Thirty seven years after independence, the sudden upsurge of the Sector Commanders Forum is earning accolade from various quarters. The trial of the war criminals is a demand of humanity and human civilization. If injustice and war crimes are allowed to go without fair and proper trials, there will remain question regarding the continuity, integrity and humanist elements of human civilization and its existence. The recent upsurge, however,poses more questions than answers.

Bangladesh earned its long-cherished independence following a nine-month battle with West Pakistan . The mainstream discourse on this battle is very long on narratives, but short on facts. The narratives are so deeply rooted and embedded in the mainstream political and social discourse that search for facts is sometimes regarded as a crime. Many facts on the battle therefore remain as fictions. One of the conspicuous fictions is “war criminals.”

Though war crimes have been committed throughout human history, the trial of war criminals is a recent phenomenon. Before World War II, it was generally accepted that the horrors of war were in the nature of war. The trial of war criminals came only after World War II, and until today there are no well-developed and well-coordinated rules and institutions to bring the war-criminals into justice. For the crime of murdering several million people—mainly Jews—by Nazi Germany, the Nuremberg trials in 1945 and 1946 led to only 12 Nazi leaders being executed. A similar process started in Tokyo in 1948. Only seven Japanese commanders were hanged, though the Allies decided not to put Emperor Hirohito in the dock.

History again and again discloses the fact that the gravest crimes against humanity went on without any proper trials, and it always favors the victors and powerful parties, who often are the real perpetrators of crimes.. There is a long history on recent genocides in Africa and killing millions of Vietnamese by America invasion, but there is not even a short history on the trials of war criminals. Committing systematic genocide on Palestinians by Israeli army, killing more than 40,000 Afghanis and about 1.2 million Iraqis—mostly civilians—by American troops will probably never be brought to trials. Following Vietnam War, Martin Luther King Jr. in 1967 rightly pointed out to his fellow Americans, “And we are criminals in that war. We have committed more war crimes almost than any nation in the world.” Unfortunately, nobody could ever bring American war criminals to trials.

War crimes in the present day world have been well-defined but the trials of it have not been well-institutionalized. Article 147 of the Fourth Geneva Convention defines war crimes as: “Willful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, including... willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health, unlawful deportation or transfer or unlawful confinement of a protected person, compelling a protected person to serve in the forces of a hostile power, or willfully depriving a protected person of the rights of fair and regular trial, ...taking of hostages and extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly.” The examples of war crimes include: Murder, Extermination, Enslavement, Deportation, Imprisonment, Torture, Rape, and Persecutions on political, racial and religious grounds. It important, however, to remember that war crimes can be committed by both the victors and defeated ones, and the trial is applicable equally to both.

International human rights groups have long called for a uniform and global legal system for dealing with war crimes and crimes against humanity. However, their demands remain largely unimplemented and mere dream.

Apart from the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, established in May 1993, a second international tribunal was established in Arusha , Tanzania , for cases resulting from the atrocities carried out in Rwanda in 1994. Although both The Hague and Arusha tribunals represent significant further steps in bringing those accused of war crimes to justice, they are, like Nuremberg and Tokyo , committed to dealing with war crimes in specific conflicts. As of June 2003, 139 countries had signed the Rome treaty that establishes the International Criminal Court and 90 countries had ratified it. The United States has refused to sign the treaty, arguing the court could be used to pursue politically motivated prosecutions.

Critics of international courts often argue that international justice can only be truly legitimate when all war crimes, committed by any county including the United States, come under the jurisdiction of a single international court, which is still absent in a world we live in.

What appears clear is that there is no unified global institutions and consensus on war crime tribunals through which we can initiate a trial for the war-criminals of 1971. The opportunity to bring the real perpetrator war-crimes (Pak army) to trials was lost following Shimla Treaty, and despite a massive movement, there is no way to alter the treaty. The local collaborators were also listed down, and a number of them were brought to justice. As the process might take decades and was gradually imbued by political motives—the paramount hindrance for building a war-wreck nation—Shaikh Mujibur Rahman granted a general amnesty to all and thereby closed the chapter. Later on, however, several political parties—because of their ideological vacuum and political bankruptcy—continued to use ‘liberation war crimes' as a political tool for their principal route to power. Surprisingly, once they were in power, they never utter a word on bringing the so-called war criminals to justice.

What is apparent as a broad day light is that the Sector Commanders Forum is either ignorant about all these facts, or they have hidden political motives. Their “sudden” upsurge therefore generates lot more questions: Why are they pointing fingers to only a particular political community (which do not have any proven criminal activities during the liberation war) rather than the actual perpetrators of war crimes (Pak army)? Why did they remain silent in the last thirty-seven years and what is the “driving force” behind their “sudden upsurge”? Why are they still vociferously committed to problematizing a resolved issue at a time when the people in Bangladesh are in the brink of famine and a grave political disaster?

A vigorous search in some prominent Indian think-tanks gives answers to the crucial questions stated above. It seems that India never thinks of Bangladesh as its partner in development but an adversary in it national interest. Depriving Bangladesh from its proper share of water, emasculating Bangladesh 's labor market in the overseas particularly in the Middle East through systematic negative propaganda, continuously killing innocent Bangladeshis by BSF, and destroying garments and shrimp market through several shrewd means are some of the examples of India 's behavior towards Bangladesh . India 's recent diplomatic and military breakthrough with the USA and Israel made it aggressive in implementing certain policies in Bangladesh . One of the policies, as it vociferously declared, is to create a “secular” Bangladesh . As the current quasi-military regime—largely a result of the foreign interference—failed to crack the Islamic parties in Bangladesh down through corruption charges, several Indian think-tanks vehemently suggested Indian government to use “war crime” issue to politically ostracize Islamic political parties in order to materialize its long-term desired ends. There is a crucial link between the Indian interest and the sudden upsurge of the Sector Commanders Forum.

The upsurge will only serve the strategic interest of India at the expense of Bangladesh 's national unity. It's irony to see how our national heroes are acting as docile puppets of the foreign force: once their great vigor helped bring independence to our nation, and now the same vigor is devoted to create a dangerous division, a division which India and other foreign forces need to brand Bangladesh as a “failed nation”.

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*Abu Rawsab writes from Canada . He can be reached at: aburawsab@gmail.com