1971 War Crimes In Bangladesh
nkdat...@bigmailbox.net
needs international support, say Jalal Alamgir & Tazreena Sajjad]
http://www.opendemocracy.net/jalal-alamgir-tazreena-sajjad/bangladesh-quest-for-justice
OPEN DEMOCRACY
9 February 2010
Bangladesh: a quest for justice
By Jalal Alamgir and Tazreena Sajjad,
Jalal Alamgir is assistant professor of political science at the
University of Massachusetts, Boston.
If asked to identify the five most known 20th-century genocides, most
informed citizens would probably start with the Nazi holocaust and go
on to name Cambodia, Rwanda, Armenia, and Darfur. There is little
likelihood that they will include the 1971 genocide in Bangladesh - a
tragedy that has become largely invisible in much of the world’s
public discourse about genocide.
It is an extraordinary act of forgetting. For the bloodbath in March-
December 1971 - when the Pakistani army massacred a largely unarmed
Bengali population in the then integral part of Pakistan’s state known
as “East Pakistan”, in an effort to quash the region’s demand for
autonomy - was at the time the biggest story in the world’s media.
The killing-spree began with the slaughter of around 10,000 civilians
within three weeks; by June 1971, headlines in the Sunday Times and
New Statesman in Britain were referring to “genocide”. In a pattern
familiar from earlier experiences of genocide, specific categories of
people were targeted: non-combatant Bengali men and boys (who were
killed en masse); Bengali intellectuals, prominent artists, and
cultural icons (who were rounded up by Pakistani soldiers and local
collaborators in door-to-door searches and taken away for mass
execution); Hindus; and women. Ten million refugees sought safety in
India.
The treatment of women was horrific. An estimated 200,000 to 400,000
were raped and sexually violated. Many, including girls below 10 years
of age, were kept as sex-slaves in military camps.
An accurate count of the victims has never been established; but it is
estimated that these nine months saw at least 1 million people
slaughtered, and perhaps as many as 3 million. Even the lower figure
would make Bangladesh among the fastest as well as the largest modern
genocides - comparable to those in Rwanda (800,000 killed in May-June
1994) and Indonesia (between 1-1.5 million killed in 1965-66).
An elusive accounting
Bangladeshis achieved their independence in 1971, but in subsequent
years they were unable to find psychological or emotional “closure” on
the violent birth of the new state. Pakistan has not issued any formal
apology for the atrocities its forces committed, although some
elements of Pakistani civil society acknowledge the atrocities
perpetrated against the Bengali people. India repatriated 90,000
Pakistani soldiers whom it had detained during the conflict, under the
terms of the Simla peace accord; but neither they nor their commanders
ever faced trial.
There was an initial effort to establish a process of accountability,
when - within six weeks of independence - the post-liberation
government announced the Bangladesh Collaborators (Special Tribunals)
Order. This was followed in July 1973 by the passing of the War Crimes
Tribunal Act which allowed for the prosecution of individuals for
genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. In these early years
of the new state, the government also arrested several thousand
individuals suspected of war crimes. But in November 1973, amid fear
of turmoil if the issue was pursued, prime minister Sheikh Mujibur
Rahman abruptly issued an amnesty order that released most alleged
collaborators and made no further provision for ensuring
accountability.
The decision to permit the re-entry of the Jamaat-i-Islami into
Bangladesh’s political scene was an additional blow to the prospects
for justice over the events of 1971. The Jamaat had opposed
Bangladesh’s independence; it had organised the dreaded al-Badr and al-
Shams death-squads that were responsible for mass killings; and it was
led by people who had committed war crimes.
The party took advantage of its restored status to position itself as
a kingmaker. It made an alliance with the rightwing Bangladesh
Nationalist Party (BNP), gained the support of key military generals,
and in 2001 saw its leaders inducted into the ruling cabinet. It
eventually became the third most powerful party in the country, and
used its strong links to the middle east to import radical ideas into
Bangladesh’s national-political discourse.
