Daily Times

History is written by the victor. Sadly, the victor forgets his own wrongdoings while remembering the wrongs of others. The same has happened in Bangladesh with the sentencing of Motiur Rahman Nizami, the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami chief. Bangladesh is not the first nation to have acted in this manner. The allies of the Second World War acted no differently. The deplorable Holocaust was remembered and the guilty rightly prosecuted but the crimes of the allies during the Second World War escaped prosecution.

When Berlin fell in World War II, Germany was in ruins and under occupation by hundreds of thousands of foreign troops. No group had complete control over any region. Serious crimes were committed at that time. In the 1950s, came the book A Woman in Berlin, the famous confessions of a woman who was raped during World War II. This book was republished in 2003. In 2010, another book, Why Did I Have to Be a Girl? surfaced. This harrowing memoir written by Gabriele Köpp, a university professor, records how she was repeatedly raped in the final months of World War II, when she was just 15. History also witnessed the Kocevski Rog Massacre during May 1945, involving the systematic murder of members of the repatriated Slovene Home Guard and their families by allied Yugoslav partisans. This has been the subject of the book Slovenia, 1945: Memories of Death and Survival after World War II. During this period, up to 12,000 people were thrown into pits, caves and crevices that were subsequently sealed using explosives. No one ever faced prosecution for these atrocities. The US’s bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki too is an example in kind. Those who did it claim that these bombings prevented the need for a land invasion of Japan that may have killed hundreds of thousands. It is deliberately concealed that the majority of deaths arising from such an invasion would have been those of military combatants and not the more than 100,000 civilians that were killed for no fault of their own. The tens of thousands who escaped death and later suffered exposure to radiation are also not mentioned.

In Bangladesh, a two-storey building in Dacca houses the Liberation War Museum. This place provides the Bangladeshi perspective on the history of East Pakistan from the days of British rule to 1971. Bones and skulls attributed to be those of Bengalis recovered from the killing fields in Mirpur, Dhaka, stare at the visitor from their glass displays. An image shows vultures picking at the bodies of those left for dead. Another image portrays a snake stretched out on the back of a dead body symbolising an unknown victim of the cyclone that battered East Pakistan in 1970. The slow aid response to this cyclone by West Pakistan led to an increased feeling of alienation amongst the Bengalis. Images of slain army officers, women and intellectuals dot other walls. Nowhere on these walls are found the images of Punjabis, Pathans and Bihari civilians slaughtered in Chittagong and other areas. That massacre, carried out in the last week of March and early April 1971, was reported at that time by The Sunday Times of London, The Washington Evening Star and The New York Times. The images of their burnt houses are also missing.

The federal government of the time rightly chose to prevent the publication of news related to these horrific events to prevent reprisals against its Bengali citizens residing in West Pakistan and also not to wreck the prospects of a possible negotiated settlement with the Awami League. However, harrowing eyewitness accounts of atrocities later got published in the 1974 book titled Blood and Tears written by Mr Qutubuddin Aziz, a former diplomat and lecturer. Telling partial history is not a service to the people of Bangladesh. If history needs to be told it better be told completely and then the people must judge for themselves.

It is indeed regrettable that what is alleged to have been done by all sides to the conflict in varying degrees is in contradiction to the teachings of the faith both claim to follow. The rules of engagement during war were made humane by Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) centuries before the Geneva Convention on war crimes. He (PBUH) had prohibited the killing of non-combatants such as women, minors, the sick, servants and slaves, monks, hermits, the insane, very old persons, killing prisoners of war except in very exceptional circumstances, cruel and torturous ways of killing, mutilation of killed enemies, destruction of crops, unnecessary cutting of trees, slaughtering animals more than what were necessary for food, burning of houses, killing of enemy hostages even in retaliation, severing the head of a fallen enemy and presenting it to a higher authority, general massacre when the enemy is vanquished and his land occupied, killing peasants, traders, merchants, artisans and contractors when they do not take part in actual fighting and burning a captured man.

Both sides having wrested independence of their common nation from the British together in 1947 were combatants in a war that was a rebellion from the perspective of one and a war of liberation from that of the other. Both were obligated to treat each other fairly. The commandments related to war as spelled out by Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) were applicable to both. That a sizable number turned a blind eye to these wonderful teachings points to another malaise that affects society in general. Ours is a society that observes the rituals but the essence of religion, which is humanity and peace for the self and others, is forgotten.

From a human rights point of view, what happened before, during and immediately after the creation of Bangladesh is a sad chapter in history. No party to the conflict, including the Bengalis, the militias and some other individuals, can claim innocence and will indeed be answerable for their actions to God in the hereafter even if prosecution in this world is escaped. While prosecution for war crimes may be a just cause, partisan justice is discrimination and deceit. If the Bangladeshis wish to prosecute fairly it would be appropriate if a neutral international tribunal were set up to try the individuals still alive and responsible for grave war crimes. Till that is done, trying those who may have killed Bengalis and letting go scot-free those who may have killed Pathans, Biharis and Punjabis and then were rewarded with positions and medallions, can only be termed injustice. The Punjabis, Bengalis and others dispossessed of their property and forced to leave their abodes are also lined up for justice. Bengalis were never alienated even after Bangladesh was created and those who even temporarily remained in Pakistan had ample time to dispose of their property. Some even chose to stay permanently. The late Nurul Amin, an Awami League-winning candidate in the 1970 elections, became the vice president of Pakistan. Raja Tridev Roy the Chakma Raja, became a minister in Bhutto’s cabinet. Ironically, Tridev Roy’s mother headed the Bangladeshi delegation to New York to apply for admission to the UN. Unfortunately, we do not find such examples there.

It is time to move on. The South African example is the real way forward for Bangladesh. If the blacks of South Africa could forgive and forget why can our Bangladeshi brothers not do so? Wounds need to be permanently healed. Reopening them is not an option.

The writer can be reached at thelogicalguy@yahoo.com