Intellectual Killing and War Crimes in Bangladesh

Published in the African Herald Express
December 17, 2012

– Dr. Rashid Askari – 

As far as human history is concerned, the event of killing intellectuals dates back to Socratic time. Socrates (c.470-399) himself was wrongly convicted by Athenian Assembly, and sentenced to death by drinking hemlock for his compelling personality, dauntless courage, and quest for knowledge. The polish astronomer Copernicus (1473-1543) faced violent opposition from the Church for his heterodox thoughts.

The Italian philosopher and logician Bruno (1548-1600) was burnt at the stake for his unorthodox views. The Italian astronomer and physicist Galileo (1564-1642) was forced to recant his views, and was placed under house-arrest for the remainder of his life by the religious authorities. A series of examples of intellectuals persecuted and killed for their unconventional role can be cited, but what happened to the intellectuals in Bangladesh during the Liberation War (1971) bears no comparison in recorded history.

Intellectuals are the best brains of a country and the conscience of a nation. They are the friends, philosophers, and guides of the people. They are determined to get at the truth, espouse certain ideals, and keep the torch of idealism alive. So, the vested interests are always the very antithesis of the intellectuals. This is what we saw in our great Liberation War. It was an inevitable outcome of our social, economic, cultural, and political awareness generated by our intellectuals and quickened by the political leaders. The intellectuals’ ideals and actions earned them the enmity of the people who stood against the Liberation War.

While the marauding Pakistan Army along with their accomplices, the Razakar, the Al-Badar and Al-Shams, were terribly fought back and kept at bay, they were compelled to beat a retreat sensing immediate danger. But before they surrendered, they did not forget to shoot their last bolt at the formidable intellectuals of our country. The distinguished Bengali intellectuals including poets, litterateurs, journalists, artists, physicians, engineers, lawyers, educationists, philosophers were brought from their houses, and killed at Rayerbazar badhya-bhumi (killing ground) and Mirpur in Gestapo manner.

The way those eminent intellectuals of the soil were killed was extremely barbaric. Their hands were tied back, and they were shot in the head. Some were buried alive, and some were found with their eyes plucked. Many of the distorted corpses were barely recognizable. From the badhya-bhumi, the dead bodies of Professor Abul Kalam Azad, Dr. Fazle Rabby, Dr. Alim Chowdhury, Dr. A. Khair, and Dr. Kamal Uddin could be identified, while those of Sahidullah Kaiser, Professor Munier Chowdhury, Professor Mofazzal Haider Chowdhury, Professor Giashuddin Ahmed and many others could not be recognized. We have heard of the blood-curdling story of atrocity of the gas chambers of the Nazis. We could not even think of the recurrence of such a heinous act in our own country. We wondered at the harrowing fact, and felt numb with terrible shock. The whole nation became mute and motionless. We suffered too heavy losses!

The paramilitary force Al-Badr, which was formed in September 1971 under the auspices of General Niazi, chief of the Eastern Command of the Pakistan Army, was the instigator of that hideous massacre. Their objective was to strike panic into the people by abduction and killing. It was the military adviser to the Governor, Major General Rao Forman Ali who masterminded the whole conspiracy to extinguish the intellectuals and the higher educated class in collaboration with their local allies. If they had had one week time more, they would have killed all the Bengali intellectuals, which was a part of their hidden agenda. The Badr force was in fact, a special terrorist faction of the then Jamaat-e-Islami led by Moududi, Golam Azam, and Abdur Rahim.

A careful analysis of the incidents reveals the testimony to the fact that the killing of the intellectual occurred schematically in three phases. The first phase includes the random killing of the intellectuals until the first week of April 1971 in different places of the country, including the universities. On the night of 25 March 1971, ten most distinguished intellectuals were killed at Dhaka University. The killing was a part of the genocide launched by the Pakistan Occupation Army. The planned killing had not yet started.

During the second phase, Jamaat-e-Islami as part of their party policy had planned to kill all progressive intellectuals. The greedy, unscrupulous, orthodox, and extremist intellectuals joined hands with them and carried on with the killings from April to December 1971.

The third phase includes the intellectuals who were killed from the last week of November to the last week of December. Being the victims of a deliberate international conspiracy, they were killed in an operation directly conducted by the Pakistani generals. Among the martyrs of the third phase, some were the targets of only Jamaat, some of international conspiracy, and some of both.

The leaders of Jamaat-e-Islami submitted their intellectuals’ extermination plan to Rao Forman Ali. The unprincipled anti-liberation intellectuals helped the Pakistani Army to locate the targeted intellectuals. To execute the plan for their abduction, some derailed university students and journalists were used. Considering the abduction operation unbecoming of the regular Army, Rao Forman Ali made use of the Badr force in this intellectual killing mission.

