Editorial
Facing the moment of truth
At last justice is about to prevail
TODAY the nation has come face to face with a stark truth. The very fact that we had to wait for the last 34 years to complete the trial of the murder of the founding father of the nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman including most of his family members and bring the killers to justice has brought us face to face with the moment of truth. Why had we to wait so long, for after his killing governments came in succession, one of those -- the BNP government of 1991-- being directly elected by the people. Strangely enough, before the Awami League government of 1996 was voted into office, none of the earlier governments felt the legal and moral obligation that the tragedy of August 15, 1975 at least deserved a hearing in the court of law! What had happened to our proud legacy of protest and struggle against all kinds of injustice?
Political parties, the civil society, the media, in short, the entire community of the thinking people, far from raising a voice of protest, remained noncommittal. It was not a case, we think, of general acquiescence in the monstrous crime committed; in truth, we collectively lacked the moral courage to protest and demand justice for righting the wrong. It was in truth a moment of great shame for the nation! And, since then it has remained a huge, gashing and festering wound on our sense of collective conscience that we had been carrying until the verdict pronounced by the nation's highest court of justice.
The sense of shame and guilt apart, the nation witnessed something even worse through the attempts of gagging the process of justice and making a travesty of lawmaking and justice through indemnifying the killers through proclamation of an ordinance on September 1975 by Khondoker Moshtaque Ahmed and incorporating it in the constitution through the fifth Amendment Bill by President Ziaur Rahman in parliament after the general election of 1979.
The fifth amendment not only distorted our legal system and obstructed the process of trying the killers of Bangabandhu, it also gave justification to the path of coming to power through assassination.
The verdict on the killing of Bangabandhu gives us more than just an occasion for avenging ourselves on the perpetrators of the outrage on the Father of the Nation that took place long ago. It is also not just an occasion for simply atoning for the wrong in which at least the conscientious section of the generation of the time for all practical purposes acquiesced. The verdict to be pronounced will give us an opportunity to restore the legal and judicial system of the country that got warped after the killing of Bangabandhu.
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