Recalling next door horrors of ’71

The monstrous atrocities that Bangladesh had to undergo for its liberation at the hands of Pakistanis cannot be forgotten. Cold figures do not convey the extent of the tortures

Designated as the “International Day of Commemoration and Dignity of the Victims of the Crime of Genocide and of the Prevention of this Crime” by the United Nations’ General Assembly in September, 2015, December 9, has a special significance for Indians. Forty-six years ago, one of the most savage genocides in history was perpetrated next door in Bangladesh, then East Pakistan. Three million people killed, 500,000 women raped — the latest figure arrived at in Dhaka — and 10 million people made refugees in India, constitute chilling statistics. But cold figures do not convey the tortures accompanying the killings, the perverse atrocities accompanying the rapes, the circumstances which forced people to flee their homes, and what they suffered en route? 

Those who have seen mutilated dead bodies of women and children bearing signs of indescribable torture or heard some of the horror stories that were so common at the refugee camps in India, will never forget the experience. I, for one, could never have thought that human beings could even imagine — far less perpetrate — the kind of atrocities Pakistani troops and their local agents and collaborators seemed to have revelled in.

A well-attended international seminar on “Genocide-Torture and Liberation War, 1971” held in Dhaka on November 25 and 26 by the Centre for Genocide-Torture and Liberation War Studies, 1971 and Genocide-Torture Archive and Museum Trust, recalled the terrible suffering that Bangladesh had to endure for its liberation. Significantly, it also showed that large sections of the generations born after 1971 were aware of the monstrous atrocities of the Pakistanis and were keen to know more. This was particularly remarkable given that the military dictatorships under generals-turned-President Zia-ur Rahman and HM Ershad clearly pursued four objectives — protect and rehabilitate war criminals, destroy the secular-democratic culture of the country’s liberation struggle, Islamise the country, and take it closer to Pakistan.

These were also the goals of the two Governments that Begum Khaleda Zia of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party led (1991-96 and 2001-06 respectively). The seminar showed at the level of discourse, as the Shahbag Square movement did on the streets, that neither the general and their stooges nor Begum Khaleda, whose husband was Zia-ur Rahman, had succeeded. Bangladesh had not forgotten. The credit for this must go primarily to a handful of men and women, who despite the daunting odds and the imprisonment, torture and harassment they had to suffer, fought relentlessly to keep the memories of Bangladesh’s ordeal by fire alive.

Things had appeared bleak immediately after Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s assassination. The severe repression unleashed by the general-turned-President Zia-ur Rahman as well as the hobbling of the Awami League, whose entire top leadership had been murdered inside Dhaka jail on the night of November 3, 1975, had silenced pro-liberation secular, democratic voices for some time. These were once again heard after Zia-ur Rahman allowed Golam Azam, perhaps the most notorious collaborator, to return from Pakistan in July 1978, where he had been based since Liberation, and stay on.

A citizen’s committee was formed in 1979 to protest against the development. The Muktijoddha Sangsad (Freedom Fighters’ Council) announced in that protests would be staged wherever Jamaat-e-Islami, a party of war criminals, held meetings and gatherings. Jahanara Imam, mother of martyr Rumi, and a widely-respected public figure, and other relatives of martyrs supported the stand along with a number of intellectuals.

Protests continued to grow. A number of publications carried pro-liberation articles. Shahriar Kabir’s landmark work, Ekatturer Ghatak o Dalal-ra: Ke Kothaye (The Killers and Agents of ‘seventy-one: Who and Where They Are), giving details about the whereabouts and activities of war criminals, created a stir when it was first published in 1987. A citizens’ committee was formed in 1988 against the Ershad Government’s designation in that year of Islam as the country’s state religion. Protests began.

The public’s anger exploded after December 28, 1991, when an increasingly active Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh officially elected Golam Azam, still a Pakistani citizen, its Amir. On January 19, 1992, 101 widely-respected citizens of Bangladesh set up the Ekatturer Ghatak-Dalal Nirmul Committee (Committee to Uproot the Killer-Agents of ‘71). It said in its first declaration that it would institute a people’s court and try Azam as a war criminal, and for violating Bangladesh’s Constitution, if the Government did not.

Though the movement for his trial drew enthusiastic response, Nirmul Committee — as the organisation has come to be popularly called — leaders sought the cooperation of political parties that had supported the liberation war, to ensure a massive popular presence at the People’s Court. Thirteen political parties, including the Awami League, agreed. On February 11, 1992, was set up the Muktijuddher Chetana Bastabayan o Ekatturer Ghatak-Dalal Nirmul Jatiya Samanyay Committee (National Coordination Committee to Realise the Consciousness of the Liberation War and uproot the Killers-Collaborators of ‘Seventy-One). Jahanara Imam was made its convener.

Despite large-scale repression by the Khaleda Zia Government, and measures like the closure of road and rail traffic to Dhaka and public transportation within it, the trial by People’s Court, held on March 26, 1992, at Dhaka’s Suhrawardy Udyan, was a massive success. In the presence of 500,000 people, it declared Golam Azam a war criminal who deserved the death penalty. The event was the turning point. There was no looking back any more. The movement grew despite the severance of its links with the political parties and Jahanara Imam’s passing on June 26, 1994.

There were reverses, but the Nirmul Committee’s leaders — Shahriar Kabir, Muntassir Mamun, Qazi Mukul and others — came back fighting, as did former liberation war commanders like Lt-Col (Retd) Quazi Sajjad Ali Zahir, Bir Protik. Their efforts were supported by growing sections of the country’s increasingly vocal civil society, organisations of liberation war fighters like the Sector Commander’s Forum. Two thousand and six was a critical year when the Nirmul Committee and the Sector Commander’s Forum held a series of meetings and rallies throughout the country to press the demand for bringing to justice members of organisations like the Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh and its spawns like the Islami Chhatra Sangha (revived later as Islami Chhatra Shibir), Al Badar and Al Shams, Razakars, Shanti Committee and Mujaheed Bahini, who had acted not only as informers and supporters of the Pakistanis but as rapists, mass murderers and torturers themselves.

If this gave a new life to the demand which had always been raised by supporters of the secular and democratic philosophy of the libetion war, it was Sheikh Hasina’s second coming to power following the general elections of 2008. Which finally paved the way for trial and punishment of some of the worst war criminals in history. In the process, it also reminded the nation of the crimes against humanity that the collaborators and Pakistanis had perpetrated. The rest is history.

(The writer is Consultant Editor, The Pioneer, and an author)