The discussion is being led by Journalist Habib who is saying that the Tribunal was initiated by the government with a mandate of the people. People have supported the trial of war criminals. Even the Opposition has expressed that they are not against the trial of war criminals but the tribunal should be free, fair, transparent and according to the International Standards. The International Standards has not been clarified. Suspicions of the Government’s interference surfaced for the first time through the notorious Skype discussions of the first Chairman of this tribunal with third party in Belgium, whihc has exposed the Governemnts hidden ploy behind the trial process. At one point the chairman resigned on moral grounds and yet trust in this tribunal has not been completely withdrawn. The tribunal has been fromed by the government, the prosecution has been appointed by the governement, the investigation team has been appointed by the government. I salute the governemnet that within such short time they have been able to present these cases that go back 40 years.
After the second judgment on Qader Mollah’s case these bloggers have suspected that the governmenet has compromised. Rashed Khan Memon, a Senior Leader of the 14 Party Alliance (Chief of workers Party – Communist faction and the partner of the ruling Grand Alliance) has spoken saying that if you kiss a snake it will bite you. Badal (MP of Rulling Allainace and leader of Communist faction) stated that i cannot compromise about the chastity of my mothers. What an emotional statement! emotions are definetely there as our freedom fight was an emotional one through which we earned our Independence, but in the cost of many lives and the emotinal sacricfices of many others. Then came the young generation [Shahbag] for the death sentence came to the stage Dr.Jafr Iqbal and demanded the death penalty for all those suspected of war crimes. Although he was a witness to Saydee’s case, he refused to appear in court to give evidence against Saydee’s charge as killing his father in 1971. He is a University Professor and he doesnt even care about the running of his University, he joined the young protesters in shahbag and went on stage. Similalry the Vice Chancellor of Dhaka University who himself was not elected, has also joined the protesters on stage although he cares less about election of students union at his University. Then following them were all the ministers including the PM who in Parliament have expressed solidarity with the protesters and vowed to accept their demands (death sentence for all war crimes suspects, forclosure of Islamic Bank and other Islamic Business Enterprises and some media houses that expose the governments misrule and corruption). We still applaud the youngsters protest hoping that in the right spirit they will also speak against the huge corruption and misrule of the current governement. Then we lost confidence as they have not yet spoken a single word against the current misrule and corruption. We further lost confidence in the youngsters’ movement when political influential personels belonging to the ruling alliance like Asaduzzaman Noor, Nasir Uddin, Yousuf Bacchi and other leaders of ruling alliance and pro-government journalists were on stage and dictating the youngsters speech and demands. If these youngsters stage movement for democracy and against corruption then we should all support them. But they are not doing so. Rather the ministers have breached their constitutional oath by joining the youngsters. As a result they are running a parallel Government. The leader of these youngsters are making declarations as if they are the head of the state towards people, different academic institutions and other agencies as if such declarations are mandatory. Then why does the country need a government?
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