A Response To The Comment Of Dhaka University Students On My Article On The Hanging Of Motiur Rahman Nizami

A Response To The Comment Of Dhaka University Students
On My Article On The Hanging Of Motiur Rahman Nizami

By Dr. Chandra Muzaffar

19 May, 2016
Countercurrents.org

I am glad that some students at Dhaka University are prepared to engage in a discourse on the recent execution of certain political leaders in Bangladesh.

Let me respond to them by stating the following:-

1) That the trials were flawed is a position held by a number of human rights NGOs, prominent individuals and at least one important Muslim government. Some of the flaws were embarrassingly glaring. In one instance a prosecution witness who decided to become a defence witness was kidnapped from court by plain clothes police personnel and was later found in a jail in India. There is also the scandal over a Skype conversation in 2012 involving a judge from the International Crimes Tribunal established by the Bangladesh government which revealed the political motives behind the executions of high profile leaders from the Jammat-e-Islami(JI). It should also be borne in mind that no international observers were allowed to monitor the trials or the judicial process as a whole. These observers need not have come from the US or the West. There are any number of democratic states in Asia, Africa and Latin America that could have provided the observers. International judicial norms pertaining to documentation and verification and the type of evidence admissible were also set aside.

2) Criticisms of the trials and of thegeneral human rights situation in Bangladesh have come from many quarters, and not just one organisation. Apart from the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon, and the Turkish government, civil society groups such as the Asian Human Rights Commission, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the International Crisis Group, among others, have denounced the executions, extra-judicial killings, incarceration, torture, and forced disappearances of activists, journalists and members of the public in general.

3) Though the Nuremberg trials had their shortcomings, there was a commitment to ensuring a minimum adherence to acceptable standards of law and procedure. This was apparent in their treatment of evidence. By and large the Nuremberg trials drew principles from the London Charter of the International Military Tribunal issued in August 1945.

4) None of the above should be construed as an attempt to ignore or downplay the atrocities committed by the proponents of a united, undivided Pakistan in 1971 in what was then East Pakistan, now Bangladesh. But these atrocities should be addressed in a fair and just manner.

5) Since it is university students who have raised questions about my position on what has been happening in Bangladesh in recent years, let me suggest to them that they read the excellent book by the Indian-American, Sarmila Bose, on the 1971 tragedy called Dead Reckoning.