Trial of Mohammad Kamaruzzaman in Bangladesh: Justice Denied

By Mohammad Talukder

On a 10th of a Bengali month of Srabon in 1971, a terrible electrocute took place during a encampment of Shohagpur, that lies low inside Jamalpur district inside Bangladesh, a few miles divided from a limit with India. That day, as Afsan Chowdhury, a publisher and researcher describes, “The [Pakistan] army had come and pounded a encampment though any warning. No rounding up, no questioning, no identification, usually sharpened to kill. It came swiftly, unexpected as if a angels of genocide had no time for a niceties of murder. The villagers had walked out of their decayed homes during emergence and a fit soldiers of Pakistan fast finished them off.” A relocating and excruciatingly spine-tingling account, a author mentions a categorical abettor of a iniquitous crime, Kader daktar, a internal encampment quack, who in sequence to calibrate a personal protest involving an instance of burglary of his property, went to a Pakistan army post miles divided and told them that Shohagpur was a Muktibahini training camp. The inconceivable happened as a army swooped on a bad farming villagers and carried out a electrocute that stays to date one of a misfortune in a midst of a 1971 fight in a Indian subcontinent that resulted in a birth of Bangladesh. Testimony to a heartless inlet of a massacre, Shohagpur is famous as a Bewas’ (widows’) village.
Fast brazen 43 years to 2014, and a Shohagpur electrocute has been avenged, by a genocide judgment awarded to Mohammad Kamaruzzaman, comparison partner secretary ubiquitous of Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami. Mystifying as it might sound, that is a organisation mount confirmed by a supervision of Bangladesh.
On 3 November, 2014, a new bookmark was combined to an ongoing section of domestic uncover trials, one of a blackest chapters in a story of Bangladesh, when a Supreme Court inspected a outcome in a box of Muhammad Kamaruzzaman, thereby confirming a genocide judgment imposed by a reduce court, namely a International War Crimes judiciary (ICT), progressing on 09 May, 2013. As aptly epitomised by Human Rights Watch in a post outcome statement, “Kamaruzzaman was creatively arrested in Jul 2010 on a orders of a International Crimes Court (ICT), a privately constituted probity set adult to prosecute fight crimes committed during a 1971 war. Kamaruzzaman was given no reason for his arrest, heading to a UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention to systematise his detain as capricious and a defilement of general law. Following a hearing full with procedural defects, Kamaruzzaman was cursed to genocide in May 2013 after a ICT found him guilty of appearance in and formulation of a wrong killings of civilians in a encampment of Sohagpur in partnership with a Pakistani army. On Nov 3, a Supreme Court on interest inspected a hearing court’s self-assurance and sentence. Kamaruzzaman’s genocide judgment was a third in a fight crimes box in reduction than a week.”
All 7 charges opposite Kamaruzzaman were for ‘complicity’, something that in general law is famous as ‘aiding and abetting’ in a crime, not being a principal, commander or a approach perpetrator in a crime. For a above charges to be taken into cognizance, one would have to be a celebrity with measureless authority and honour among a administration and a earlier armed forces, and atleast of a satisfactory bit of age. However, given a fact that he was innate on 4th Jul 1952, a vicious blog square dryly records that, “He would have usually incited 19 during a time of a 25th July/10th Srabon Shohagpur Massacre. He wasn’t to finish his A-level equivalents until 1972, before graduating in 1974 and completing a masters in Journalism during Dhaka University in 1976.” Combining a fact that Kamaruzzaman was 19 years aged during a time, with a fact that Kamaruzzaman is absent from a stage recreated by a publisher Afsan Chowdhury in his good narrated square on a Shohagpur massacre, brings to light a credit of a calls both within and outward Bangladesh that a trials are zero though definitely abominable collection of domestic and ideological repression. Further exacerbating a row of a supervision and a supporters that a trials such as that of Kamaruzaman are most indispensable to reanimate aged wounds and mete out “justice”, Hasan Iqbal, a son of a cursed forked out, that no book on a theme before 2011 includes a name of Kamaruzzaman in tie to a Shohagpur electrocute or a like.
The trials are zero though a hoax of justice. And Kamaruzzaman is a latest in a usually flourishing line of victims. Application of common clarity in examination of a box is adequate to infer that Kamaruzzaman is an trusting male being framed for crimes that he simply had no links with whatsoever. Replete with counsel instances of unfairness, such as tying counterclaim witnesses to 5 opposite permitting total charge witnesses, or not permitting a counterclaim to furnish justification on several occasions, a hearing record have time and again proved, that a fight crimes judiciary was combined on a judgment of “guilty until proven reduction guilty”. The record have been criticized ad nauseam by general organizations, personalities and rights organizations, who have remarkable with augmenting dispatch a farcical inlet of a trials. UN tellurian rights experts, as before on several occasions, have uttered alarm per critical violations of satisfactory hearing and due routine guarantees in a legal record before a Tribunal that were reported to them, as have a European Union and others such as a Human Rights Watch, International Center of Jurists, Center for Justice and Accountability and Bar Human Rights Committee of England and Wales among others. Eminent personalities such as Lord Avebury, Lord Carlyle and Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice during a US state department, Stephen J. Rapp have uttered their critical concerns during a shocking inlet of a hearing as well.
The concerns lifted by Rapp per a hearing are eye opening to contend a least, as this twin of his matter on a hearing reveals, where he reiterated a position of a U.S. supervision on a trials, job for a hindrance to a execution, given a “irreversibility” of a genocide sentence.
All aside, there is really genuine reason to be endangered that a supervision of Bangladesh is in precipitate to govern Mohammad Kamaruzzaman, as evidenced by a tide of steady threats delivered by supervision officials and ministers over a past few days on several media.  Keeping in mind a irreversibility of a genocide judgment and a need to safeguard a satisfactory trial, not usually for a consequence of a satisfactory trial, though to safeguard that probity is served opposite a loyal perpetrators of fight crimes in 1971, regardless of temperament or domestic affiliation, a genocide judgment of Kamaruzzaman contingency be cancelled immediately, focusing instead on restoring elemental rights insurance to a fight crimes indicted by nullification of Article 47A (1) of a structure that privately strips fight crimes indicted of their right to certain elemental rights, including a right to an swift hearing by an eccentric and just probity or tribunal, and a right to pierce a courts to make their elemental rights.

Source: www.worldbulletin.net