Bangladesh for 'symbolic' trial of 1971 war criminals

"The trial of war criminals doesn't mean trials of thousands of people. It will be symbolic and those who led the massacre in 1971 will be tried," ruling Awami League General Secretary Syed Ashraful Islam said, clarifying government's stance on the much hyped issue.

Islam said, it would be of no use to create "unrest everywhere in the country" centring the trial.=The top minister's comments came as deputy leader of parliament and senior Awami League leader Syeda Sajeda Chowdhury recently told a party rally that the trial was expected to be launched by later this month while she urged party units at grassroots to send the names and addresses of the alleged 1971 war criminals to the Prime Minister’s office.

 Islam's comments sparked sharp protests among the groups waging a campaign for the exposure of the 1971 Bengali speaking collaborators of the Pakistani atrocities as they said it was contrary to the earlier government policy.

 Coordinator of the Sector Commanders Forum, the grouping of 1971 Liberation War veterans, and former army chief retired general Harun-ar-Rashid in a statement said Islam’s comments did not reflect the government's final policy on the issue.


"It is the War Criminal Tribunal, which will decide on how many people will be tried for war crimes," he said.

Ekatturer Ghatak Dalal Nirmul Committee, another group to wage the protracted campaign, said Islam did not have the "right to comment like this.""Such comments will make the trial of war criminals a farce," acting president of the Committee Shahriar Kabir said.

But Islam referred to the examples of war criminals trials abroad saying only three to four war criminals were tried in Yugoslavia; a small number of war criminals were tried during the Nuremberg Trials, a few in Rwanda while only one in Liberia.

He said Awami League had pledged in their election manifesto to hold the trials of war criminals and "we will do so" as a court building was already been prepared and the prosecution team and investigation agencies were also ready.

Islam's comments came two weeks after Pakistan said a 1974 tripartite treaty between Dhaka, New Delhi and Islamabad had resolved the 1971 war crime issue."Pakistan thinks the issue (of war crimes) was duely resolved for good in that treaty," Islamabad’s new envoy to Bangladesh Ashraf Qureshi told newsmen after a courtesy call on Foreign Minister Dipu Moni on February 26.

Moni at that time, however, told the envoy that Bangladesh would try its own citizens for war crimes through a fair judicial process "adhering to highest international standards" under a policy decision and expressed her belief that this would not, by any means, affect its bilateral relations with Pakistan.

Several senior government ministers earlier this week visited the city’s old High Court building, which was refurbished to stage the trial under the International Crimes Tribunal Act while authorities last year ordered a ban on several high profile suspected high profile 1971 war criminals, mostly belonging to fundamentalist Jamaar-e-Islami travel abroad.

"The government has ordered some people (suspected war criminals) not to leave the country as the process is underway for their trial" Law Minister Shafique Ahmed earlier said without naming the suspects.

Jamaat-e-Islami party (JI), an ally of main opposition BNP of Khaleda Zia and several other rightwing groups had had sided with the then Pakistani junta in 1971.
Demands for the trial of the war criminals resurfaced two years ago after Mojahid commented that the "anti-liberation forces never existed" as he denied his party’s role in 1971 while party called it a "civil war" intensifying the public outrage.

After the independence JI and other religion-based parties were constitutionally banned in Bangladesh till 1976 but they were allowed to resume activities after the August 15, 1975 military putsch which had killed Bangladesh’s founder Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman along with most of his family members and toppled his post independence Awami League government.

The post-independence government had announced a general amnesty to those who opposed the independence keeping the persons accused of arson, rape and killings out of its purview.