Bangladesh's Quest For Closure

Can the execution of Mujibs assassins finally

deliver the country from its darkest chapter?
By SALIL TRIPATHI | 1 April 2010

AQUARTER CENTURY AGO I met a man who calmly told me how he had
organised the massacre of a family. He wasnt confessing out of a sense of
remorse; he was bragging about it, grinning as he spoke to me. I was a
young reporter on assignment in Dhaka, trying to figure out what had
gone wrong with Bangladesh, which had emerged as an independent
nation after a bloody war of liberation 15 years earlier, in 1971. The man I
was interviewing lived in a well-appointed home. Soldiers protected his
house, checking the bags and identification of all visitors. A week earlier
he had been a presidential candidate, losing by a huge margin.
He wore a Pathani outfit that looked out of place in a country where
civilian politicians wore white kurtas and black vests, and men on the
streets went about in lungis. He had a thin moustache. He stared at me
eagerly as we spoke, curious about the notes I was taking, trying to read
what I was writing in my notepad. He sat straight on a sofa, his chest
thrust forward, as if he was still in uniform. He looked like a man playing a
high stakes game, assured that he would win, because he knew someone
important who held all the cards.
His name was Farooq Rahman, and he had been an army major, and
later, lieutenant-colonel. He had returned to Bangladesh recently, after
several years in exile in Libya. Before dawn on 15 August 1975, he led the
Bengal Lancers, the armys tank unit under his command, to disarm the
Rokkhi Bahini, a paramilitary force loyal to President Sheikh Mujibur
Rahman and his Awami League party. When he left the Dhaka
Cantonment, he had instructed other officers and soldiers to go to the
upscale residential area of Dhanmondi, where Mujib, as he was popularly
known, lived. Soon after 5:00 am, the officers had killed Mujib and most
of his family.
I had been rehearsing how to ask Farooq about his role in the
assassination. I had no idea how he would respond. After a few desultory
questions about the countrys political situation, I tentatively began, It
has been widely reported in Bangladesh that you were somehow
connected with the plot to remove Mujibur Rahman from power in 1975.
Would you
Of course, we killed him, he interrupted me. He had to go, he said,
before I could complete my hesitant, longwinded question.
FAROOQ RAHMAN BELIEVED he had saved the nation. The
governments that followed Mujib reinforced that perception, rewarding
him and the other assassins with respectability, political space, and plum
diplomatic assignments. One of Mujibs surviving daughters, Sheikh

Hasina Wajed, who inherited his political mantle and who was to become
the prime minister of Bangladesh, was marginalised for many years. She
lived for a while in exile, and for some time, was detained. The political
landscape after Mujibs murder was unstable. Bangladesh has had 11
prime ministers and over a dozen heads of state in its 39-year history.
Hasina was determined to redeem her fathers reputation and seek
justice, and her quest has larger implications for Bangladeshs citizenry.
Hundreds of thousandsand by some estimates perhaps three million
people were killed during Bangladeshs war of independence in 1971. Tens
of thousands of Bangladeshis now wait for justiceto see those who
harmed them and their loved ones brought to account. But the culture of
impunity hasnt disappeared. It took more than three decades for Sheikh
Hasina to receive some measure of vindication.
SOMETIME IN THE AFTERNOON of 27 January this year, Mahfuz Anam
received a call from an official, saying that the end was imminent. Anam
was in the newsroom of Bangladeshs leading English newspaper, The
Daily Star, which he edits. He knew what the message meant: perhaps
within hours, five menFarooq, Lt-Col Sultan Shahriar Rashid Khan, LtCol Mohiuddin Ahmed, Maj Bazlul Huda, and army lancer AKM Mohiuddin
would be hanged by the neck until dead at the citys central jail. Anam
told his reporters to be prepared, and sent several reporters and
photographers to cover the executions.
We had hints that the end was near, particularly when the relatives of
the five men were asked to come and meet them with hardly any notice,
Anam told me during a long telephone conversation a week after the
executions. The authorities had told the immediate families that there
were no limits on the number of relatives who could come, and they were
allowed to remain with them until well after visiting hours. We knew that
the final hours had come.
Once the families left, the five men were sent to their cells. They were
told to take a bath and to offer their night prayers. Then the guards asked
them if they wanted to eat anything special. A cleric came, offering to
read from the Quran. Around 10:30 pm, a reporter called Anam to say
that the citys civil surgeon, Mushfiqur Rahman, and district magistrate
Zillur Rahman had arrived at the jail. Police vans arrived 50 minutes later,
carrying five coffins. The anti-crime unit, known as the Rapid Action
Battalion, took positions providing support to the regular police force to
prevent demonstrations. Other leading officials came within minutes: the
home secretary, the inspector general of prisons, and the police
commissioner. Rashida Ahmad, news editor at the online news agency,
bdnews24.com, recalls: Many media houses practically decamped en
masse to the jail to experience a historic moment firsthand. Anam told
me, By 11:35 pm, we knew it would happen that night. We held back our
first edition. The second edition had the detailed story.
Bazlul Huda was the first to be taken to the gallows. He was handcuffed,
and a black hood covered his face. Eyewitnesses have said Huda struggled
to free himself and screamed loudly, as guards led him to the brightly lit
room. An official waved and dropped a red handkerchief on the ground,

