Khaleda Zia’s BNP accused of peddling lies to mislead international nations

By Sahidul Hasan Khokon: How can a army dictator usurping energy after a carnage involving the nation’s first household be the beacon of freedom, liberty, good governance and freedom of press?

Celebrated writer Anthony Mascarhenas described Bangladesh’s first army dictator’s tenure as the beginning of the “legacy of blood”, however the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) is on an overdrive of falsehood to undertaking him because the guardian of democracy.

Such blatant glorification of a army ruler is deplorable. However, the BNP is attempting to push this feel-good narrative in regards to the occasion chief, General Zia to shore up its personal legitimacy with highly effective international nations.

Sample this: “BNP was founded by late president Ziaur Rahman who declared war of liberation in 1971,” reads an excerpt of a letter dated January 27, 2020, written by BNP leaders to former Japanese premier Shinzo Abe, which has come out within the public area solely just lately.

The outlandish declare that “the BNP introduced multi-party pluralistic democracy” within the letter additionally testifies to the wave of disinformation to mislead the world leaders in regards to the state of affairs in Bangladesh.

“The main objective of the party is to institutionalize democracy in all spheres of the state to ensure freedom, liberty, independence of the judiciary, good governance and freedom of the press,” the letter says.

It has the occasion’s official letterhead. The letter blacks out the circumstances of the BNP’s formation and the way the founder, General Zia provided an olive department to ardent fundamentalist forces, like Jamaat-e-Islami, and even helped the then self-confessed conflict criminals and killers of the nation’s founding father to open up fronts within the nation’s political panorama, inside six years into the nation’s independence.

Such makes an attempt to whitewash the legacy of bloodshed masterminded by General Zia earlier than Japan and different Western nations have evoked sharp response from the nation’s conflict heroes, eminent researchers and households of the conflict heroes who misplaced their close to ones throughout General Zia’s tenure.

“General Zia rose to become the country’s first military dictator and unleashed a wave of repression by hanging scores of soldiers and officers in Bangladesh military, even as his spin doctors projected him as the beacon of ensuring freedom, liberty, good governance and freedom of the press,” mentioned Ajoy Das Gupta, a famous researcher.

BNP’s lengthy legacy of portraying incorrect historical past

Like his father, General Zia, who throughout his stint because the president of the nation made all-out efforts to erase the secular beliefs and inject ethos harbourbed by conflict criminals to stop the nation’s start in 1971, Tarique Rahman additionally adopted an identical path, a transparent pointer that the occasion’s bedrock was nonetheless dominated by communal and anti-liberation parts.

In 2014, Tarique desperately tried to ascertain his father as the primary president. In his pursuit, he had first give you the declare final March that Gen Zia was the nation’s first president, based on Bangladesh media.

Even as that assertion triggered widespread condemnation from the nation’s prime researchers, BNP’s appearing secretary normal Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir requested Awami League leaders to do some research of historical past, claiming that Tarique had revealed some “historical truths” after finding out totally different books.

Fakhrul additionally went on to check Tarique with Cuban chief Fidel Castro and mentioned, “After the revolution, Castro had said in a court: ‘I may be hanged, but history will embrace me.’ And we know history has embraced him [Castro].”

“The BNP clearly needs to free itself of Tarique Rahman. Of late, the absconding elder child of General Ziaur Rahman and Begum Khaleda Zia, has been busy distorting Bangladesh’s history in tones reminiscent of the Yahya Khan regime and its henchmen. This calculated move by a nearly 50-year-old man to peddle newer lies to the country only reveals the ignorance which underlies his thinking. He forgets that it was his father who announced, on March 27, 1971, Bangladesh’s independence on behalf of Bangabandhu,” wrote the nation’s prime researcher and celebrated writer Syed Badrul Ahsan.

Tarique, maybe, had not learn his father’s article within the weekly Bichitra in 1972, the place Zia effusively paid tribute to the Father of the Nation and acknowledged in unambiguous phrases that Bangladesh’s freedom had been achieved underneath Bangabandhu’s management, added Badrul, who has additionally labored in nation’s prime English dailies.

