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Qaisar, why?

Mother with war baby still asks for answer

Wasim Bin Habib andTuhin Shubhra Adhikary
She grew up in her grandparents' house. While a child, she struggled to figure out why she could not go to her parents.
As she came of age, she got the answers to the questions that had been crowding her mind all these years. She learnt that her birth is entwined with the birth of the nation.
"You are the child of Pakistani soldiers, "the grandparents told her.
During the Liberation War, her mother, who had just been married, was raped by Pakistani troops in Jagadishpur area of Habiganj.
The victim later gave birth to a baby girl, who would be the first-ever war child to testify in Bangladesh war crimes trials.
The girl got the shock of her life as she first faced the bitter truth of her birth.
When one of the maternal grandfathers married her off, she thought her bad days were over.
But within a few months, her husband came to know it all and began to torture her. Eventually, she was sent back to the grandparents at Belghar village in Habiganj.
Meanwhile, her mother, who had been living with husband in another village, became a widow. She took her daughter to Sultanpur village in Habiganj.
They never got separated again. The war baby now works at a nursery, the only source of income for the two-member family.
"We are destitute, passing days in hardship," the mother told The Daily Star, requesting for government assistance. Now at 60, she is plagued by eye troubles.
Earlier this year, they testified against war crimes accused Syed Mohammad Qaisar.
Yesterday, a tribunal sentenced Qaisar to death for this rape and six other crimes including rape of another woman in Chunarughat of Habiganj.
The mother said she was happy to learn about the verdict from TV news at her neighbour's.
According to her testimony, in midAugust 1971, Qaisar and his men picked her up along with her father and uncle from their house and took them to the Pakistan army camp set up at JagadishpurHigh School.
The army men raped her for 8-10 days at the camp where she used to hear screams of other women, she said.
One night she was dumped near Temunia Primary School on Qaisar's instructions.
"Within a few minutes, a storm began. My entire body was caked with blood and mud and my clothes were tom. I lied down the whole night under the open sky with insects crawling over my body," she said in her deposition.
In the morning, she managed to walk home, half a kilometre away.
"What was my fault? Why he |Qaisar]
handed me over to Pakistani army for rape ... my daughter does not call anybody her father..." she cried during her testimony before the tribunal behind the closed doors.
The tribunal put the testimony in the verdict.
While adjudicating this rape charge, Justice Obaidul Hassan, chairman of the International Crimes Tribunal-2, said the act of rape during the war was most grave and justifiably proscribed.
"It was not an isolated incident of rape. It formed an attack against women in order to send a message of intimidation to the pro-liberation Bengali civilians."
He added, "The perpetrators had carried out the act of sexual violence as an instrument of threat to the civilians who took stance in favour of the war of liberation."
Another judge of the tribunal said Qaisar's order to dump the victim shows how he saw a woman's life, "possibly not worthier than a disposal syringe as she had become useless, she was just disposed of like leftovers of a fruit".
According to one of the charges, two Pakistan army men raped a Santal woman at her house in Chunarughat of Habiganj on May 11, 1971, after Qaisar showed them the victim.
Her father-in-law tried to save her only to be beaten up by Qaisar and other collaborators.
"What a perverted man the accused Qaisar was! It is indeed hard to believe that the accused Qaisar was a Bengali Muslim," the tribunal said.
"Accused Qaisar, by his act and conduct, eventually outraged the civility."
The tribunal observed, "War-time rape victims are the greatest mothers and sisters of the soil indeed. They are the integral part of our war of liberation. They are our pride. They fought for our independence, by laying their supreme self honour and bravery.
"The nation salutes them, their sacrifices. It is true that the trauma they sustained can never be minimised. But however, they should never be left unattended and uncared as it makes the society, the nation, the humanity and our conscience seriously humiliated."