the signal for the executioner to proceed. It was just after midnight when
Huda died. Muhiuddin Ahmed was next, followed by Farooq, Shahriar, and
AKM Muhiuddin. It was all over soon after 1:00 am.
Earlier that day, the Supreme Court had rejected the final appeal of four
of the five convicts. Shahriar was the only one not to seek presidential
pardon. His daughter Shehnaz, who spent two hours with her father that
evening, later told bdnews24.com, My father was a freedom fighter; and
a man who fights for the independence of his country never begs for his
life.
Mujibs daughter, Sheikh Hasina, was at her prime ministerial home that
night. She was informed when the executions began, and she reportedly
asked to be left alone, and later offered namaz-e-shukran (a prayer of
gratitude). Many people, most of them supporters of the Awami League,
had gathered outside her house that night, but she did not come out to
meet anybody. A few days later, she told a party convention that it was a
moment of joy for all of them, because due process had been served.
The mood was sober and subdued. Dhaka residents I spoke to told me the
celebrations were only in certain localities. Ahmad, who was at her news
desk until late at bdnews24.com, wrote to me, saying the mood was
sombre, and many looked at it as a time for reflection, although that night
and the following day there was muted rejoicing in some areas. Many
could understand Hasina thanking God, and other politicians welcoming
the closing of a dark chapter, but some felt it a bit much that parliament
itself thanked God and adjourned for the day, she said.
The chapter is not yet closed. In early February, Awami League activists
ransacked and set afire the home of the brother of Aziz Pasha, one of the
self-confessed conspirators who had died in exile in Zimbabwe a few years
ago. Six other conspirators remain at large, and the Government says it is
determined to bring them back.
CALL IT JUSTICE, REVENGE, or closure. It has taken 34 years for this
particular saga to reach its end. Khondaker Mushtaq Ahmed, who took
over as Bangladeshs president after Mujibs assassination, had granted
the officers immunity and praised the assassins. General Ziaur Rehman,
who later became president, confirmed the immunity. A series of articles
in August 2005 were published simultaneously in The Daily Star and
Prothom Alo, commemorating the 30th anniversary of the coup dtat that
killed Mujib and much of his family. Lawrence Lifschultz, an American
journalist who had been South Asia Correspondent of the Far Eastern
Economic Review in the 1970s, revealed that one of his principal sources,
alleging CIA links with the political leadership of the coup, was the US
Ambassador to Bangladesh, Eugene Boster.
While Boster sought anonymity during his lifetime, Lifschultz disclosed
after Bosters death that the ambassador had in 1977 informed he and his
colleague, the American writer, Kai Bird, that the US Embassy had
contacts with the Khondaker group six months before the coup, and that

