By IANS
Dhaka : Bangladesh’s 35th Victory Day celebrations became the rallying point for critics of the interim government over demands that those who opposed country’s separation from Pakistan in 1971 should be put on trial.
Leaders of most political parties and freedom fighters stayed away from the official reception hosted by President Iajuddin Ahmed Sunday because “anti-liberation forces” were invited.
Leaders of the Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI), the largest Islamist party about whom the allusion of being “anti-liberation” was made, attended the function, media reports said.
JeI and other Islamist parties who shared power under Begum Khaleda Zia (2001-06) say the separation of Pakistan’s erstwhile east wing was the result of a civil war.
Besides JeI political leaders, their cadres are accused of having participated in the mass killings in 1971 when the then Pakistan president Yahya Khan ordered military action.
The JeI and other Islamists, termed “collaborators” of the East Pakistan regime, were prosecuted and banned from political activity after independence. But two military rulers, presidents Ziaur Rahman and H.M. Ershad, brought them back to the political mainstream.
Dec 16 is Bangladesh’s Bijoy Diwas (Victory Day) as on that day in 1971, the Pakistan Army surrendered with 93,000 soldiers to a joint command of India and Bangladesh’s Mukti Bahini.
Political parties and the intelligentsia put up a divided show on the issue that arouses emotions in Bangladesh.
While a rebel faction of Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) attended the reception, since it was “a state function”, the loyalists boycotted.
Both Zia and her political rival Sheikh Hasina, also a former prime minister and chief of the Awami League, are in jail on corruption charges. Their parties joined the boycott.
The parties, instead, held flag-hoisting ceremonies and blood donation camps.
The parties opposed to JeI and other Islamists have been campaigning for a ban on their participation in elections. But the Election Commission says it would decide only after it finds a consensus on the issue.
But the task is not high on the list of priorities of the interim government of Chief Advisor Fakhruddin Ahmed that completed 11 months in office last week. It says giving the country a good government and holding elections by 2008 are its principal tasks.
Ahmed’s government, conducting a drive against corruption that has netted former ministers and lawmakers, has disregarded demands for early polls by the political parties and foreign governments, sticking to the end-2008 timetable.