I really have to get this out of my system and so I
decided to publish this commentary on Sunday instead of
the usual Monday because the subject, besides the
emotional aspects, carries far reaching implications for
our polity and its "security".
On 27 May 2009, in a crowded press conference at the Home
Ministry, Mr. Anisuzzaman Khan, the head of the government
investigation committee on the BDR massacre, handed over a
voluminous report to the Home Minister and thereafter
spoke to the eagerly expectant newsmen. So, to say that
the investigation report has been made public would be a
euphemism, because not a single page of the tome is on any
government web site, nor is a copy of it available with
anyone other than the Home Minister. Only those who
have excess to the highest levels of the AL government
have summaries or truncated versions of the investigation
reports which leaves out me and the rest of the 150
million people of this country from the information-loop.
So much for the Information Act 2008/9. The only things
that the "public" has to go upon are the rather highly
subjective, judgmental and at times contradictory comments
of Mr. Anisuzzaman Khan.
Mr. Khan frankly and naively gives out that the "real
causes and main objectives behind the heinous act could
not be ascertained …" and yet in the very next breath
he contradicts himself and conjectures that, "certain
quarters who do not believe in the country's sovereignty
may have placed BDR and the Army in a confrontational
position to derive nefarious political interests." He
goes on to add further that there might be connections
to "anti-liberation forces" and that "some quarters
might have fuelled the incident to destabilize the
government and the country". If that be the case then
the "real causes and main objectives" behind the massacres
have indeed been identified as being "to destabilize the
government and the country". The "masterminds" too have
been identified under the general rubric "anti-liberation
forces"; it only remains to identify individuals by name
as the "masterminds". Mr. Khan identifies the immediate
causes of the mutiny as being, "a negative attitude
against army officers and discontent over the
non-fulfillment of their demands".
Skeptics and cynics, and that includes me, would contend
that if what Mr. Khan said and the way he said it, are
anything to go by then these belie the statement "we have
prepared the report based on facts…" because each one
of his comments are conjectural, loaded with "ifs and
buts" and half-said, tongue-in-cheek sort of thing. One
apprehends that the other reports - the one submitted
by the Army and the one by the CID which it says will take
a year to complete - will be no better or worse than Mr.
Anisuzzaman Khan's report because the coordinator of all
these reports Lt. Col Faruk Khan (Retd), the Commerce
Minister, has already mentioned as soon as the committees
were formed, that the various reports would be
"coordinated" and that there would be no "contradictions"
between the various reports.
Be that as it may, what people are most concerned about
now, are the trials of the murderous mutineers. Justice
will be done and will be seen to have been done only if
fair, open trials are held, people either convicted or
acquitted, the convicted getting appropriate punishments
and the acquitted rehabilitated with apologies and
appropriate compensations. Given the examples of the
way the investigation reports have gone, strong
apprehensions are there that the trials might well follow
the same convoluted, enigmatic, befuddling and puzzling
path. One earnestly hopes that this apprehension and I
am proved false (the only instance where I am expectantly
waiting to be proved false) because the consequences would
be devastating not only for this AL government but also
for the Nation-state. I am not sure what those
"consequences" will be but certain I am that they would
lead to the "destabilization of the government and the
country", thus vindicating the intents of the
"masterminds" of the BDR mutiny.
The substance of these investigations reports and the
trials to follow are but one part of the problem; the
greater problem lies in the fact that much more than the
mutiny and the massacres, the process of investigations,
the charges and counter-charges by various quarters and
the statements by various ministers have opened up new
fissures in our polity. So now, besides the ever
present AL-BNP dichotomy, the pro-liberation and
anti-liberation divide, the Islamic militant and the
no-Islamic militant debates, we have the pro and the
anti-Army lobbies as well, if the thousands of articles
and comments in numerous blogs are any guide. New
generations of people are being caught up every day in
these "divides", constrained to take this or that side,
increasing aggravations, raising new social and political
tensions and providing new causes for conflicts. The
only way to come out of these divides, is to see the
truth, hear the truth, feel the truth and live the truth,
whatever be the context or the circumstances, however high
the political stakes and costs.