The impunity of the collaborators had a profound effect on
Bangladesh’s politics over later decades. The 1971 genocide became an
artifact, a constant if shadowy presence but something removed from
actionable politics. Two linked developments disrupted the veneer of
“collective amnesia”: the Jamaat’s arrival in government, and the
recasting of Bangladesh’s liberation war as a “civil war”, in effect
an event with limited casualties for which both “sides” bore
responsibility.
The politically-driven attempt to minimise the scale and horrors of
the genocide by those directly complicit was vigorously opposed by the
combatants of the 1971 war and their frontline commanders. They
launched a nationwide movement demanding trials for the war criminals,
and won strong support from human-rights organisations, intellectuals,
journalists, and families of the dead and disappeared. The centre-left
Awami League (AL) endorsed the idea and included the prosecution of
war crimes as a manifesto pledge in the December 2008 elections. Its
landslide victory, and the crushing defeat of the Jamaat, provided an
opportunity to reopen histories, memories and court proceedings (see
“Bangladesh: a verdict and a lesson” (13 February 2009).
An unfinished history
Bangladesh's government has sought to deliver on its pledge to hold
war-crimes trials, though it is facing renewed legal, political and
logistical obstacles. Its current plan is to use the War Crimes
Tribunal Act of 1973 (suitably amended) as a legal foundation for the
establishment of domestic courts.
But a rushed and expedient process has brought problems. The
government did not consider adequately the opinions of legal experts
and advocacy groups which pointed out that the act’s definition of key
concepts (war crimes, rape, command responsibility) is incomplete or
inadequate. There remain questions about procedural transparency, the
independence and gender composition of the judiciary, and the
expertise of prosecutors in criminal and international law. In
addition, many survivors of the genocide are dismayed that the trials
will focus only on local collaborators and will not allow the pursuit
of Pakistani commanders.
Bangladesh does have competent lawyers and a legal system stable
enough to initiate a domestic process; however, political volatility
and the limitations of the 1973 act raise concern about whether an
internal process alone can see the trials through to the end. Yet
putting the trials on a solid footing is crucial to ensure that they
will continue to have official political backing in the event that the
Awami League is voted out of power when its term ends in 2013.
The international challenges are also daunting. The United Nations has
pledged technical assistance, and recommended four of its war-crimes
experts to work with Bangladesh’s courts. But the act’s provision for
the death-penalty will reduce international support. The interests of
states in the region will also come into play. Pakistan opposes the
trials, and has sought to mobilise the Jamaat-e-Islami’s allies in the
middle east against them. India’s backing for the process may be
limited to rhetoric, as it has its relationship with Pakistan and the
United States to consider. India also holds critical evidence that
would assist court proceedings, and principled cooperation with
Bangladesh would foster much-needed goodwill between the two
countries.
The United States is both implicated in the genocide and uncomfortable
in the process of establishing legal accountability for the crimes of
1971. Henry Kissinger, national-security adviser in Richard M Nixon’s
first administration, bears most responsibility for the US policy of
backing its cold-war ally, Pakistan, in its brutal campaign. America
should release all its official documents from that dark chapter in
history.
Bangladesh needs support from friends and allies abroad if it is to
bring the legal process to a successful conclusion. For there is an
interest here that goes far beyond politics. The demand that those who
perpetrated the crimes of 1971 should be brought to justice is a
reminder that the policy of forgetting does not work because the
victims always remember. True, a handful of trials will not vindicate
the loss of 1-3 million lives and the sufferings of survivors. Many of
those culpable of war crimes will, even in the most just outcome,
never be found or punished.
Nonetheless, it is imperative that even limited justice is served for
one of humanity’s worst massacres. This will provide closure to a
scarred populace; it will morally discredit entrenched policies of
immunity; it will help strengthen the rule of law; it will mitigate
persistent conditions for future conflict; and it will allow
Bangladeshis at last to fulfill their core responsibility towards the
dead - and the living.