Khaleda Zia the new genocide denier

Syed Badrul AhsanSyed Badrul Ahsan
Published : 23 Dec 2015, 11:18 AM
Updated : 23 Dec 2015, 11:18 AM

Khaleda Zia joins that notoriously select band of individuals who have never felt comfortable with the history of Bangladesh's War of Liberation.  And because they have not, they have gone around distorting it with unabashed enthusiasm, indeed with verve and convoluted skill. The former prime minister, in a state of desperation for the past couple of years or so, now has reason to think that there is a controversy about the exact number of Bengalis who were killed by the Pakistan occupation army and its local goon squads in 1971. Accounts relating to the number of those killed in 1971, she now informs us, without batting an eyelid, have been varied. You now begin to wonder how the widow of General Ziaur Rahman, who in his lifetime never questioned the morality behind the War of Liberation and raised not a single question about the number of those murdered by the Pakistan forces, has suddenly decided to take on a revisionist role upon herself.

But wonder soon gives way to bad truth. If the Begum felt little compunction in giving ministerial berths and advisory positions in her government to some of the most notorious war criminals of the country, she can very well come up with outlandish statements that only expose the vacuity which has consistently underlined her politics. Suddenly, you realise to your horror, she is no different from the likes of Syed Sajjad Hussain, the collaborationist Bengali academic who went around the world in 1971 disseminating the lie that the Yahya Khan and Tikka Khan cabal had killed no Bengalis when they cracked down in March 1971. Men like Hussain saw evil but chose not to speak about it out of their fawning love for Pakistan. But, of course, Khaleda Zia did not see any Bengali being killed, for she was in the safe confines of Dhaka cantonment, in the secure custody of the Pakistan army during the entirety of the war. She refused to join her husband in his armed struggle against the enemy even as the family of Khaled Musharraf crossed over to Mujibnagar territory to be part of the war.

It stands to reason, therefore, that Khaleda Zia did not see the war, did not feel the emotions that other Bengalis as also people around the world felt in the course of that twilight struggle. And yet she is a woman who has more than once presided over the fortunes of this nation. Now, in light of her questions about the casualties of the war, you comprehend the misfortune that has been ours with the chairperson of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party being part of national politics for decades. She is now in a class with her exiled son, whose imbecilic remarks on the Father of the Nation have already done enough damage to his parents' political organisation. One can now be quite certain that with Khaleda Zia in her new avatar as genocide denier, the BNP once more has its back to the wall. Rarely has there been an instance in modern history where the chief of a party has on her own pushed her organisation into muck and slime.

Khaleda Zia's doubts about the figures for martyrs in 1971 is vulgarity in the extreme, in much the same way that Donald Trump's snide references to Hillary Clinton's visit to the washroom are a hallmark of supreme indecency. The BNP leader is now on ground similar to that which other deniers of Bangladesh's wartime history have walked on. Sarmila Bose, whose 'research' on the War of Liberation was essentially a parroting of the Pakistani line on the crisis, will now surely be happy to discover that no less a person than a former Bangladesh prime minister is now on board with her. Bose saw no atrocities in 1971, indeed would not go beyond a grudging figure of 26,000 Bengalis murdered in the war. That assessment was perfectly in accord with the figure, 26,000, which the Hamoodur Rahman Commission set up by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto after the war in Pakistan would arrive at. Khaleda Zia has not come up with any specific numbers. Perhaps in her petulance she will soon give us a figure for those martyred during the war to back her new claims?

The ghost of General Tikka Khan will happily be strutting all across the old killing fields in Bangladesh at news of this new salvo from a woman who has already gone down in history as a politician who felt little of shame in bringing about a full-scale rehabilitation of the 1971 war criminals. Way back in the late 1980s, when Tikka Khan served as governor of the Punjab under the Benazir Bhutto government, he told a Bengali interviewer with a straight face that his soldiers had killed no one on the night of 25-26 March 1971 in Dhaka. Only two passers-by, he said glibly, had died from stray bullets. You see, this deliberate attempt to underplay the number of casualties, to cook the books as it were, began a long time ago. Khaleda Zia is only carrying it a little further ahead, in much the same way that the journalist David Bergman tried to do not so long ago and ended up getting penalised for it.

Khaleda Zia has clearly and deliberately decided to play truant with Bangladesh's history. Note the ignorance in her understanding of history — or is it mischief? — when she tries to falsify the record of 1971 in another way. Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, she says without a bit of embarrassment, did not want this country to be a free nation but was more interested in becoming prime minister of Pakistan. After such knowledge, what forgiveness? An individual who has problems coming to terms with the numbers of those killed by an occupation army in her own country and who remains uncomfortable with the history of the man who led the nation to freedom is an ominous sign for the future, assuming she yet has a future. Misleading people about history and deliberately insulting those who have perished at the hands of oppressive forces is a criminal act, as the British historian David Irving was to learn when he was pulled up for his distortion of the history of the Holocaust. Khaleda Zia has now walked into similar dirty waters. One is now inclined to ask what all that dwindling band of freedom fighters yet aligned with her will make of her new 'discovery' about the 1971 war.

Khaleda Zia's misrepresentation of history will cheer Pakistan's foreign office to no end. Only weeks ago, Islamabad brazenly told Dhaka that its army had committed no killings in 1971. The Begum's remarks will perhaps cause a few smug smiles at the offices of Amnesty International, which recently wounded itself badly in the foot by asking for Bangladesh's freedom fighters to be tried for war crimes.

When politics dwindles into nonsense, one can understand and even excuse such nonsense. But when it mutates into the patently dishonourable, there arises a grave need for those indulging in the dishonourable to be put in their places, firmly and for all time.

There is little question that the BNP chairperson has deliberately been tampering with history. If David Bergman can be called to account for his dismissive views of wartime realities, Khaleda Zia can be treated in similar fashion. The State cannot afford to be complacent in the face of her outrageous behaviour.

All said and done, the question must now be asked if the time has now arrived for denials of any and every aspect of Bangladesh's War of Liberation to be made a serious crime punishable by law, perhaps within the ambit of the Constitution?