Gita Sahgal - Bangladesh: Blasphemy, Genocide and Violence Against Women
When Malala Yousafzai and her companions were shot by the Taliban, the whole of Pakistan expressed outrage. The attack on a young girl fighting for her right to education was shocking to many Pakistanis. What was unusual about this event was, unfortunately, not the targeting of girls, but the fact that there was a national outcry.
No such outrage was expressed when Asia Bibi, a poor Christian woman was charged with blasphemy. Asia Bibi is facing the death penalty and there are fears for her safety even if she were acquitted and released, as people charged with blasphemy are often killed or may ‘die’ in custody. They are not only being persecuted by the State but are at grave risk, even while they are in the custody of the state[1]. No-one has yet been brought to justice for the death of the former Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto, although she herself, had named suspects in the Taliban and clearly predicted that her death would be the result not only of ‘non-state’ fundamentalist forces, but of those in the Pakistani establishment who wanted to get rid of her[2].
What is the link between the complete impunity for the deliberate targeting of women at all levels of Pakistani society, and the trials of alleged war criminals going on today in Bangladesh? The link is the forgotten genocide committed in Bangladesh in 1971. Appeals to violence in the name of religion were a central feature of this conflict as was the systematic targeting and mass rape of women. A military strategy to counter an armed uprising involved the mass murder, impregnation and forced pregnancies of unarmed civilians. But intertwined with it, was a fundamentalist strategy which involved not only fighting for Pakistan but turning it into an Islamist state, while attacking religious minorities and all who were not ‘good’ Muslims. Women, were attacked as professionals, as activists and simply for being women – particularly if they were from religious minorities.
Unlike Bangladesh, which is attempting to make good on an election promise to hold war crimes trials, Pakistan reneged on its promise to try its own military for war crimes, even though a Commission of Inquiry recommended that officers should be tried[3]. Instead of containing them, military and civilian leaders have made deals with fundamentalists, and sometimes with the support or acquiescence of Western powers, enormously increased their power.
In openDemocracy recently, I argued that Bangladesh was the forgotten template for twentieth century war. Long before the killings and mass rape that took place in former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, Bangladesh showed what happens when militias allied to the army are involved in a conflict[4]. Although contemporary witnesses, including a number of US diplomats[5] were convinced that they were witnessing genocide[6] – that is the deliberate destruction of a national, ethnic, racial or religious group; by the twenty first century, the conflict in Bangladesh had largely disappeared from international concern. A BBC website defining genocide, for instance, failed to include Bangladesh even among a list of possible genocidal campaigns. Since 1972, not a single human rights organisation has done any investigation of the conflict, although they have been harsh in their comments about the establishment of an international crimes tribunal to try alleged war criminals.
The Pakistan military, one of the chief perpetrators of the conflict, is out of reach of the Bangladeshi authorities. Nine men have been charged and numerous others, including at least two men resident in Western countries, are being investigated. All those charged are Bengalis. They are opposition leaders mostly of the Jamaat e Islami, a transnational fundamentalist political party, allied to the Muslim Brotherhood and often seen by Western governments as ‘moderate Islamists’. In Pakistan, in Britain and in the US, those accused of grave crimes enjoy almost complete impunity[7]. It is only in Bangladesh that there is an attempt at holding them accountable. A mass movement, conducted almost entirely by survivors of the genocide, and energised by a new generation of younger activists, made the trial of alleged war criminals a major issue in the last elections.
As Sara Hossain and Bina D’Costa have explained, in their thoughtful discussion of redress for crimes of sexual violence[8], women such as Jahanara Imam[9] were the leading figures in the people’s movement for accountability. Jahanara was a ‘mother’ of the liberation war, like Sufia Kamal[10] whose long career as a writer stretched back to the great Hindu and Muslim writers of Bengali literature – Rabindranath Tagore, Kazi Nazrul Islam and the science fiction writer Roqiaya Sakhawat Hossain. Bengali nationalism grew out of a cultural movement for language and secular identity, in which women were prominent actors.
In March 1971, the military in West Pakistan decided on a military crackdown to avoid accepting the results of the elections which would have made the Bengali leader of the Awami League, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the Prime Minister of both East Pakistan ( as Bangladesh was known) and West Pakistan. During the course of the conflict, they were politically and militarily supported by the Jamaat e Islami, whose leader Golam Azam is alleged to have incited violence and whose student wing are alleged to have formed the basis for paramilitary death squads. Both the military and their fundamentalist allies carried out actions which could be construed as genocidal in intent. There was a convergence of aims but they were carried out for somewhat different reasons. The Pakistan army, targeted Hindus and other minorities for killing, with large numbers of women raped and forcibly impregnated. Hindus were seen as outside the nation of Pakistan. They were depicted as part of the enemy nation, India, and therefore a legitimate target. West Pakistani soldiers also displayed racialised attitudes to Bengalis, similar to the intra- Muslim conflict seen more recently in Darfur.
But there is another aspect to the atrocities and that is the attempt to depict Bengali Muslims as not proper Muslims. General Yahya Khan was said to have said of Bengalis, ‘Make them Muslims’- when he landed in Dhaka. This is interpreted by some as one of the bases for sexual slavery, mass rape and forcible pregnancy... read more:
From Gita Sahgal: Congratulations to all those who have worked on the convictions of Chowdhury Muen Uddin and Ashrafuzzaman Khan in Bangladesh. for their targeted assassinations of intellectuals. Long campaign, lead by relatives and researchers. Very proud of my small role in working on The War Crimes File, which first exposed Muen Uddin. Now we need to call for inquiries in Britain and the US to explore the role of the Jamaat e Islami in public life, and its promotion by successive governments, the adoption of genocide denial by the left, and the liberal acceptance of prominent Jamaat men including Muen Uddin as voices of the ' Muslim community' US and UK governments need to work with Bangladesh, to ensure that these are not simply symbolic victories. If the UK can jail Charles Taylor, surely they ought to be able to hold Muen Uddin, if he cannot be extradited?
http://www.dhakatribune.com/law-amp-rights/2013/nov/03/tribunal-starts-reading-out-verdict.
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