PAKISTAN: Apology demanded for military atrocities
LAHORE — The Joint Action Committee for People's Rights Lahore (JAC) has demanded that Pakistan's military government give a formal apology for the atrocities committed by Pakistani military officials during the Bangladeshi independence struggle in 1971.
A resolution to this effect was unanimously approved by some 200 activists present at an August 21 seminar at the Lahore Press Club. The seminar was an initiative of the JAC, which is an alliance of 36 non-government organisations and political parties established in 1992.
The gathering aimed to publicise a 1970s report by Supreme Court judge Hamood ur Rehman about allegations of military atrocities against the Bangladeshi population. The report had been kept secret by successive Pakistani civilian and military governments, but had been printed the previous week in the Indian fortnightly journal India Today.
Speakers at the seminar included S.M. Masood, a former law minister; Asthma Jehangir, a former chairperson of the Human Right Commission of Pakistan; I.A. Rehman and Hina Jilani from the HRCP; intellectual Dr Mahdi Hasan; Farooq Tariq, general secretary of the Labour Party Pakistan; and Tahira Mazhar Ali Khan, president of the Democratic Women's Association.
Tariq said that military officials carried out looting and plundering of state assets at an unprecedented level during the war — as confirmed by the report. He condemned the so-called democratic governments over the last 26 years that were unable to print and act upon the findings of the report.
Hina Jilani, the newly appointed special representative of UN secretary-general Kofi Annan, said the publication of the report marks the end of the army's attempt to keep the truth hidden from the people. She demanded that those responsible for atrocities committed against the Bangladeshi people be put on trial.
BY FAROOQ SULEHRIA