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Justice reigns, freedom wins

SYED BADRUL AHSAN
An execution is no cause for cheers, but a reason for reflection. And when a war criminal, convicted and sentenced through due process, takes those final steps of life to the gallows, the collective prayer is one, and only one: that such criminality does not recur, that men like him do not walk the earth again.
This morning, in this people's republic preparing to observe yet one more anniversary of its liberation, the knowledge that justice has finally caught up with Abdul Quader Mollah, that for the first time in the forty two years we have spent, so far, in freedom a collaborator of the Pakistan occupation army, indeed a war criminal, has met his due end only reminds us of what we must yet do to preserve our self-esteem as a nation. These forty two years have been symbolic of deep, penetrating pain for this nation for the very grave reason that we have seen the murderers of our compatriots — intellectuals, professionals, freedom fighters, citizens across the board — strut in all their hubris across a land they once tried to abort at birth. Now that justice has been done in Mollah's case and will be done in the matter of others of his kind, it is time for the 160 million people of Bangladesh to inform the souls of our martyrs that we remember their supreme sacrifices, to let their pained families know that those who murdered their loved ones will pay the wages of their sins.
We happen to be living through times fraught with new terrorism, set in motion by the old forces of darkness in tandem with those who saw nothing wrong in rehabilitating the perpetrators of genocide, nothing amiss in having them walk the corridors of power. There is arson that leads to people being burned to death; there are criminals wickedly pulling out rail tracks and setting moving buses on fire; there are politicians who call for democratic elections and yet will not condemn the ancient criminality of the ageing collaborators and their frenzied followers. It goes to the credit of the nation that through all these troubled times, it has refused to forget its history; It has not ignored the need for justice because it knows that it owes its present and its future to those whom the war criminals and the foreign enemy they were beholden to murdered all those decades ago.
There were people who once stated glibly that the war criminals could not be tried. When the trials commenced, they said the war criminals could not be convicted. When the convictions came, they were certain the sentences could not be carried out. Now, with Mollah having his comeuppance, there is hope that those others who perpetrated all those crimes against humanity in the nine months of our
twilight struggle against Pakistan's war machine will walk the same path to the platform of justice.
This morning, we remember yet once more the innumerable men and women done to death by Mollah and his gang, indeed by his fellow war criminals and their masters in the occupation army. And we inform the world that Mollah died for reasons that were as valid in Dhaka as they were in Nuremberg and in Tokyo decades ago.
Today, we do not gloat over Mollah's execution. But we do expect some crucial lessons of history to be learned from his sorry end — that freedom always wins, that repression does not last, that the wheels of justice may turn slowly but turn they certainly do.
We salute our three million martyrs — we do obeisance to the founding fathers of our sovereign republic — we rededicate ourselves anew to the cause of a democratic, liberal and secular Bangladesh once more in this dawn of triumphant justice.