Recalling memories of Liberation War

Bangladesh observes 'Martyred Intellectuals Day' on December 14 by paying tribute to the intellectuals and professionals who were massacred on this day in 1971 by the Pakistani occupation forces with the help of local collaborators, mainly Jamaat. The killing of intellectuals and professionals perpetrated by the marauding Pakistani forces was orchestrated with the help and collaboration of Jamaat. The term 'killing of intellectuals' refers to the systematic execution of intellectuals and professionals during the Bangladesh liberation war.

In fact, intellectuals and professionals were killed throughout nine months of the liberation war, but the largest number of execution of intellectuals and professionals in one day took place on December 14, 1971. This was the day when more than 200 intellectuals and professionals were killed. This day is observed as 'Martyred Intellectuals Day' in Bangladesh.

In 1971, the Pakistani forces in collusion with local collaborators, mostly Jamaat, killed more than 30 lakh innocent freedom fighters and raped around 3 lakh Bengali women. More than one crore fled from the country to take shelter in India. More than 30,000 war babies were born. The inhuman genocide and rape were committed in the name of 'safeguarding Islam and its abode Pakistan'.

The horrors of December 14, 1971, are the main focus of the ongoing trial of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Bangladesh. Leading Jamaat figures now stand accused of masterminding the brutal killing of intellectuals that occurred only two days before the Pakistani occupation forces surrendered on December 16, 1971, known as Victory Day.

Jamaat chief Matiur Rahman Nizami (now hanged) who was then President of Jamaat student front Islami Chhatra Sangha, his second-in-command Ali Ahsan Muhammad Mojahid (also hanged on war crimes charges) along with their Razakar/al-Badr/al-Shams cohorts committed the most horrendous crimes and murders to crush the liberation war. The motive was to intellectually cripple the yet to be born Bengali nation and deprive it of able leadership.

Most notable among the charges brought against Nizami at the International Crimes Tribunal is his role in the systematic elimination of the country's intellectuals and professionals on December 14, 1971. Nizami himself admitted that as head of the infamous Razakar and al Badr militia he had campaigned across the country to foil the birth of Bangladesh.

Ali Ahsan Muhammad Mojahid, now executed for war crimes, was a second-in-command of the infamous al-Badr which functioned as an auxiliary force of the Pak army. It was he who orchestrated the massacre of the front line intellectuals and professionals, hours from the independence in 1971. He was the key man of the Jamaat killing squad al Badr and the charges brought against him included genocide, murder, torture, rape, planning incitement, and complicity in atrocities.

A report published in the vernacular daily Purbodesh of January 9, 1972, describes Ashrafuzzaman Khan, a Jamaat leader, as Commander of al-Badr militia and killer of intellectuals of Bangladesh. He was a member of the Central Committee of the Jamaat student wing Islami Chhatra Sangha. After the liberation of Bangladesh, he went to Pakistan and worked for Radio Pakistan for quite some time before finally, he fled to Pakistan.

After the liberation, Ashrafuzzaman's personal diary was recovered from his residence in Dhaka. Two pages of his diary registered names and residential addresses of some teachers and medical officers of Dhaka University who were killed by him.  Now he is living in New York for more than three decades and presently he heads the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA).

Another al-Badr commander who played a key role in the killing of intellectuals in Dhaka in 1971 was Chaudhury Mueen Uddin who is now Vice Chairman of East London Mosque and presently heads the British charity 'Muslim Aid' which has an annual budget of over 20 million Pound. Mueen Uddin, who was a journalist of the daily Purbodesh in Dhaka during the liberation war, was a Jamaat activist.

He rounded up, tortured, and killed many prominent intellectuals and professionals to deprive the soon-to-be-born state of its intellectual and cultural elite. Both Ashrafuzzaman Khan and Chaudhury Mueen Uddin have been tried in absentia by the war tribunal and sentenced to death. Both are on the run.

Intellectuals of erstwhile East Pakistan were the targets of the Pakistani rulers since the beginning and as the war started the Pakistani occupying forces started systematically killing them. On December 14 as the war was nearing its end and victory of Bangladesh became imminent, Bengali intellectuals and professionals including teachers, doctors, engineers, journalists, writers, artists, and other eminent personalities were picked up from their houses and blindfolded before being taken to torture cells where they were executed en masse in a brush fire at Rayerbazar and Mirpur.

