Perspectives
Jamaat's piece de resistance
WITH the coming of the month of victory, even as millions mourn for the dead, missing and dishonoured, the quislings of 1971, mainly from Jamaat-e-Islami patronised by their acolytes in the country's "nationalist" political camp, continue to have a junket over the gains they have garnered. However, the time for their piece de resistance has come now, with the Jamaat's audacity in baring its fangs after thirty-six years of independence.
The people are indeed flummoxed that not only did Jamaat survive all these years, it also grew in strength. Thanks to the subtle support it is believed that it receives from the establishment and asserted groups of sympathisers the party thrives, and has gathered courage to heap innuendoes on our intrepid freedom fighters to add insult to injury with impunity.
Now, they are about to assail our values, history, and the glorious achievements of our struggle for independence. What do we do with the growing menace?
Since the dawn of our independence, the mistakes have been piling up with regard to our handling of war criminals. In the euphoria of independence, our post-liberation government, already exasperated with myriad other problems of a war ravaged country, is presumed to have failed to fathom the agony of the people affected by the brutality perpetuated by the Jamaat-led death-squads of Al-Badr and Razakar.
As a result, the question of putting them in the dock wasn't perhaps given due weight-age. It isn't, however, true that the collaborators were granted general amnesty; as claimed by some in defence of those criminals. The Collaborators' Act was very much in existence till the political change of 1975 when, in December, late General Ziaur Rahman rescinded it through an ordinance, relegating the issue to the back burner. It, nevertheless, opened the door for the collaborators to worm their way into the country's body politic.
Today, there is an animated debate as to whether the anti-liberation elements, with their record of myriad crimes during the war, can be tried after the long hiatus. It is an irony that this debate is at all taking place when there is already a national consensus in favour of a trial, the clamour for which is reaching a crescendo.
Many people who were privy to Jamaat's atrocities are still alive to tell the ghastly stories of their experience. As a matter of fact, the whole country bears the tell-tale evidence of the Razakars' killing ground, torture centres, and mass graves of those who succumbed to the barbarism of notorious Al Badr activists.
The cry of the hour is to de-fang the remorseless dangerous species, who had no qualms in participating in a mission to kill three million innocent people, dishonour two hundred thousand of our mothers and sisters, drive away one seventh of our population from their home and hearth, as well as to brutally wipe out our greatest sons of the soil on the eve of the victory.
Many crosscurrents of events and paradoxical factors have brought us to a pass where we are facing these dangerous elements in a country brought into being by us in the face of stiff opposition of these elements.
Yet, in a deeply religious country like ours, they thrived by resorting to religious pretensions. Religion being the most saleable trademark of our politics, they hoodwinked our simple public by putting on the garb of Islam although, both during and after our independence war, all that they did was blatantly unIslamic.
According to our Holy Book, if one kills an innocent man, it is as if he has killed the entire mankind. Does Islam ever approve of the rape, looting and arson that they committed -- again in the name of Islam?
Forceful public clamouring for bringing the killers and collaborators to book, under the banner of "Ghatak Dalal Nirmul Committee" led by a redoubtable Jahanara Imam, failed due to the government's apathy, if not opposition.
Even this time, much of the success in de-fanging the Jamaat will depend on how the whole affair will be viewed in the corridors of power. Unless the conscience of those who are holding the sceptre of power can be stirred with regard to the victims of 1971, little can be achieved.
No individual can, at this stage, legally prove his grievance. Therefore, it is only the authorities who can move the matter to some consequences. It is also they who will have to work out a modus operandi to dispense justice for the tormented souls, only for our sake.
Ominously, like in 1991, even this time there are people who are raising the bizarre question of trial for the "crimes" of freedom fighters also, and resorting to sophistry to forestall the collaborators' trial. The Jamaat and its cohorts are past masters of scheming with their domestic and trans-national nexus. But, the last laugh should not be theirs.
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