On trying the war criminals
About a year ago, senior figures associated with Jamaat-e-Islami created a furore by making extremely provocative statements about Bangladesh’s Liberation War - a war in which Jamaat’s members actively fought against the country’s independence, perpetrating some of the worst war crimes of that conflict along the way. Indeed, some of the very people making these statements themselves are alleged to be war criminals. The statement reignited the demands to bring the war criminals to a trial.
Here is a summary of the controversy. The reasons for Jamaat’s offensive wasn’t clear to me then (see here), and they’re no more clear now. What is clear to me though is that people like Matiur Rahman Nizami or Ali Ahsan Mujahid — the party’s two top ranking leaders — should be brought to justice for their actions in 1971. What is also clear to me is that the strategies — Shahrier Kabir’s writings linking war crimes trial with secularism or the Sector Commanders’ Forum’s call for banning Jamaat — adopted by those seeking a trial are not going to work. In this post, I offer an alternative approach. Looking forward to a good discussion.