Abdul Quader Molla of Bangladesh’s Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) became the first person accused of atrocities during the country’s independence war to be hanged. Whereas a number of senior leaders of the JI in that country are behind bars awaiting trials on similar charges, it fell to the lot of Molla to be the first to have his trial completed and be sentenced to death. A last minute hoped for reprieve when the Supreme Court took notice proved infructuous when the court refused to reverse the death sentence. There has been concern internationally that the tribunals trying the accused for their role in massacres carried out by the JI’s militias, Al Badr and Al Shams against intellectuals and ordinary citizens in what was then East Pakistan do not meet the highest international standards of fair trial.
There also does not appear to be in place a proper appeals process to ensure justice is not only done, but is seen to be done. The surprising fact is that these trials and the hanging of Molla come 42 years after the events that finally led to the emergence of Bangladesh as an independent country following an army crackdown, an indigenous insurgency led by the Mukti Bahini and a relatively short war with India that saw the Pakistan garrison in the eastern wing cut off and finally forced to surrender on December 16, 1971. The shame and ignominy attached to the whole Bangladesh episode was so embarrassing that the political and military establishment that followed the Yahya military junta responsible for the crackdown and atrocities in East Pakistan thought discretion the better part of valour. Even Mr Bhutto’s Hamood-ur-Rehman Commission report was suppressed. This was in line with the mood that gripped the remaining Pakistan’s elite: brush the whole tragic episode under the carpet and pretend it never happened. As a result, not only did we fail to learn any lessons from the tragedy, we have continued to repeat the same mistakes again and again and been responsible for subsequent generations being kept ignorant of this bloody chapter in our history, so much so that millions of young people today in Pakistan may not even know that Bangladesh was once part of Pakistan or the reasons why it separated. Not only this, we have never formally apologized for the atrocities visited on our Bengali brothers and sisters.
It should not surprise us therefore that whereas the government and the foreign office have acted with restraint so as not to appear to be interfering in the internal affairs of a sovereign country with which we enjoy good relations bilaterally and as a member of SAARC, the Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali has once more tooted a tune at variance with that restraint. Sounding like an ultranationalist JI spokesman, the feisty minister’s statement painted Molla as a hero of Pakistan, whereas Molla and his ilk helped ensure because of their bloodletting that East Pakistan would definitely break away, sooner or later. How does that make him a hero? This is like saying General Yahya, responsible squarely for the breakup of the country, should be considered a hero of Pakistan. Or, if the argument is stretched further, like our JI declaring an enemy terrorist like Hakeemullah Mehsud a shaheed (martyr). The JI, however, is not in power. Chaudhry Nisar’s party, the PML-N, is. How can the prime minister allow one of his ministers to shoot off at the mouth from time to time without even a nod at the government’s policy stance? Pakistan still has much to answer for vis-à-vis Bangladesh. Had we shown even a modicum of the large heartedness Chaudhry Nisar would have liked Bangladeshi Prime Minister Hasina Wajid to show in Molla’s case, we would have formally apologised to our brethren and sisters in Bangladesh soon after the tragedy, or at the very least at some point in the last 42 years. Sadly, we did not, and have now convinced ourselves it is so much water under the bridge and there is no need now to even contemplate such a possibility.
We should not attempt to wax indignant in matters concerning our erstwhile eastern wing, given the above sad facts. While our moral standing in these matters is weak, to say the least, there are nevertheless issues with Molla’s hanging that do not sit easily with rational minds. First, the length of time that has transpired since the crimes for which he was convicted, the advanced age of the accused, reservations about the trial and appeals process all militated against the death penalty in a world increasingly moving away from the ultimate and irreversible punishment. Under the circumstances, perhaps deprivation of liberty for life of the accused may have proved more appropriate, avoided the taint of either revenge (versus reconciliation a la the late lamented Mandela) or political partisan motivation. This last suspicion is rooted in the domestic divide in Bangladesh in the approach to upcoming elections, which have pitted the ruling Awami League against the main opposition Bangladesh National Party and its close ally, the JI. The violent reaction to the hanging strengthens this argument. Avoiding hanging would also have avoided offering the ultra-nationalists like Chaudhry Nisar and our JI the opportunity to make political capital out of this turn of events and causing diplomatic embarrassment in our relations with Bangladesh.
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