One must take with a huge amount of scepticism the criticism that has now been unleashed over the proceedings in Bangladesh against 1971 war criminals, since much of it comes from partial sources
Ever since International Crimes Tribunals 1 and 2 began trying people accused of committing crimes against humanity and other heinous offences during Bangladesh’s liberation War in 1971, there has been criticism of the sentences given or likely to be given, and the fairness and transparency of the proceedings. The principal criticism of the sentences is the award of the death penalty to two accused — Delawar Hossain Sayedee (February 25) and Abul Kalam Azad (January 21). While the former is under arrest, the latter is said to be a fugitive in Pakistan.
While some of the criticism is from the supporters and patrons of the Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh, the political party of which the two have been leaders, and its close ally, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, some arises from a principled opposition to the death penalty. Asserting that Amnesty International is not opposed to the trial of those accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity, the organisation’s South Asia Researcher, Mr Abbas Faiz, told the Deutsche Welles on December 21, 2013, that “AI has always been against the death penalty” because it was irreversible.
Nobody relishes the award of the death penalty. It, however, exists in the statute books of many countries and is given in rare —in India in the rarest of rare —cases, where the rule of law prevails. War crimes and crimes against humanity fall in that category. The post-World War II trial of 23 main political leaders of Hitler’s Germany by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg sentenced Hans Frank, Wilhelm Frick, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Wilhelm Keitel, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Alfred Rosenberg, Fritz Sauckel and Julius Streicher to death by hanging for committing, among other offences, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Herman Goring, who was also awarded the death sentence, committed suicide the night before his execution.
The doctors’ trial, which was a part of the second set of 12 trials by the tribunals the Americans set up, sentenced seven of the 23 defendants to death for war crimes, crimes against humanity, performing medical experiments without the subjects’ consent, mass murder of concentration camp inmates and prisoners of war. Thirty-six defendants were sentenced to death in the Dachau Camp Trials, 58 in the Mauthausen camp trials and 15 in the Flossenburg Camp Trials. The trial of Einsatzgruppen personnel, members of SS mobile squads accused of killing one million Jews and thousands of anti-Nazi partisans, led to 13 death sentences. The Buchenwald Camp Trial and Muhldorf Camp Trial saw 22 and five sentenced to death. In all, the various American Military Tribunals sentenced 297 persons to death and 279 to life imprisonment, and gave many others shorter periods in jail. Apart from the 12, the Neuengamme and Belsen concentration camp trials by the British authorities led to 11 death sentences each; the Auschwitz camp trials by the Polish Government, to 23.
Amnesty International does have a point when it talks of the irreversibility of the death sentence. The demand for death penalty to the 1971 war criminals by the young demonstrators at Shahbagh intersection and elsewhere, however, owes much to the experience of the killers of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the father of their nation, and almost his entire family, on August 15, 1975, and of the Awami league leaders slaughtered in a Dhaka jail on the night of November 3-4, 1975. They were given immunity for their crimes by the Governments dominated by Major-General (subsequently President) Ziaur Rahman, the founder of the BNP and the late husband of Begum Khaleda Zia.
The fear is that the war criminals, if awarded life sentences, would be released and rehabilitated if the BNP, a close ally of the Jamaat, comes to power following the next general election in Bangladesh. One can hardly ignore the fear since nine of those charged with war crimes belonged to the Jamaat and two to the BNP.
Nor can there be any under-estimation of the enormity of the savagery the Pakistani uniformed forces and the leaders of the Jamaat and its auxiliaries like the Razakars, al Badr and al Shams, perpetrated. This writer would not have believed that humans could stoop down to such acts had he not been an eye-witness to some of the results. There have been many, many other witnesses. The Bengali daily, Dainik Azad, published from Dhaka, carried in its issue dated January 2, 1972, an article by Professor Hamida Rahman. Titled, Katasurer Badhyabhumi (Katasur’s Killing Field), it gives a benumbing account of how the dead bodies of Bangladesh’s leading intellectuals and professionals killed by cadres of the Jamaat and its auxiliaries in December 1971, lay scattered. Her account, translated into English by this writer, reads:
“Dead bodies of two large men were [found lying] as we went a little further, nose severed, ears severed; someone seems to have scooped out the lesh from near their mouths, their hands and feet tied...A little further ahead a girl’s dead body [lay] at the feet of a mound of earth to the left. Her eyes were tied. The two napkins were still lying there. She had been wearing a black Dhakai saree. Her nose and mouth had no shape. It seemed that someone had scooped her mouth out with a weapon so that she might not be recognised. She was fair and well-built. A part of her breasts was severed. The dead body was [lying] on its back. The horrible sight could not be seen for long....Of course, she was identified later; she was Salina Parvin, the editor of Shilalipi [a highly acclaimed literary magazine]”.
How many were killedIJ Professor Ahmed writes, “Field stretched after field. Skeletons of the dead in the thousands and thousands of mounds of earth beside every wetland bore witness to the number of people killed...”
As for the fairness of the proceedings of the Bangladesh trials, the only blot is the consultation the presiding judge, Mr Mohammad Nizamul Huq, had with another lawyer abroad. The judge has resigned. Besides, not even the impeccably conducted trials at Nuremburg, have been without controversy. The then Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, Harlan Fiske Stone, called those “a fraud”.
Clearly, one needs to take with a huge amount of scepticism the criticism that has now been unleashed against the proceedings in Bangladesh, particularly since much of that criticism comes from quarters which can hardly be called impartial.
(The accompanying visual is of Bangladesh’s Opposition activists shouting slogans as they clash with the police during their protest in Dhaka on March 11. AP Photo by AM Ahad)