International Crimes Tribunal of Dhaka
Yesterday, one of
the worse criminals of the XXI century was condemned to life imprisonment. His name
is Delwar Hossain Sayedee, he is 74 years old and he was one of the leaders of
the extremist party Jamaat-e-Islami in Bangladesh. During the Liberation War of
Bangladesh in 1971, he committed brutal crimes against humanity. Being now
accused of at least 20 crimes, the case went to Supreme Court and there he was
proven guilty of:
- torture a leader of the Awami League, Mr Nurul Islam, and arson attack on his house;
- killing one and torching house in the village of Chitholia;
- killing one and torching 25 houses in the village of Umedpur;
- abduction and rape of 3 sisters of Parerhat Bazar;
- forcing 100 to 150 Hindus to convert to Islam in Parerhat and other villages.
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| Delwar Hossain Sayedee, a Razakar |
Besides that, he was
accused of many other crimes, as killing more 65 people, raping countless Hindu
girls (many in Pakistani army camps), and torching civil houses in at least 17
other villages. Those charges lacked evidences for the judges. Mr Sayedee was
known as “Delu Razakar”. Razakars, as Al-Badr’s and Al-Shams were paramilitary militias
organized by the Pakistan Army to fight the freedom fighters in Bangladesh in
1971. These paramilitary forces, together with Pakistan Army, committed one of
the biggest genocides of history, killing 3 million people (specially Hindus,
other religious minorities, moderate Mulsims, Awami League party supporters and
country intellectuals), provoking an exodus of 10 million refugees and the
displacement of 30 million people million, and raping more than 200 thousand
Bangladeshi women, from whom thousands of war babies were born. Genocidal mass
rape was part of the military strategy and must be seen in this context: as General Tikka Khan (also known as the “Butcher of Bengal”) openly said "I
will reduce this majority to a minority".
Mr Sayedee is not the first person to be condemned for crimes
against humanity, for example Mr Abdul Quader Molla faced death sentence and was
hanged to death on the 12th of December 2013. Next judicial case to
be solved must be Azharul Islam’s,
who was an Al-Badr commander and is charged “with two acts of genocide that
left more than 1,200 people dead. The 61-year-old Jamaat assistant secretary
general was also charged with torture, looting, arson, abduction, rape, mass
killing and conspiracy to kill unarmed civilians in Rangpur”, reports the Daily Star.
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| Beautiful poster from 1971, saying that Hindus, Christians, Buddhists and Muslims, all are Bengali |
But now it is fair
to ask: if those crimes were committed in 1971, why they are being judged only
now? The problem was that during many years the Jamaat-e-Islami party was
influential enough to prevent his criminal members to be judged. Only in 2009 – 38 years after the liberation war – the International
Crimes Tribunal was set up, being supported by the Awami League government and
large sectors of Bangladeshi society, many of them young people who were born
after 1971, who gathered in huge numbers in the Shahbag area in Dhaka calling
for justice. The Shahbag Movement was one of the biggest protests in History of
moderate Muslims in a country with a Muslim majority. Although all the
political parties tried to take credits for these manifestations, it is now
clearer that the Shahbag Movement was spontaneously born within the civil
society, in a non-partisan way.
However, we must not
believe that Jamaat-e-Islami and other extremist groups are weak in Bangladesh.
On the contrary, these parties are richer than others, being very well financed
from abroad with donors in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar… Also, in the case of
Jamaat, they are self-financed through key businesses they control in Bangladesh, such as banks, hospitals, universities, madrasas, charities and
others. In fact, Jamaat-e-Islami called for hartal (strike) yesterday and
Sunday, in order to protest the condemnation of Mr Sayedee. Yesterday, some
clashes between Islami Chhatra Shibir (Jamaat-e-Islami’s youth political wing)
and the police were registered.
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| Al-Zawahiri announced in September 2014 a new Al-Qaeda chapter in South Asia |
Al-Qaeda in South Asia
Justice is being
made and Bangladesh is putting an end to impunity, which was undermining rule
of law. This is good news. We just have to hope that when other party comes to
power no amnesty must be given to such criminals. But while Bangladesh is
putting its terrorists into jail, others are coming to South Asia. Al-Qaeda’s leader,
Mr Al-Zawahiri, announced this month that Al-Qaeda is opening a new
chapter in South Asia. Besides Al-Qaeda’s support of the Taliban in
Afghanistan, experts admit that India will be the first priority for this
terrorist network and Myanmar and Bangladesh are probably the following
targets.
India’s Prime-Minister
Mr Narendra
Modi, told CNN today that Al-Qaeda will fail in India. He said “If anyone
thinks Indian Muslims will dance to their tune, they are delusional. Indian
Muslims will not want anything bad for India”. As Indian elections were won by
the Hindu-Nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), many political analysts
feared that discrimination laws and practices would flourish in the country,
marginalizing minorities and stablishing 1st and 2nd
class citizens. But those fears were not materialized so far and we must give this government the benefit of the doubt and
Mr Modi first steps in government seamed good. For example, after visiting
neighbouring countries, Mr Modi chose Japan as the first country to visit,
where he signed with Japan’s Prime Minister Mr Shinzo Abe the Tokyo
Declaration for India, to foster Indo-Japanese cooperation in domains as
important as Defence, Maritime Security, Cyber Security, Economic and
Technologic Partnership.
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| Tokio: Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi with Shinzo Abe, Prime Minister of Japan |
Even if Indian Muslims
are a minority (around 14,6%), India is also the 3rd country in the
world with more Muslims (177 million), next to Indonesia (204 million) and
Pakistan (178 million). Most of the Muslims in India are known as being quite moderate.
But one of the most significant clashes between Muslims and Hindus happened during
the tragic 2002 Gujarat riots, when Mr Modi was Gujarat’s Chief Minister. The challenge
is simple in theory and hard but possible in practice. If Muslims in India feel they are
being unfairly treated, they may become easy targets for jihadi
recruiters. But if Mr Modi choses the right words and his government choses the
right actions to integrate Muslim communities in India, he will succeed.
Most of Indian
Muslims are proud Indian, they want democracy and a pacific secular State. We should resist the prejudice of seeing in each
Muslim a potential terrorist. That is simply not fair. But we must also
recognize evidences, and reality is that Al-Qaeda terrorists are coming to
fight and bomb in South Asia. Al-Qaeda, as ISIS and other Islamic terrorist associations, uses a misinterpretation of Islam for
political purposes. South Asian politicians understand that their best allies
against Islamic terrorist groups are moderate Muslims themselves. They are the
ones who ultimately will expose this fraud and reject this foreign, far-away, backwards
ideology of fear. And India concretely has a long experience of both defending
against terrorist groups as Lashkar-e-Taiba, Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and other ISI (Pakistan Secret Services) supported groups, as
well of preventing communist attacks by the Naxalite guerrilla groups. With
Al-Qaeda opening a new chapter in South Asia, the free world should support
India in its fight against terrorism.
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| Dhaka: Shahbag protests in 2013, supporting the condemnation of 1971 war criminals |
To sum up
While extremists are
finally being put in jail in Bangladesh, others are coming to South Asia. Terrorism
never sleeps and this is our wake-up call: those who love freedom and liberty
should be vigilant and don’t let these extremists gain ground anywhere.
