Over the weekend, the State Minister of Law claimed that though war crimes and crimes committed against humanity are the same thing, nevertheless it is only the leaders of the Jamaat who seem to be confessing to perpetrating crimes, committed during war, but perhaps against humanity. Now quite apart from the sense most of us have that war crimes and crimes against humanity are not necessarily the same thing–and if they are, that proposition cannot be read off; it is instead a matter of interpretation that the two types of crimes are the same –the on-going argument between the government and Jamaat-e-Islam and other parties is quite interesting.
Just this March gone past Jamaat’s leader Motiur Rahman Nizami seemed to have walked into the cross-hairs of an execution squad by seemingly over-playing his hand in his attempt to support the claim that he is being persecuted. Indeed, even though Nizami seemed to have responded to hypothetical questions of the sort, if X, then does Y follow, Nizami has hooked itself by unheedingly attending to the misplaced bait. Now the AL wants to claim, why would a leader of a major Islamic party in Bangladesh even consider the consequence of war crimes that he argues he most definitely did not commit?
It seems leaders of Jamaat are playing a strange game of cards. Nizami has gone on the record to say that the evidence that is being marshaled against him is a fabrication and that previous proceedings have left him blameless. But he is not asserting outright that he did not take the stances that he is shown by the record to have taken. Meanwhile members of the Awami League want to arrest other leaders of Jamaat for comparing Nizami to the Prophet Muhammad. It strikes me that this move is beyond capricious even though the sense of indignation and moral approbation some, perhaps many, have experienced are likely genuine.
The process to discover evidence and prosecute war criminal seems, in practice, to have been set up in a way that puts the cart before the horse. The government has long claimed that everyone knows that Jamaat leaders are war-criminals, but insists that no war criminals wil be charged until the facts on the ground are (re)discovered.
Nizami’s claims notwithstanding his argument is worth investigating. For only if the new evidence brought forth is identical in fact and spirit to the evidence previously discovered, will the new charges have merit. Otherwise it is impossible to state unequivocally whether or not over the years, the wind has carried gossip from some dark, musty corner to another.