the ambassador had himself ordered that all links with Khondaker and his
entourage be severed. Boster claimed he learned later that behind his
back the contacts continued with Khondakers associates until the actual
day of the coup.
In their book, Bangladesh: The Unfinished Revolution (1979), Lifschultz
and Bird document Khondakers prior links to a failed Kissinger initiative
during the 1971 war. Khondakers colleagues in Bangladeshs
government-in-exile had discovered his covert contacts with Kissinger,
and it ended with him being placed under house arrest in Calcutta. Four
years later, Khondakerwho was in Mujibs cabinetbecame president
after the military coup, and once in office, he granted immunity to the
assassins.
Later governments gave some of the assassins high-ranking posts, even
though these men had conspired to eliminate the countrys elected leader.
Lt-Col Shariful Haq Dalim represented Bangladesh in Beijing, Hong Kong,
Tripoli, and became high commissioner to Kenya, even though he had
attempted another coup in 1980. Lt-Col Aziz Pasha served in Rome,
Nairobi, and Harare, where he sought asylum when Hasina first came to
power in 1996. She removed him; he stayed on in Harare, and died there.
Maj Huda was briefly a member of parliament, and also served in
Islamabad and Jeddah. Other conspirators served Bangladeshi missions in
Bangkok, Lagos, Dakar, Ankara, Jakarta, Tokyo, Muscat, Cairo, Kuala
Lumpur, Ottawa, and Manila.
The Oxford-trained lawyer, Kamal Hossain, who was Mujibs law minister,
and later foreign minister, told me, The impunity with which Farooq
operated was extraordinary. When he returned to Bangladesh, the
government facilitated him and President [Hussain Muhammad] Ershad,
who wanted some candidate to stand against him in the rigged elections.
[Ershad] let Farooq stand to give himself credibility.
It was clear that a trial of the assassins would only be possible if Mujibs
party, the Awami League, came to power. That happened in 1996, and
Mujibs daughter, Sheikh Hasina, became prime minister. The cases began
and the court found all 12 defendants guilty. But Hasina lost the 2001
elections, and the process stopped, resuming only after her victory in the
elections of December 2008. The government now wants to bring the
surviving officers back to Bangladesh: Noor Chowdhury is reportedly in
the United States; Dalim is in Canada; Khandaker Abdul Rashid, Farooqs
brother-in-law, is in Pakistan; MA Rashed Chowdhury is in South Africa;
Mosleuddin is in Thailand; and Abdul Mazed is in Kenya. Bringing all of
them back may not be easy, because they will face executions. Canada
and South Africa have abolished the death penalty, and Kenya put a stop
to it recently, making it harder for those governments to extradite them.
How does a nation, whose independence was soaked with blood, which
lost a popular leader of its freedom struggle in a brutal massacre,
reconcile with that crime? What form of justice is fair? Does the death
penalty heal those wounds?

Bangladesh thinks so. It is among the 58 countries (including India) that

retain the death penalty, but it applies it only in rare cases, like murder.
In 2008, five people were executed in Bangladesh. Many governments
oppose the death penalty on principle, and the European Union appealed
to the Bangladeshi government to commute the sentence of Mujibs
assassins. The human rights group Amnesty International also sought
clemency, while agreeing that the men should face justice.
Bangladeshi human rights lawyers have found it hard to challenge the
death penalty because it is not controversial in Bangladesh. There are also
political exigencies. One human rights activist told me, We are against
[the] death penalty but the dilemma is that we are in a country where life
imprisonment really means imprisonment guaranteed until your party is in
power. The death penalty is almost seen as the only way to guarantee
justice for such a grisly crime.
Grisly, it certainly was. This is what happened.
IN 1975, Dhanmondi hadnt changed much from how it looked at
Independence, with roads lined with two-storey houses dating back to the
1950s. Today, there are multi-storey buildings, English-medium schools,
new universities, shopping malls and hookah bars to lure younger crowds.
Back in 1975, the area was quieter. In the evening, people strolled along
the periphery of the large lake in the middle of the neighbourhood and at
night you could hear the tinkle of the bells of the cycle rickshaws plying
the roads.
On 15 August 1975, before dawn, 700 soldiers with 105 millimetre
weapons left their barracks and headed for the three homes where Mujib
and his family lived. Everyone was still asleep at Mujibs home, number
677 on road 32 in Dhanomondi. Mujibs personal assistant, Mohitul Islam,
was at his desk when Mujib called him, asking him to call the police
immediately. Mujib had heard his brother-in-law Abdur Rab Serniabats
house at 27 Minto Road was being attacked. Serniabat was a minister in
Mujibs government.
Mohitulwho lived to tell the taletried calling the police, but the phones
werent working. When he called the telephone exchange, the person at
the other end said nothing. Mujib snatched the phone and shouted into
the mouthpiece.
The guards outside were hoisting the national flag when the soldiers
arrived. The guards were stunned to find army officers rushing in through
the gate, ordering them to drop their weapons and surrender. There were
a few shots.
A frightened servant woke up Mujibs son Kamal, who got dressed and
came down when Maj Bazlul Huda entered the house with several soldiers.
Even as Mohitul tried telling Huda that it was Kamal, there was a burst of
gunfire; Kamal lay dead. Huda quickly went to the landing of the staircase
when he heard Mujibs voice.

