Jamaat-e-Islami party member of parliament (MP) was sentenced to death for leading a unit that killed, raped and tortured unarmed civilians during the 1971 war. The ICT sentenced seven others – six in absentia – to life in prison.
5.The International Crimes Tribunal convicted Britain’s Chowdhury Mueen-Uddin and Ashrafuzzaman Khan, from the United States, in absentia of charges relating to the murder of 18 intellectuals during the 1971 war. The pair, who fled Bangladesh after it gained independence from Pakistan, faced the death penalty by the International Crimes Tribunal. They were handed down death penalty.
6. About the Gaibandha case, the six are accused on four counts of crimes like abduction, torture, loot, arson, forcing people to leave country, killing and genocide. The accused are Md Abdul Jabbar Mandal, 86, Md Jasisar Rahman alias ‘Khoka’, 64, Md Abdul Wahed Mandal, 62, Md Montaz Ali Bapari alias ‘Momtaz’, 68, Md Asgar Hossain Khan, 66, and Md Ranju Mia, 59. All but Mia are absconding.
“It’s not only us who are frustrated over the fugitives, some frustrations have affected the victims, case witnesses, and those demonstrating for a long time for war crimes trial,” Sanaul, the chief of ICT investigation agency said at a news conference. He said the ICT investigation agency has nothing else to do other than to remind police about the fugitives, because the investigators do not have the powers to arrest them.
According to Sanaul, 22 of the 24 fugitive war crimes convicts have been condemned to death. One of the 22, Kishoreganj Razakar commander Gazi Abdul Mannan, died on December 19, 2016 while on the run. The number of fugitives accused in cases under trial is 46 while 11 are absconding in cases under investigation. The total number of absconding war criminals or war crimes suspects is 81. “We hear a great deal of political rhetoric about bringing back the persons accused in war crimes cases from abroad. But somehow it comes to our mind that there is a lack of coordination. I’m not saying there is a lack of sincerity,” said the ICT investigation agency coordinator. In his words, ‘Justice gets limited as only a symbol’ when the sentence is not executed. “We’ve written to the government several times. The home ministry has formed a committee on the matter. Another committee was also formed at the Police Headquarters following a tribunal order. “The committee sits every three months and issues some reminder letters. That’s all,” he said.
It is important to note that we have never encountered a single Holocaust perpetrator who ever expressed any regret or remorse.
Is it the lack of interest on the part of some people of the government machineries! Are there even secret ties and collaboration between some people on both sides? It is not hard for this coalition to torpedo the hunt for the war criminals. But countless players — in politics, the judiciary, the government and the administration — have to work together in order to arrange and execute successful criminal prosecutions. Indeed, a small mistake or minor procedural irregularity is enough to foil the arrest of the criminals. Some reports may confirm that it neglected to forcefully pursue murderers for decades
But there is no scope to turn a blind eye to atrocities committed by thousands of 1971 war criminals. In order to effectively protect our loved ones, we must provide the Bangladesh’s people with unfettered access to know who these dangerous criminals are and where they are living. They are criminals, they brutalised Bangladesh, they killed our people, and they destroyed our land. Rutherford B. Hayes has written, “One of the tests of the civilization of people is the treatment of its criminals.” The concerned government authority must look into the matter of fugitive war criminals and convicted war criminals seriously to get rid of this state of things.
The past years’ experience has taught us that a single tribunal court is not sufficient enough to try the many remaining war criminals. Setting up more tribunal courts are a dire emergency needed one to give the essential momentum to the on-going trials. William Penn said, “Anything less than full justice is cruelty.”
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