OP-ED: Imran Khan’s call and report to Dawn

This is not a closed chapter and will only be when its current generation of leaders dissociates itself from the legacy of men who repudiated the results of the 1970 election and subjected the majority population of Pakistan to genocide.

You shouldn’t read too much. Even so, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan’s appeal last week to Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina predictably sparked interest in the three countries that once made up the united India before 1947. Politicians in the southern Delhi bloc are irritated, for their own geopolitical reasons. In Islamabad, its diplomats see this development as a near breakthrough for Pakistan.

In Dhaka, the reaction was rather subdued at a time when a full statement was expected from the Foreign Ministry on the nature of the discussion between the Pakistani and Bangladeshi leaders. Imran Ahmed Siddiqui, the new Pakistani High Commissioner to Bangladesh, had a meeting with Foreign Minister AK Momen.

In Islamabad, a change is about to take place at the Bangladesh diplomatic mission, with High Commissioner Tarik Ahsan soon to be reassigned as Ambassador to Portugal.

But, of course, there will be time to think about the issue from a broader perspective, given that diplomacy is badly in need of a resurgence in the subcontinent. For now, it will be necessary to concentrate on certain misplaced perceptions concerning 1971 which nevertheless dominate the thoughts in Pakistan, in particular in its media.

Take Dawn, the country’s leading English-language newspaper founded in 1946 with the patronage of Mohammad Ali Jinnah, who would see his country a year later, based on his two-nation theory, see the light of day. Commenting on Imran Khan’s appeal to Sheikh Hasina, Dawn writes: “The relationship between Pakistan and Bangladesh fell apart after Ms. Wajed began her second term as Prime Minister in 2009 and took over the alleged 1971 “war crimes” trial. .

“Pakistan has always regarded the bitter past of the dismemberment of 1971 as a closed chapter in view of the tripartite agreement signed in April 1974 for the repatriation of prisoners of war. Ms Wajed’s father and Bangladesh’s founding father, Mujibur Rehman, after the deal agreed that in the interests of regional peace, no one would be tried for crimes allegedly committed during the 1971 war.

“But, Ms. Wajed was determined to revive the ghosts of 1971. She was even more emboldened by the coming to power of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the ties between Pakistan and Bangladesh have gone from low to low. ‘other.

The Dawn report takes us back to the Tripartite Agreement signed by Bangladesh, Pakistan and India on April 9, 1974: “[…] Considering the Pakistani Prime Minister’s appeal to the Bangladeshi people to forgive and forget the mistakes of the past, the Foreign Minister of Bangladesh said that the government of Bangladesh has decided not to proceed with the trials by act of clemency. It was agreed that the 195 POWs could be repatriated to Pakistan along with the other POWs currently being repatriated under the Delhi Agreement.

The Delhi Accord, it will be remembered, was signed on August 28, 1973. However, the Dawn report does not seem to relate to the facts relating to the trials of war criminals in Dhaka. As the section of the Tripartite Agreement cited above makes clear, the Act of Leniency refers to the 195 Pakistani army officers indicted as war criminals by the government of Bangladesh.

It has no connection with what Bangladesh intended to do with the local Bengali collaborators of the Pakistani army in 1971. Invoke the Tripartite Agreement, therefore, in relation to the trials of local collaborators by the Bangladesh is a blatant distortion of the facts by the Pakistanis. newspaper.

The Dawn Report resorts to the application of the term “so-called”, an old cliché of the establishment in Islamabad on issues with which it has never been comfortable. During the liberation war, Pakistani ruling circles and its media persisted in referring to a “so-called” Bangladesh and the Mujibnagar government as a “so-called” government.

Now that Dawn has added the term to war criminal trials, it would be relevant to return to the question of how the Pakistani establishment was responsible for the collapse of Dhaka-Islamabad relations. When the trials of war criminals began in Dhaka, the Pakistani government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif engaged in what was clearly an act of interference in the domestic politics of Bangladesh.

Interior Minister Chaudhary Nisar Ali Khan presented a resolution to the Pakistani National Assembly accusing Bangladesh of bringing “loyal Pakistanis” to justice. Extensive discussions in Pakistani media, print and electronic, focused on the war crimes trials. The tone was condemnatory of Bangladesh.

In addition, the false impression was given to Pakistani citizens that the trials constituted a violation of the 1974 Tripartite Agreement when it was not. The collapse of bilateral relations between Bangladesh and Pakistan was therefore a consequence of this resolution presented to the chamber of the Pakistani National Assembly by the country’s interior minister at the time.

Where the act of clemency for the 195 prisoners of war is the issue, in Delhi speaks Pakistani Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Aziz Ahmed – the same individual who sent instructions to the police, as chief secretary from the government of East Bengal in February 1952, to shoot students requiring Bengali as the state language – conveyed a message from PM Bhutto to Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman through Bangladesh Foreign Minister Kamal Hossain to the Indeed, the trial of army officers in Dhaka could lead to a coup against the civilian government of Pakistan by the military.

Oral assurances were given in Bangladesh that Pakistani authorities would judge officers in Islamabad on their own. These assurances were of course not followed. Indeed, war criminals like Rao Farman Ali were rehabilitated and continued to serve Pakistan in various capacities.

Farman Ali was minister of General Ziaul Haq’s regime. The Dawn Report states, at one point: “… Mrs. Wajed was determined to revive the ghosts of 1971.” This is still a misrepresentation of the facts. The ghosts of 1971 were not quite buried by successive Pakistani governments.

Textbooks in Pakistan have never explained to children the reasons for the break-up of the country or the disappearance of its eastern province. There are still Pakistanis of an older generation who ask if their army has done something wrong in “East Pakistan”.

In a hallway in the upper house of the Pakistani parliament purporting to depict the history of Pakistan since its formation in 1947, the story speaks of the country’s first general election in December 1970 but does not mention the political party that swept the election.

In 1971, the bland statement that Pakistan’s first elected government – a reference to Bhutto and his People’s Party – took office, stares us in the face. The people of Bangladesh certainly welcome Imran Khan’s gesture of calling on Sheikh Hasina. During his years in opposition, he condemned in television broadcasts the atrocities committed by the Pakistani military in Bangladesh in 1971.

Perhaps he can appeal to the daring to move on? Germany was sorry for the actions of the Nazis. The Japanese circulate with their palms folded to apologize to the Chinese and Koreans for the murderous policies of Tojo and his militarists. Willy Brandt knelt in front of the Warsaw memorial in penance.

Dawn refers to 1971 as a “closed chapter”. This is not a closed chapter and will only be when its current generation of leaders dissociates itself from the legacy of men who repudiated the results of the 1970 election and subjected the majority population of Pakistan to genocide. Imran Khan does not have to carry the baggage of his country’s past.

Syed Badrul Ahsan is a journalist and biographer.

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