What do you want? Mujib asked Huda, whom he recognised.

The soldiers pulled their triggers, spraying Mujib with dozens of bullets.
Before his burial the following day in his birthplace, Tungipara, the imam
noticed at least ten bullets still lodged inside Mujibs body. When I visited
the house in 1986, I saw dozens of bullet marks on the wall and staircase
where he was killed. Mujib had collapsed on the stairs; his trademark pipe
in his hands. He was dead by the time his body stopped tumbling down
the stairs.
The killers then went inside the house, and one by one, killed everyone
they could find: Mujibs wife Fajilutunessa, Kamals wife Sultana, Mujibs
other son Jamal and his wife Rosy, and Mujibs brother Naser, who was
heard pleading, I am not in politics.
Then they saw Russell, Mujibs ten-year-old son, who was crying, asking
for his mother. He, too, was killed.
Around the same time, another group of soldiers had killed Mujibs
brother-in-law, Serniabat at his home, and a third group had murdered
the family of Fazlul Haque Moni, Mujibs nephew, an influential Awami
League politician who lived on road 13/1, about two kilometres away from
Mujibs home. At that time, Mahfuz Anam was a young reporter at the
Bangladesh Times. He lived across the Dhanmandi Lake, and had a clear
view of Sheikh Monis house. I saw what happened, he recalled. Early
that morning I was awakened by the sound of firing. I got up. My room
was on the side of the lake. I ventured out to the boundary wall. I saw
troops enter Sheikh Monis house. I heard plenty of firing, followed by
screaming. I heard shotssome random, some from sub-machine guns. I
saw the troops leave the house. It was all over in four to six minutes. I
could hear the people inside groaning; it continued for some time.
The junior officers coup had proceeded exactly as planned. There had
been no resistance from the moment Huda and his team had reached
Mujibs home. After taming the Rokkhi Bahini, Farooq arrived at Mujibs
gate, eager to know what had happened at Mujibs home. Huda told him
calmly, All are finished.
When we met a decade after those killings, I asked Farooq, one of the
leading conspirators, And the ten-year-old boy: did he have to be killed?
It was an act of mercy killing. Mujib was building a dynasty; we had to
finish off all of them, he told me with a degree of finality, his arm slicing
ruthlessly in the air, as if he was chopping off the head of someone
kneeling in front of him. There was no mercy in his eyes, no remorse, only
a hint of pride.
They had tried killing the entire family, but they could not get Mujibs two
daughters, Hasina and Rehana, who were on a goodwill tour in Europe.
Hasina was in Bonn, Germany, where her husband, MA Wazed Miah, a
nuclear scientist, was a researcher at a laboratory (He died in May 2009).

Kamal Hossain, Mujibs cabinet minister, was on an official visit to

Belgrade. Speaking a week after the executions of Mujibs killers, he told
me, I first heard there had been a coup. Later, at the home of the
Bangladesh Ambassador to Yugoslavia, we sat listening to French radio,
and more information began coming out. We heard about Mujibs death,
then we heard about the other family members. My first thought was
Hasinas safety. He met her in Bonn and decided to sever his relations
with the new government. He handed in his official passport to the
ambassador, and left for England, which had better links with Bangladesh,
and where getting information would be easier. Hasina, too, decided there
was no need for her to go back. She was granted asylum in India and
lived in New Delhi with her husband until 1981. Hossain returned to
Dhaka in 1980.
IN OCTOBER 1986, I visited Mujibs house, the mute witness to the
ghastly events of that dawn. As if to ensure that no one will forget the
tragedy, Hasina, who showed me around, had made only minimal changes
to the house, preserving the crime scene. The bare walls bore bullet
marks. Shattered glass lay on the ground of what was once Mujibs
library. On the staircase on which Mujib was shot, and on the wall which
he tried to grip for support as he fell, darkened blood stains were still
visible.
Mujib was 55 when he was killed. He had been in and out of Pakistani
jails, and was widely regardedand initially reveredas Bangladeshs
founding father. At the time of Partition, what is now known as
Bangladesh formed the eastern wing of Pakistan. The two parts of
Pakistan were divided by thousands of kilometres of Indian territory.
Islam united the two, but culture, language and the idea of nationhood
divided them. The eastern half was more populous, and should
legitimately have commanded greater resources, but the generals and
politicians in power in the western half disregarded eastern demands,
responding to eastern claims with contempt, if not repression. Punjabis
dominated the Sindhis, Baluchis, and Pathans in the west, and they had
even less regard for their Bengali compatriots.
Things came to a head in 1970, when in nationwide elections, Awami
League secured a majority. Mujib should have been invited to become
Pakistans prime minister, but the generals and politicians in the west
thought differently. Mujibs negotiations with Gen Yahya Khan, Pakistans
ruler, and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, leader of the Pakistan Peoples Party which
had won a large number of seats in the west, continued interminably.
Meanwhile, Yahya Khan sent Gen Tikka Khan to Dhaka. Many
Bangladeshis remember planeloads of young men arriving on flights from
the west. They were military men but not in uniform, and they did not
carry weapons. Meanwhile, Pakistans navy was shipping weapons through
ports like Chittagong, keeping Bengali officers in the dark, and secretly
arming the men who had landed in Dhaka.
The crackdown began on 25 March 1971, as the Pakistani army brutally
attempted to crush Bengali aspirations. Mujib was jailed in West Pakistan.
In the east, hundreds of thousands were killed, and millions of refugees

