Taposh ... and all those old questions
THE attempt on the life of Fazle Noor Taposh has set off a chain of events we cannot really run away from. In a bigger sense, we should not shy away from the truths that may be emerging once again about August 1975 now that quite a few individuals related to the makers of that unmitigated national tragedy have been netted by the law enforcers. But, of course, you might suggest that by now we have known everything there was to know about the conspiracy to murder Bangabandhu and his family and then the leaders of the Mujibnagar government. And you would have a point. Which is why we will not go into exploring that territory again, at least not now. For there is another that beckons us.
And what might that be? It all comes with an outfit called the Freedom Party. Note the irony here. The men who in August and November 1975 clearly and without any sense of embarrassment put national freedom into a state of jeopardy somehow called forth, in the 1980s, the audacity in themselves to invoke the spirit of freedom as they went about giving shape to their political organisation. And all that insidious work was done in the 1980s, when General Hussein Muhammad Ershad held sway as the nation's second military ruler.
Nowadays, when you hear all these Jatiyo Party politicians speak of democracy, of the need to consolidate the gains made after December 1990 (and that was the moment when dictatorship was brought low by the nation), you tend to ask why these very people did nothing when the Freedom Party was formally given shape.
If you recall 1988, you will remember too the national shame that we went through when one of the convicted assassins of the Father of the Nation was thrown our way as a candidate for the nation's presidency. He went on radio and television to tell us how he meant to govern if he were elected president. And then he told us, without batting an eyelid, of his hatred for Bangabandhu, of how he meant to try the Liberator posthumously. Ershad and his regime did nothing. And those who had all their lives felt outsmarted by Bangabandhu cheered.
The old, ageing collaborators of the Pakistan army could not contain their glee. Thirteen years after 1975, we as a people were helpless before the outrage that was the Freedom Party and its dark lights. There was the infamous indemnity ordinance (and you thank Khondokar Moshtaque and General Zia for that!), having insinuated its way into the constitution through the fifth amendment, that held us back from treating these men for the self-confessed criminals they were.
When you reflect on these men, on the grave damage they have done to us as a people and as a society, you ask why we have not yet been able to answer some critical questions that should have been answered long ago. Few people have ever been in any doubt about the role Khondokar Moshtaque Ahmed played in the tragedy of 1975. And yet he was never charged for criminality. If you now accost some leading lights of the Awami League on this issue, you just might come up with a bland, indefensible response: by the time the Awami League made it back to power, Moshtaque had been dead for three months. The point they are trying to make is that it would have been pointless to file charges against a dead man. That was the height of folly. Death does not absolve a man of criminality.
Moshtaque should have been charged and tried in posthumous fashion. Because he has not, we have no official record of exactly what he did between those secret meetings in Comilla, in his village Dashpara and the early hours of 15 August. Perhaps it is time someone went digging into that story? It is never too late to solve mysteries.
There are other questions that pop up as you reflect on the end of Bangabandhu and the Mujibnagar leaders. In all these years since 1975, no government in Bangladesh appears to have questioned Libya's Muammar Gaddafi why he has so assiduously been providing sanctuary to Bangabandhu's killers. Have the Libyans, who have under Gaddafi been responsible for much global mischief in our times, ever been asked to extradite the perpetrators of the August 1975 tragedy to Bangladesh? And then comes the matter of Pakistan, a state we defeated in war and which therefore will not ever wish us well. That is being undiplomatic, to be sure.
But if diplomacy had really been a measure of Bangladesh-Pakistan ties, men involved in Bangabandhu's murder or their cohorts would not have been so welcome in Islamabad. Go into the record and count the number of times Mujib's killers have been to Pakistan. One even served at the Bangladesh high commission in that country.
You could, if you wanted to, ask Kenya on what criteria it accepted a prime accused (and subsequently convicted) in the Bangabandhu murder case as Bangladesh's high commissioner in Nairobi. The Japanese could be questioned about one of the alleged killers serving at Dhaka's mission in Tokyo. And the Americans could have some explaining to do about some of the actors of August and November 1975 finding homes across their vast land, without any questions being asked.
And the Freedom Party? Find the men who midwifed its birth. Chances are you might unlock a few more dark secrets.
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