The Boy Refugee by Khawaja Azimuddin

Author:Khawaja Azimuddin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
Published: 2020-06-20T00:00:00+00:00

15. Living in Oblivion

The prisoners of camp #34 lived in oblivion. This was, in part, because we did not have access to newspapers and there were only a few radio sets in the camp, but the main reason was because the news we did hear was so painful that we preferred not to listen to the radio at all. In those days, the news was mostly about the ‘Liberation of Bangladesh’. For us, that was a sad calamity, one that had severed an arm of our beloved country and landed us in these forsaken camps. There was abundant talk of the Indian victory and Pakistan’s humiliating defeat. Then, there was the over exaggerated propaganda of the atrocities committed by the Biharis and the West Pakistan Armed Forces that were so dear to us.

But there was no news about us, the 93,000 prisoners of war in the Indian camps. We felt forgotten and abandoned. So, we deliberately avoided the news hour, shutting ourselves off from the world around us.

The world outside camp # 34 continued to revolve though. While we were languishing in the camp, a lot was happening in the outside world. With the fall of Dacca and the liberation of Bangladesh, the Bangladeshi Government, in exile, returned to Dacca on December 24, 1971. Their new Prime Minister-to-be, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, had been arrested by Pakistani commandos a few months earlier and secretly imprisoned in West Pakistan. Following the defeat of the Pakistan Army in East Pakistan, there were serious concerns that Mujibur Rahman might be prosecuted or even murdered in captivity but the Pakistani government caved to international pressure and agreed to return Mujibur Rahman to Bangladesh. We thanked God for his safe release since we knew if he had come to harm in Pakistan, we would all be in even worse trouble.

A week after our train had left Khulna for India, a triumphant Sheikh Mujibur Rahman returned to a hero’s welcome in Dacca. Almost the entire population took to the streets to welcome the Bangabondhu, Friend of Bengal. He was sworn in as the Prime Minister of Bangladesh on the January 12, 1972. Soon afterward, he announced that the Pakistani military officers, who had committed ‘crimes against humanity’ in Bangladesh, would be tried as war criminals. The Bangladeshi government started to prepare its case for a heavily publicized trial.

But, now, the Indian government faced a dilemma. They had taken these Pakistani soldiers as prisoners of war and were obligated to protect them under international law. Handing them over to the Bangladeshi government for criminal prosecution would have meant that India had failed to protect its POWs. It was a difficult situation. So, the Indian Army quickly started moving the Pakistani soldiers out of Bangladeshi soil and into India and by February 1972, the process was complete.

In March 1972, the Bangladeshi government announced a formal plan to try some 1,100 Pakistani military prisoners but, after a few months, the list was cut down to 195. The International Crimes Tribunal Act was passed by the Bangladesh Parliament and plans were drafted for a formal trial.

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