made their way to India. A civil war followed, and India aided the Mukti
Bahini, as Bangladeshi freedom fighters were called. In early December,
Pakistan attacked India on its western front; India retaliated, and its
troops defeated Pakistan on both fronts within a fortnight. Indian troops
entered Dhaka, and thousands of Pakistani troops surrendered. A few
weeks later Mujib returned to the Tejgaon airport. A sea of humanity
greeted the leader of the new nation, Bangladesh.
Three and a half years later, Farooq and his men annihilated most of
Mujibs family. Even dogs didnt bark when we killed Mujib, Farooq told
me.
THE SHEIKH MUJIBUR RAHMAN of 1975 was not the Sheikh Mujibur
Rahman of 1971. He squandered his unprecedented goodwill for two
reasons. First, he could not meet the phenomenal expectations
Bangladeshis had in his leadership. Lifschultz, who was based in Dhaka in
1974, remembers the day when Pakistans Prime Minister, Zulifikar Ali
Bhutto, visited Bangladesh for the first time since its independence from
Pakistan. As Bhuttos motorcade moved from the airport into central
Dhaka, a section of the crowd lining the street shouted, Bhutto Zindabad
(Long Live Bhutto).
Lifschultz thought this was rather bizarre. He told me there were
conflicted feelings among some Bangladeshis who in 1974 were living
through the first stages of a severe famine. Clearly, some believed their
hopes had been belied, but to him, the cheering of Bhutto seemed
particularly perverse, given the circumstances of Bangladeshs
emergence.
BANGLADESHI FRUSTRATION with Mujib was understandable. By mid1974, Bangladesh was reeling from a widespread famine that experts
believe was at least partly due to political incompetence. Citizens were
also stunned by the ostentatious weddings of Mujibs sons at a time of
economic crisis. Food distribution had failed, and people were forced to
sell their farm animals to buy rice. Thousands of poor people left their
villages looking for work in the cities. Irene Khan, who was until recently
the Secretary-General of Amnesty International, was a schoolgirl in the
early 1970s. She recalls hungry voices clamouring for food outside the
gates of her family home every day.
With public criticism over the mass starvation growing, Mujib clamped
down on dissent. He abolished political parties and created one national
party called Bangladesh Krishak Shramik Awami League (BAKSAL);
removed free-thinking experts who did not agree with his policies;
nationalised newspapers (closing most), and allowed only two eachin
Bangla and in English. He stifled dissent within the party, suspended the
constitution, and declared himself president. Now editor of The Daily Star,
Anam calls those measures the greatest blunder Mujib made. It is still a
mystery what led him to do that. He had it all. There was nothing, nobody
in the parliament opposed to his policies, except for a few voices. He was
the tallest man in the country. Why did he do it? It was in total contrast to

