Rebuttal of propaganda spread through The Toronto Star

This document is a rebuttal of propaganda being spread through Canadian media. This particular article was published in the newspaper The Toronto Star on March 31, 2013. The article can be read here.

In the article in question, the writer very carefully avoided naming any names for the accused and convicted war criminals and the political party that is inciting the recent carnage in Bangladesh while putting the blame for everything on the ruling political party. While he mentions that the Pakistani army and local collaborators were responsible for the genocide in 1971, he tactfully avoided mentioning that the local collaborators were primarily member of Jamaat-e-Islam (JIB), an Islamist party who were agains the liberation of Bangladesh. While he brings up other names such as Dr. Yunus, which had no relevance to the topic of discussion, he failed to name Golam Azam, Delawar Hossain Sayidee or Quader Mollah, the accused and convicted war criminals who are in the the center of all this debate. There were no words about JIB and their student wing Islami Chhatra Shibir, who unleashed a violence unprecedented in scale in Bangladesh after the 3rd verdict. There were no mention of targeted attacks on law enforcement forces, religious minorities and state and public establishments by these groups. After reading the whole article it may seem these omissions were not at all accidental.

Diving down to specifics that is misleading the readers:

The convicted criminals did not merely incite crimes against humanity, they lead those crimes to execution. The author of the article perhaps haven't read the verdicts at all.

The author emphasizes on the number of people protesting against the death sentence, which is the highest punishment allowable within the Bangladeshi legal and judicial system, while conveniently forgetting to mention the ongoing Shahbag movement that inspired hundreds of thousands of people spontaneously gathering at Shahbag square since February 5th observing a peaceful protest demanding highest punishment for war criminals (http://shahbag.org/). This movement has gained worldwide support from Bangladeshis around the world since (Including Canada http://www.projonmocanada.com/).

Furthermore,The writer claimed that the Shahbag movement was triggered when "the third defendant given “only” a life term", with an emphasis on the "only". If it wasn't for his obvious political bias towards the Islamists extremists and their war criminal leaders, he could have very well mentioned that the general people erupted in Shahbag protesting the verdict, when they saw Qader Mollah (the third defendant) was convicted for his links in the rape of an 11 year old and in the killing of over 300 civilians and still did not get the maximum allowable punishment. Mollah in fact showed a victory sign with his fingers sporting a complacent smirk. If someone shows victory sign after getting life sentence, any fool would see something going awry.

The author puts no referencing whatsoever behind his claim that the initial death count mentioned was 300,000 and then he insinuates that the number has since been doctored to go up to the numbers that the current Bangladeshi government presents. When the fact is, even in May 14 1971, The Baltimore Sun reported 0.5 million people being dead and National Geographic reported the number of death to be 3 million in Sept. 1972 during liberation war. A partial survey conducted in 18 out of 64 districts right after the war confirmed over 1.2 mil casualties.

The author seemed to have forgotten about the regime of Hussain Muhammad Ershad from 1983 - 1990 and his tone shows prejudice towards female leadership. Indeed, for a long time Bangladesh has been led by two prominent political leaders who happen to be women. Given prevalent gender discrimination against women worldwide, it is not a surprise that many people couched the political conflict in Bangladesh in terms of gendered relations. But it is completely unexpected to see publication of gender biased statements like calling the current and former Prime Ministers as the 'Battling Begums' by any reputable media.

The 'grandly titled' International Crimes Tribunal does not intend to be international and cannot be criticised on the grounds that its name is misleading. The International refers to the 'nature' of crimes, meaning they are recognised as 'international crimes', a technical term which hasn't made its mark in the author's understanding yet. The trial is, clearly stipulated in all documentation, to be a domestic trial. So this contempt and criticism does not stand, and is based solely on poor knowledge of the tribunal.

Here the author is referring to an illegally obtained unverifiable Skype conversation and e-mails which was published by the Economist (news media that is well known for their Jamaat backed lobbying) and then presenting his own interpretation of the discussion as a fact . In those conversations, after mentioning the political pressure, the judge also allegedly discussed how he RESISTED the pressure, showing that even under the political strain put on tribunals throughout the world, the ICT, an independent body created by but then separated from the government, was aiming to retain its integrity and avoid collusion at all costs. The author also forgot to mention that despite the fact that no law was broken during this discourse, tribunal chair Nizamul Haque had resigned in order to keep the tribunal free of debate.

The allegedly kidnapped witness was originally a witness for the prosecution who disappeared from witness accommodation and was missing, travelling in and out of Bangladesh for months, only to turn up among defence lawyers. He went missing once again as a defence witness but it was never proven that he was anywhere near the courtroom at that time. Neither of these absences have been explained. The defence spectacularly failed to explain how a witness for the prosecution, whose absence was reported to the police, appeared within their realms without having the police notified in the first place.

In the first part of the quote author is deliberately being deceptive by withholding the name of the political parties he is lobbying for. The political party in question here is Jamaat-e-Islami, who was against the liberation of Bangladesh and still harbours anti-Bangladeshi extremist Islamist ideologies. Like the Nazis in Germany, they can be and must be tried for their role in one of the most viscious atrocities committed in the twentieth century.

Also, the change to appeal the verdict applies to BOTH the defence and the prosecution. It is not just for the prosecution to seek death sentences. The defence is exercising their right to appeal just as much as the government is.

This statement clearly goes to show the bias and the intentions of the author. He sympathizes with the protest crying about the innocence of convicted war criminals while belittling the Shahbag movement which was initiated independent of any political involvement. In fact, leaders of Awami League (who expressed solidarity with the movement while the main opposition never took any proper stand against war criminals or express solidarity with the Shahbag movement) were thrown out of the stage. It reflects a public opinion separate from that of the government. While Shahbag always tried to remain non-partisan, the author of this article clearly isn't.

The trials in Yugoslavia and Rwanda have been heavily criticized in the aftermath for political slants that lead the victorious parties to receive less punishment than the non-victorious. As with all trials.There are many articles criticizing them. There is even large quantities of research criticizing South Africas Truth and Reconciliation commission for not providing the black victims with sufficient justice, giving amnesty to their prosecutors.

The reason Bangladesh has not resorted to ICC is because it is a sovereign country and has passed a law in parliament to try the perpetrators of 1971 on its own soil as early as in 1973. Bangladesh has a strong and steady judicial system to take care of this trial and therefore does not require international interference, a system which countries like Cambodia or Yugoslavia or Rwanda lacked. In fact, under international law, it is Bangladesh's national responsibility to the international community to set up a tribunal.

And once again the author fails to back his conviction of lack of funding and conspiracy to control the trial. The writer cannot infer such a thing, it is a placing of blame and intent drawn largely from the author's imagination.

Courtesy: Becka Hudson, Arman Rashid, Khairul Chowdhury, Jyotirmoy Banik, Asif Islam Khan, Iftekhar Naim and Sachal Himu