Immediately after submitting the killing plan, Golam Azam, along with the chief of the Razakars, Mohammad Yunus, and the liaison officer of the Peace Committee, Mahbubur Rahman Gurha, went to see the training of the Razakar and Al-Badr at Mohammadpur Physical Training College. From then on, the Student Sangha all over the country was transformed into Al-Badr and in the last week of November (1971) and first half of December (1971), the list of the intellectuals was handed over to them.

On December 4, 1971, began the imposed curfew and black out to pave the way for abduction of the intellectuals. The preparation started extensively from December 10. Amid curfew and black out, a Badr bus, stained with mud, picked up the listed intellectuals from their residences. Then they were taken to the Al-Badr headquarter at the Physical Training College for interrogation and persecution. At dead of night they were taken to Rayerbazar brick field and brutally killed. Another killing also took place at Mirpur. This is how a lot of intellectuals were killed in a few hours or days or months before the final victory coming to the climax of the Liberation War.

What we call ‘war crime’ has a long history. In fact, perfidy has existed in human societies over the centuries. It has been tried under customary laws. In the Hague Convention of 1899 and 1907, these customary laws were clarified. The modern concept of ‘war crime’ however, has developed through the Nuremberg trails which were held basing on the definition of the London Charter published in 1945. The customary law defines ‘war crimes’ as crimes against humanity and peace.

Over the last century, many other treaties also introduced positive laws that put constraints on belligerents in light of which the nature of war crime can be determined. War crimes include mistreatment of prisoners of war or civilian and mass murder or genocide. Under the Nuremberg principles, the supreme intentional crime is that of waging a war of aggression. In addition, the war crimes that are defined in the statute which established the International Criminal Court, include:

1. Breaches of the Geneva Convention, such as deliberate killing or causing great suffering or serious injury to body or wealth.

2. Torture or inhuman treatment.

3. Unlawful deportation, confinement, or transfer.

The people who killed and who had been accessories before and after the fact can be considered as war criminals by all implications of the term. They must be accused of aiding and abetting the crime. Hence they were in breach of the Geneva Convention, and crossed all limits of simple human decency in their treatment of the stranded intellectuals. They joined hands with Pakistan occupation force that willfully launched an armed war of aggression against the innocent peace-loving people and unarmed civilians. They caused untold sufferings, irrecoverable physical and economic harm to them, and wanton destruction to national wealth. They made the abducted intellectuals undergo cruel confinement and barbaric torture in the torture chambers, until they were killed. This is how, they have successfully fulfilled all the criteria for being war criminals. They should have been brought to justice much earlier on the sovereign soil of independent Bangladesh. But quite unfortunately for us, they had been going with impunity. The long arm of the law could not even touch the tuft of their hair. Quite contrarily they gained ground little by little. Backed by the opportunist power hunters of the right-wing coalition, they had been able to savour the taste of power. Not only that, the war criminals went to the extent of passing most derogatory remarks on the Liberation War itself, and denying the existence of any anti-liberation forces in Bangladesh. This well becomes them to malign the image of the Liberation War.

Ali Ahsan Mujaheed, who never saw the existence of any war criminals in Bangladesh, was the erstwhile president of East Pakistan Islami Chhatra Shagha, and one of the top brass of Al-Badr force. He helped the occupation army in carrying out the bloody massacre, plunder, and rape. He, too, it is credibly alleged, had his role in the brutal killing of the intellectuals on December 14, 1971. Quader Mollah was dubbed as ‘butcher’ in his neighborhood. He, it is too credibly alleged, started killing people even before the occupation army launched genocide.

We know it full well who the war criminals are. The party they belonged to remained banned until 1976. After the ban was lifted, they have resumed their activities with renewed interest, and are posing serious threats to the hardest earned ideals of our Liberation War. The war criminals’ existence and the Independence ideals cannot go hand in hand. They are ideologically, socially, and politically incompatible.

We had long failed to try the war criminals! The Founding Father of the Nation Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, after having assumed the power of the prime minister arrested 37,000 people on charges of war crimes, and launched the trial under seventy three tribunals across the country as per a Collaborators Act. Afterwards the criminals to lesser degree (11000) were granted general amnesty. But the remaining 26,000 were still undergoing trial until Mujib was killed in August, 1975. To our great shock and horror, all the war criminals in custody got off scot-free when the post-Mujib military government of General Zia abrogated the Collaborators Act.

But it is never late to mend. We always have a tremendous popular support for this trial and a considerable public disquiet about some government’s unwillingness to do it. The Great Alliance Government (2009- ) has trod the path that their predecessors did not. They have started the lone-awaited trial of the war criminals. The top brass have been arrested and are standing trail. By this month of victory (December) the tribunal is expected to deal out sentences at least to some of the criminals. The people are looking forward to seeing how Sheikh Hasina’s Government carries out the whole trial procedure, accomplishes this serious task, and fulfils popular expectation.

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Dr. Rashid Askari writes fiction and columns, and teaches English literatures at Kushtia Islamic University, Bangladesh.