his political heritage. It was a dramatic transformation from a multiparty

system to a one party state.
The only time I met Farooq, in 1986, he expressed outrage at those
changes, How do you pass an amendment in Parliament which abolishes
party membership in just 11 minutes? No discussions, nothing!
Bangladesh, in his opinion, was becoming a colony of India, and as a
freedom fighter, he thought he had to stop that. I tried to save the
country, he told me, his tone rising, Mujib had changed the constitution
so that the court could not do a thing. All power was with the president.
None of Farooqs explanations justified the terrible manner in which he
and his family were killed, but the famine and his increasingly
authoritarian rule partly explains why there was little outward expression
of grief after his assassination. At the same time, it was not just Mujibs
killing, but the brutality of it, that many Bangladeshis felt justified the
death penalty for the assassins.
Justice moves slowly in Bangladesh. According to a recent study,
Bangladeshs jails can hold only 27,000 prisoners, but there are some
70,000 inmates in jail, and some 47,000 are still awaiting trial, according
to the inspector-general of prisons. One reason for the backlog is the
shortage of judges. The other is that some defendants are too poor to
afford legal help.
The trial of Mujibs assassins falls under a different category. There was
little political will to try the assassins. That changed when Hasina came to
power. The five officers were sentenced to death as early as 1998. They
appealed, but higher courts upheld the sentence in April 2001 and
November 2009 respectively. They sought a Supreme Court review, and
later, four of the five applied for presidential pardon. While the
government meticulously followed the constitutional procedures, many
have noted the speed with which the final appeals were dealt with.
A four-member special bench of the Supreme Courts appellate division
met at 9:25 am and issued a verdict at 9:27 am, on 26 January 2010,
rejecting the review petition. Senior civil servants of the law and home
ministry met at noon, and discussed the issue for three hours. Farooq,
who had resisted writing his mercy petition, did so that afternoon. Officials
received and dispatched his petition within minutes, as they were all in
one room with colleagues whose approval was needed. A report on
bdnews24.com said that President Zillur Rahman rejected the petition at
7:30 pm (the hangings occurred soon after midnight).
The quick turnaround of the documents was remarkable. One lawyer told
me, What you saw wasnt due process; it was process with undue
speed.
THERE IS A SENSE IN DHAKA NOW, that the executions have brought
the tragedy to a close. Perhaps; but many other wounds continue to
fester. On the day of Mujibs killing in 1975, the officers had also arrested

Tajuddin Ahmed, Nazrul Islam, Kamaruzzaman, and Mansur Alifour

leading Awami League politicians suspected of being pro-Mujib. On the
night of 3 November 1975, soldiers came to the jail, and asked for the
four to be brought to one cell. The jail authorities tried to find out what
was going on, when a call from the president asked them to cooperate.
The soldiers then took out their weapons, and, without reading out any
charges, without any trial or any authority, sprayed bullets on them,
killing them instantly. Mosleuddin, involved with the 15 August killings,
proudly claimed to have played a role in the jail killings. Khondaker gave
the killers immunity. Some pro-Mujib officers overthrew Khondaker two
days later. A counter-coup followed, and the situation was stabilised
weeks later when Gen Ziaur Rahman took over, ending the pretence of
civilian rule. Tajuddins daughter, Simeen Hossain Rimi, has compiled her
fathers writings and sought justice. The government has said it will
pursue that case, too.
And then there are the war crimes.
When Hasina came to power in 2008, one of her electoral promises was to
seek justice for the victims of the 1971 war. Without getting into the
technical debate over whether what happened in Bangladesh in 1971 was
a genocidewhich is a legal term with a precise meaning in international
lawthere is enough evidence to prove that both war crimes and crimes
against humanity were committed in Bangladesh. Many of those who
committed those acts are still free: some live abroad, some in Pakistan
and some in Bangladesh, living with the same impunity as some of Mujibs
killers did until recently. These individuals resisted an independent
Bangladesh, and successive governments in Bangladesh havent pursued
the matter. Some governments lacked the political capital and will, some
had little moral authority, and some have even been complicit with some
of the crimes.
That context has changed with Hasinas recent victory.
Irene Khan, who worked for many years at the UN High Commission for
Refugees before leading Amnesty International, told me:
You can have debates about whether particular acts constitute war
crimes or genocide. You can debate whether what happened was a
war or an internal conflict. But they were crimes against humanity.
There was obviously culpability and collusion of some locals with the
Pakistani army. For instance, in December 1971, before the formal
handover to the Indian army, there was a whole list of intellectuals
who were picked up and killed. These were not political cases; these
were civilians. Those crimes have remained uninvestigated; it is
extremely important that there is a commission of inquiry, if
Bangladesh is to put a closure to this chapter of its history. Even if
you will have only a limited number of prosecutions, you need a full
record of what happened.
Pakistans own war inquiry commission report of 1974 mentions that tens

of thousands of civilians were killed, and many women were raped.