Gen Zia’s function in Bangabandhu assassination

Soon after the assassination of Bangabandhu, the army took over the reins of the nation and continued in energy for 15 years, giving the democratic course of an surprising halt inside the nation, resulting in the rise of conflict criminals underneath the duvet of Jamaat-e-Islami, a radical outfit that ruthlessly executes who they deem “apostates” and advocates for scrapping of secular credentials of the nation.

Lawrence Lifschultz, an investigative journalist and former South Asia correspondent of the Far Eastern Economic Review, has mentioned that in his view, psychologically Gen Zia was one thing of a “psychopath” in his functionality to make use of and betray others and use violence.

Lifschultz mentioned the lads behind that assassination wouldn’t transfer with out Gen Zia’s backing. Gen Zia wouldn’t transfer with out American backing. “In my view, it needs to be further investigated.”

Veteran BBC journalist Sir Mark Tully, who lined the Liberation War of Bangladesh in 1971, just lately mentioned that there was an Islamic stream at work within the nation after 1975, “wanting to press Bangladesh into being more Islamic”.

Gen Zia blamed for executing 1,000 freedom fighters

With the rise of Gen Zia as the military chief after the assassination of Bangabandhu, together with 19 of his relations on August 15, 1975, the conflict heroes, serving within the Bangladesh Armed Forces, knew they have been in hassle as Pakistan-returned repatriates ganged round Gen Zia. Soon, their misgivings got here true as Zia unleashed a collection of executions to strip the army of freedom fighters on the pretext of a purge.

Still unaware of the stays of their close to ones, households of over 1,000 conflict heroes are nonetheless searching for international consideration to finish the tradition of impunity perpetrated by Gen Zia.

Earlier, in an unique interview with India Today, victims of the largest human rights abuses have shared their ordeals about how their lives acquired turned the other way up as their close to ones fell sufferer to enforced disappearances.

Gen Zia and his cohorts branded these heroes as “traitors” earlier than they have been executed. And their households have been left to fend for themselves.

“I still don’t know where to find the remains of my father, we do not know why he was executed; all we have heard is that he was hanged without any trial in the Central Jail. The killers did not even bother to care for any religious ritual, like a proper burial,” mentioned the son of one of many victims.

Mamtaz Begum, the daughter of Corporal Mobarak Ali, mentioned, “When I was just six months old, Gen Zia hanged my father. Killer Gen Zia ruined our lives and is solely responsible for the death of my father; no one gave us any explanation about why he was hanged.”

Gen Zia’s sturdy penchant for army model rule

Gen Zia was at all times eager on army management of the nation as he envisaged a Pakistan-style army rule for Bangladesh amid the nation’s battle in opposition to Pakistan in 1971, based on writer and veteran columnist Sukharanjan Dasgupta, who reported on the Liberation War by gathering info from freedom fighters in Bangladesh because the chief correspondent of Anandabazar Patrika.

In an interview with India Today, he earlier mentioned he was briefed about Gen Zia’s political ambitions by a senior BSF officer through the 1971 conflict.

“The trouble with foreign powers, including Japan, is that they tend to take on face value whatever (lie) is peddled by the BNP-Jamaat coalition or Kamal Hossain’s Gana Forum. Some so-called rights groups also join them in this disinformation campaign, which is why even the UN list on enforced disappearances contains grave errors like Indian insurgents long back repatriated to India,” mentioned Sukharanjan Dasgupta, writer of ‘Midnight Massacre’ on the 1975 Bangladesh coup.

“But Bangladesh’s historical past, the best way it was born by way of an ocean of blood and its up to date occasions are so well-known that the BNP’s pack of lies fall by way of like a home of playing cards,” Dasgupta mentioned.

Edited By:

Tirtho Banerjee

Published On:

Mar 21, 2023