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Pakistan in denial

Nasim Firdaus
PEOPLE'S representatives in Pakistan have spoken. The legislators of Pakistan, in their infinite wisdom, have adopted a resolution condemning Bangladesh for executing the punishment given by the appellate division of the highest court of the country to the 'butcher of Mirpur.' They have clearly made a decision to hide their heads in the sand like the proverbial ostrich and deny that the collaborators committed any crime at all. Perhaps for them it was not a crime to try and keep East and West Pakistan together.
Every' individual in every country' has the fundamental right to keep his country intact. However flawed this view may be in our eyes, we do not contest the view of those who wanted to keep Pakistan together. They had their own reasons for deciding to do so. But resorting to barbaric brutality is another thing. The 'butcher of Mirpur' decided to carry' out brutality to achieve his end result, that is, to keep Pakistan's territorial integrity. Only territorial integrity is what he was aiming to achieve, for there never was a meeting of minds between the West Pakistanis and the East Pakistanis. It was not an integrated nation to begin with.
In adopting the resolution the Pakistani law makers made two things very clear to us. First, 'the butcher of Mirpur' was indeed one of their closest allies and, therefore, guilty of all that has been proven against him in the highest court of the country' called Bangladesh. Second, that Pakistan still holds on to the imaginary image of the then East Pakistan as an integral part of their country and therefore they are within their lawful authority to deliver their verdict in the internal affairs of "East Pakistan."
Never mind that the people of Bangladesh have given their verdict, both in mock courts and in public protests, to punish all war criminals. Even the maximum punishment being asked for by the public at the Projonmo Chottor is not commensurate with the crime they committed against the Bangladeshi nation forty two years ago. If this same punishment had been given forty years ago it would have made headlines. It should not make headlines now. The devil has not been given his due, he has received much less. Our wounds have not been healed by this execution. They have only been bandaged to stop the bleeding. The pain of loss does not leave a nation, especially when the loss is so huge. It can only be protected from further hurt, in this case from the people of Pakistan who are represented in their National Assembly and who have taken it upon themselves to open the old wounds.
This action will do no good to anyone and Pakistanis must see that. Damaging relations with Bangladesh is not what they should be aiming at; what they need to do is acknowledge that crimes against humanity of the crudest kind were meted out to their fellow countrymen in 1971. The leadership in Pakistan must openly and unequivocally seek forgiveness from those who have been affected eternally by the unjust war, having lost their dear and near ones. Bangladesh lost too many lives, brutally murdered by the Pakistani junta and their east Pakistani collaborators. It is time that Pakistan and its rulers and lawmakers opened their eyes and saw the spade that dug Pakistan's grave. Breaking that spade will make no difference now, but breaking that deafening silence and saying "sorry" will make a huge difference.
For us it is not a time to rejoice at the execution of the collaborator who had such a long list of crimes against his name, but more a time for reflection. We cannot forget that these war criminals were given a long leash of forty two years; that they were permitted by our shortsighted leadership to fly the blood soaked flag of Bangladesh on their roof tops and on their cars for five of those forty two years. We must not let that happen again. Our leaders need to learn how to read the pulse of their people and respond to their calls with vision and sincerity. Closing their eyes when they need to open them wide is not how people's representatives should act. They must act in the interest of the people. That interest includes maintaining a healthy relationship with neighbouring countries. Protests to acts of immaturity shown by the legislators in Pakistan must be responded through a mature and time tested diplomatic method.
Resorting to any kind of violence from either side would only create cracks in the existing stable relations between these two countries. It is easy to break relations, very difficult to create and sustain a good one. We must build better relations with Pakistan through engagement of their mature and talented civil society that understands the history of our breakup and supports our existence as an independent sovereign country. For Pakistan it is a time for introspection too. Its leaders need to open the story' book of Bangladesh and let their people find out what truly happened in those nine months. It is not a hidden history but one that is available every'-where in books, videos and movies. All Pakistan needs is to lift the ban on "learning more about Bangladesh and its birth."
The writer is Executive Director, Bangladesh Alliance for Women Leadership, and a former ambassador.