Bangladeshis find that report incomplete because it barely scratches the
surface of what happened.
Justice for those crimes against humanity wont be easy. At the time of
the final handover of Pakistani prisoners of war, India and Bangladesh
signed a tripartite treaty with Pakistan, which effectively granted
immunity to Pakistani soldiers. While Bangladesh passed a law
subsequently to try war criminals, that law only focused on Bangladeshi
collaborators, leaving out the Pakistani army. That issue has always been
brushed under the carpet, Irene Khan told me. The real question is: can
an international treaty sign away the rights to justice of victims? The
treaty absolves the Pakistani army and political leaders.
Realpolitik may have prevented going after Pakistanis, and domestic
politics made targeting local collaborators complicated. Hasinas rival was
Khaleda Zia, Ziaur Rahmans widow. She led the Bangladesh National
Party, which has had an electoral alliance with Jamaat-i-Islami, a
fundamentalist party. Some of the Jamaats leaders and many followers
are accused of being collaborationists.
The Bangladeshi government had said it would commence trials in March.
A tribunal was expected to be set up in Dhaka by 26 March, Bangladeshs
Independence Day, but nobody has been indicted yet, no prosecutors or
investigators have been appointed, and only Bangladeshi collaborators
will be tried. Some observers fear that the process will be seen as an
attack on Jamaat-i-Islami. If the initial indictees are only from the Jamaat,
they will claim they are being victimised, and the credibility of the process
will suffer. A fair process would also investigate the conduct of the Mukti
Bahini, the Bangladeshi freedom fighters who are alleged to have
committed atrocities against Urdu-speaking Biharis, many of whom
supported Pakistan.
And all this, to what end? It is a peoples quest for justice; a societys
desire to break the imposed silence. It is to reassert the norms that
govern a nation, to re-establish the foundations on which civilisation can
rest.
Irene Khan is not sure if the recent executions will help turn the tide
against the culture of impunity. This is a systemic problem in
Bangladesh, she says. There is impunity from the local policeman who
beats up a suspected thief, to the security forces who tortured and killed
suspected mutineers in interrogation cells. She refers to the failed
Bangladesh Rifles mutiny last year. Guards of Bangladesh Rifles objected
to army officers commanding them, so they held officers hostage, killing
many of them and ransacking the barracks, before surrendering.
Hundreds of mutineers were tortured later, and over 60 died.
THE CULTURE OF IMPUNITY runs deep. Hasina may think of reaching
closure for her personal grief. For millions of Bangladeshis, that remains
an elusive goal. Projonmo 71 is a social movement, bringing together the

children of those who died during the independence war. Staunchly

Bengali in their nationalism, many of its members are secular. Meghna
Guhathakurta, an academic who taught international relations at Dhaka
University and is now the director of Research Initiatives, a development
think tank, is one of them.
She vividly remembers the midnight of 25 March 1971. Her father,
Jyotirmoy Guhathakurta, who was a professor of English at Dhaka
University, was correcting examination papers. Schools and colleges were
closed, as Bangladeshis had embarked on a non-cooperation movement.
She feared her father would get arrested, and they had been warned.
An army convoy came to the campus. There were six apartments in the
building. The soldiers began banging on the doors. An officer and two
soldiers entered their ground floor apartment through the back garden.
The officer asked in Urdu, Where is the professor? Her mother asked
why they wanted to meet her husband. The officer said they had come to
take him away.
Where? she asked. The officer did not reply.
Guhathakurta told me what followed in a calm voice:
My mother called my father. The officer asked my father if he was the
professor. My father said yes. We have come to take you, he said.
Meanwhile, several other professors were being brought down. Some
families tried to hold them, but we told themlet them go, otherwise
they will shoot you. We turned around, and we heard the firing of
guns. And we saw all of them lying in a pool of blood. Some were
shouting for water. We rushed out to the front part of our compound.
I saw my father lying on the ground. He was fully conscious. He told
me they had asked him his name and his religion. He said he was a
Hindu, and they gave orders to shoot him. My father was hit by
bullets in his neck, his waist, and it left him paralysed. The soldiers
had run away. We took my father to the house. We could not take
him to the hospital because there was a curfew.
He remained in pain, and they could only take him to the hospital on 27
March, when the curfew was lifted. He died three days later.
I asked her about the executions of Mujibs assassins. I am against
impunity, and I am very much happy justice has been met, she said.
But I am not happy that we have the death penalty. Not every crime has
been tried yet.
She is a peace activist and has thought of forgiveness, but there is a
moral dilemma around that idea. British writer Gillian Slovo, who was
born in South Africa, had faced such a moral quandary in the years after
apartheid was lifted. During apartheid, Slovos father, Joe, led the South
African Communist Party, and he and her mother, Ruth, first lived in exile
in Mozambique, from where they carried on their anti-apartheid activism.