The killing of intellectuals constituted the most shameful chapter of the genocide that took place during the Bangladesh liberation war. The architect of these gruesome killings was Maj Gen Rao Farman Ali, a senior high profile Pak Army officer who was Military Adviser to the Governor of East Pakistan in 1971. After the liberation of Bangladesh, a diary of Maj Gen Rao Farman Ali containing a list of the intellectuals who were killed on December 14, 1971, was discovered, indicating that it was he who blueprinted the massacre of intellectuals n 1971.

According to the book 'A Stranger in My Own Country - East Pakistan', written by senior Pak Army officer Late Maj Gen Khadim Hussain Raza and published by Oxford University Press, Gen Amir Abdullah Khan Niazi, then Martial Law Administrator of East Pakistan, said that he would let loose his soldiers on the women of East Pakistan till the ethnicity and lineage of Bengali race were changed. What an audacious and dangerous statement.

War Inquiry Commission (Hamoodur Rahman Commission), a judicial inquiry instituted by the government of Pakistan to inquire into the causes of the defeat of Pakistan, held widespread atrocities, other abuses of power by the Pakistani army officers, and complete failure of civilian and martial law leadership responsible for the loss of East Pakistan.

The Commission in its report to the government underscored the need for the Pak authorities to offer an apology for the atrocities. But the Pak authorities turned a deaf ear to the suggestion.The Haloodur Rahman Commission recommended that the Pakistan government constitute a high powered Court of Inquiry to investigate and hold the trial of those who indulged in the atrocities. No such Court was ever constituted by Pakistan.

Over the last couple of years, the International Crimes Tribunals have been hearing cases relating to crimes against humanity committed in 1971. Testimony by prosecution witnesses continues to revive the specter of genocide and rape, with thousands of freedom fighters killed and dumped in mass graves and hapless women sexually assaulted and massacred.

From their testimony one can visualize the barbaric and gruesome manner in which the freedom fighters were killed/maimed and the Bengali women sexually assaulted, their bodies mutilated and dumped in sewer pipes and mass graves. A vivid picture of killing/maiming of freedom fighters, destruction of homes and properties, and torture of women emerges from their testimony.

Abbas Uddin Ahmed, a prosecution witness against notorious BNP leader Salauddin Quader Chowdhury (now hanged), deposed before the Tribunal that he had seen dead bodies of pregnant women with an unborn child lying in the open. He also described how Salauddin Quader Chowdhury's Goods Hill residence in Chittagong was used as a torture cell where freedom fighters were killed, maimed, and subjected to other forms of brutality while women were sexually assaulted by Pak soldiers and their local collaborators before being killed.

Mohammad Salimullah, another prosecution witness against Salauddin Quader Chowdhury, recounted in his deposition that a red jeep starting from Goods Hill residence of Salauddin Quader Chowdhury would go around various parts of Chittagong every morning and return in the evening filled with young women. Some among those brought in the jeep would be taken to a neighboring house for night-long sexual assault while others would be handed over to the Pakistani army officers to be used as comfort girls. 'I can still hear the shriek of these girls' said Salimullah as he broke down sobbing while deposing.

A prosecution witness in the case filed against senior Jamaat ideologue Delwar Hossen Saeedi (now sentenced to life-long jail), broke down with emotion when he told the court that Saeedi, along with some Pakistani soldiers, picked up three of his sisters from his home and handed them over to an army camp at Pirojpur. The witness could not control his emotion as he said that his sisters were 'repeatedly raped in the camp' and sent back home after two days. While sobbing he also told the court that 'they forced me, my parents and siblings, to convert to Islam and say prayers at a mosque'.

Another witness in Saeedi case, Madhusudan Gharami, could not hold his tears back while deposing in the court as he described how he returned home one day to know that his wife had been raped. The couple was newly married then. While weeping he said "my wife had been raped. ... she was in great pain", "but she told me 'don't worry about me; you go and hide, otherwise they will kill you' and I fled".

After the war his wife Shefali gave birth to a daughter. "The villagers used to say a lot of things for her", Madhusudan added. Traumatized by the rape and stigma the couple decided that Shefali would go to live in India with the newborn daughter for safety. She left for India with her baby. That was their last meeting and Madhusudan never heard anything from Shefali since then.

The exact number of women exploited by the occupation forces of Pakistan and their local collaborators during the liberation war in 1971 is not known. The numbers vary, but the gruesome story they tell continues to remain as heart-rending as before even though more than four decades have passed since then.

The writer is journalist.