Pakistan Foreign Office took a strong notice of Bangladesh Premier Sheikh Hasina Wajid’s anti Pakistan statement wherein Wajid had said that the people of Bangladesh must respond to those who have been lost in their love for Pakistan. “They must be punished. We must make them forget their love for Pakistan”, she had said.
Terming Wajid’s remarks as being against the spirit of the 1974 tripartite agreement the Foreign Office Spokesperson Dr Muhammad Faisal during a weekly briefing in Islamabad on Thursday observed that under the 1974 tripartite agreement, Dhaka had agreed not to proceed against those whom it had accused of ‘war crimes’ during the 1971 separation. It is worth to mention here that the incumbent government led by Hasina Wajid had recently resumed the trial of 1971 ‘war crimes’ that had been suspended after the 1974 accord between Pakistan, Bangladesh, and India. It is quite unfortunate that the ruling party and particularly the Prime Minister of Bangladesh seem to have not forgotten the bitter past. The vengeful and vindictive policies adopted by her government during recent years led to chaos in the country. It has been observed that Wajid led regime in Bangladeshi is pursuing systematic policy to silence the voice of dissent in the country besides punishing all those who had showed their allegiance and fought a long battle for the cause united Pakistan during the civil war. In 2009, the Awami League-led Bangladesh government established a tribunal to continue its bogous trial of people accused of committing atrocities during the war in 1971. As a result Motiur Rahman Nizami and eight other leaders of Jamaat-e-Islami and two leaders of the Bangladesh National Party were charged with war crimes by the prosecution.
Opposition parties and human rights groups raised serious concerns over the political interference in the trial. However the court delayed its verdict regarding the ailing Nizami in June 2014 because of the state of his health. Later on Nizami was hanged at a prison in Dhaka on 11 May 2016. In 2017 the special Bangladeshi tribunal sentenced to death six JI activists, including a former lawmaker, for allegedly committing crimes against humanity and siding with the Pakistani troops in carrying out the genocide in 1971. Despite serious apprehensions raised by international rights organisations about the fairness of these trials the incumbent regime went on with its decision to punish all those who had opposed Bangladesh’s liberation during 1971 war. Increasingly overwhelmed by the burden of history, Prime Minister Hasina Wajid seems unwilling to forget the past and this unwillingness and trepidation to make a fresh start has been adversely affecting the contemporary politics in Bangladesh. Her antagonism dogged vendetta against her political rivals has inflicted many injuries on Bangladesh’s democracy. While on the other hand, her anti-Pakistan ‘posturing’, has been straining the bilateral relationship between the two countries. Instead of sticking to dogma of hatred and vendetta she must take a leaf out of her father’s advice who wanted that the people of Bangladesh should forget the past and make a fresh start. Rather than reopening the old wounds Bangladesh must follow the path of reconciliation, bury the past and make a fresh start to improve bilateral relations between the two countries. History gives us opportunity to learn from past mistakes so instead of getting entangled in the trauma of mishaps that have befallen in the past one should learn as how to move forward bearing the fact that scratching old wounds makes the situation even worse. This is perhaps the lesson Sheikh Hasina Wajid could draw out of the tumultuous history of her nation.