They were among the few whites to take on the South African regime (her
mother had been detained without trial in 1963, and the couple fled South
Africa after the African National Congress leadership was rounded up).
Tragedy struck in Mozambique, when agents of apartheid sent her a letter
bomb, which exploded, killing her.
Slovo ended up confronting the man responsible for sending that lethal
parcel to her mother. She discovered a copy of her book, which she had
autographed, had ended up with that man. I met Slovo in late 2008, soon
after the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, and I asked her if it was possible to
forgive. After all, South Africa had astounded the world with the Truth and
Reconciliation Commission, which offered a non-violent way in which the
oppressor and victim could resolve differences face to face. Slovo told me,
Lots of countries like truth commissions because they look at South
Africa and think of the miracle. But I am not sure if it was entirely
miraculous; it had its flaws, too. The commission was a compromise to
stop people from fighting. People need to see if the two sides want to stop
fighting first. It is impossible to otherwise start a process that goes so
deep. There is a difference between individual and collective responses.
South Africas experience reflected the thinking of an archbishop
[Desmond Tutu], whose church believed in forgiveness.
Guhathakurta had studied at a convent, and the Christian ideas of mercy
were ingrained in her as a child. She was 15 when her father was
murdered, and the impression of those school lessons was strong. She
told me, I remember the first thing I did was to say: I forgive those who
killed my father. But in a multicultural system it doesnt always work. Not
all religions are about forgiveness. Revenge is permitted in many
religions. Human beings have a primordial urge to take revenge.
Many years later, Guhathakurta was interviewing victims of 1971 for a
film. She was talking to those who escaped from killing fields, and families
of people who were victims. Thats when it occurred to her: trauma never
really ends. Her nightmares will always stay. She acknowledged her
anger. She did not want revenge; she wanted justice. She said:
For me, justice would be when the Pakistani government realises what
it did. But they have not even recognised the genocide. For me,
justice means something like Berlins Holocaust Museum is
constructed in Islamabad. I want to see signs where they say that
such an event took place, and it was our fault, because we did it, and
we are sorry. You cant ask the daughter to forgive the murderer of
her father. Revenge doesnt make sense, either. Just because my
father died doesnt mean yours has to die. But recognition, that
something took place, and the fact that it should not take place
againthats justice. The Holocaust museum says it happened,
therefore it can happen again.
Slovo had put it slightly differently: Real reconciliation only happens when
the terrible is acknowledged, so that you cant say it did not happen.

TOWARDS THE END of the Pakistani writer Kamila Shamsies novel,

Kartography, Maheen tells her niece Raheen, Bangladesh made us see
what we were capable of. No one should ever know what they are capable
of. But worse, even worse, is to see it and then pretend you didnt. The
truths we conceal dont disappear, Raheen, they appear in different
forms.
Bangladesh abounds with victimseach family has a horror story of its
own, where a loved one has been hurt grievously, and the ones who have
committed those atrocities have not faced justice, nor expressed remorse.
It is impossible to heal everyone. But honest accounting of what
happened would be a good start. Trying Mujibs killers, seeking the
extradition of those living abroad and solving the mystery of the jail
killings are useful steps in making sense of their warped politics, where
individuals bragging about killing defenceless people were being
rewarded.
Removing the culture of impunity will be a small step towards justicenot
necessarily through death penalties, but through remorse, forgiveness,
and reconciliation. Until that happens, the question Projonmo 71 left
inscribed on the plaque commemorating the martyred intellectuals at
Rayer Bazaar in Dhaka will continue to resound across the wounded rivers
and valleys, awaiting an answer: Tomra ja bolechhiley, bolchhey ki ta
Bangladesh? (Is Bangladesh saying what you had wanted to say?)