Dr. Ali Al-Ghamdi

 

This is the last part of a series of my columns that dealt with a long article written by the American journalist Lawrence Lifschultz on the verdict of Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal against the British investigative journalist David Bergman. The tribunal found Bergman guilty of contempt of court charges for making derogatory remarks about the tribunal and for questioning the official death toll of three million people in the country’s 1971 War of Liberation.



In previous columns, I had critically analyzed Lifschultz’s article, supporting some of his views and objecting to some others. Lifschultz published the article on an American website because of his inability to publish it in Bangladesh. This was because the tribunal judges imposed a ban on publishing such articles after they declared this matter sub judice, and made clear that there should be no public discussion of this matter until they have issued their decision.



In the article, Lifschultz strongly supported his friend Bergman. However, I refuted some of his arguments, and questioned the very existence of such a tribunal, which was created apparently to settle a political score. It also lacked basic international criteria, as pointed out by several international human rights organizations, including the UN Human Rights Commission, Amnesty International, and the Human Rights Watch.



Coming back to Lifschultz's article, I would like to point out that the writer drew attention to the current state of democracy in Bangladesh, saying that it is struggling. He emphasized that an enlightened court would think hard about what the distinguished 18th century philosopher and writer Voltaire said about opinions he didn’t agree with. Voltaire once commented: “I do not agree with what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.”



Then, Lifschultz writes about a letter sent by Serajur Rahman, deputy head of the BBC’s Bengali service, to the British newspaper The Guardian. In the letter, he was commenting on an article written by Ian Jack in which the issue of the number of deaths during the Bangladesh war was discussed.



Rahman wrote in the letter: “On Jan. 8, 1972, I was the first Bangladeshi to meet independence leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman after his release from Pakistan. He was brought from Heathrow to Claridges (in London). . . and I arrived there almost immediately. . . He was surprised, almost shocked, when I explained to him that Bangladesh had been liberated and he was elected president in his absence. Apparently he arrived in London under the impression that East Pakistanis had been granted the full regional autonomy for which he had been campaigning.”



“During the day, I and others gave him the full picture of the war. I explained that no accurate figure of the casualties was available but our estimate, based on information from various sources, was that up to “three lakh” (300,000) died in the conflict. To my surprise and horror he told David Frost later that “three millions of my people” were killed by the Pakistanis. Whether he mistranslated “lakh” as “million” or his confused state of mind was responsible I don’t know, but many Bangladeshis still believe a figure of three million is unrealistic and incredible.”



After explaining about his meeting with Sheikh Mujib, Lifschultz recalls his previous meeting with him in Dhaka. “I met Sheikh Mujib in July 1969 when I was traveling through Dhaka after working in India for a year on a Fellowship from Yale University where I was an undergraduate. We had a long talk lasting two hours, just the two of us, over lunch and tea at his residence in Dhanmondi. I met him again after independence when I returned to Bangladesh as a young journalist and lived in Dhaka for a year. After 1975 I would spend many years unraveling the circumstances of his assassination.”



The journalist continued saying: There is not a single man or woman I’ve ever met who has not made a mistake in their lives. Mujib had his own share, as do we all. I believe he misspoke in the Frost interview that Serajur Rahman has written about. The error should have been corrected but it never was. Unfortunately, in some circles this number took on the quality of rigid dogmatism.” Here, I think Lifschultz meant by this none other than Abul Kalam Azad.



Lifschultz concluded his article with a strong conviction that there is relevant information that should be in the public domain that may inform both the court and the public about new information. “The facts of the 1974 Home Ministry study are published here for the first time. My purpose is not to defy the court but to inform it,” he added.



While analyzing the entire information covered by Lifschultz in the article — including the study that was carried out by the Ministry of Interior but never made public, as well as the study by Dr. M. A. Hasan, convener of the War Crimes Fact Finding Committee, who since the fall of Gen. Ershad had assembled a team of researchers to uncover accurate information on the numbers of dead, in addition to the testimony of Serajur Rahman — it is evident that the issue of three million death toll is totally an ambiguous one.



As Serajur Rahman pointed out, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was in a confused state of mind when he arrived in London after his release from Pakistan and he was not in a mood to believe that he was the new president of an independent state, while, apparently having only the impression that East Pakistanis had been granted full regional autonomy for which he had been campaigning.

 

— Dr. Ali Al-Ghamdi is a former Saudi diplomat who specializes in Southeast Asian affairs. He can be reached at algham@hotmail.com