Those Razakars won’t let me come home if I name them: Gaffar Choudhury

Columnist Abdul Gaffar Choudhury has made an explosive remark saying the “Razakars have infiltrated the Awami League”, as the government has published the first of the wartime collaborators of Pakistani forces after 48 years.

Military rulers Ziaur Rahman and HM Ershad rehabilitated the collaborators, he said at a discussion in Dhaka on Sunday alleging that many of them were still flaunting power as the trend continued.

“There will be no outcome in naming them. [They are] even around our leader Sheikh Hasina. [They are] making the Ganabhaban insecure. And I won’t be able to come to Dhaka if I name them. I don’t want to name them. This is the situation,” the veteran writer, who is now based in London, said.

Sometime after Choudhury spoke at the discussion at the National Press Club, the Ministry of Liberation War Affairs published the first list of 10,789 members of the forces that collaborated with the Pakistani occupation army in 1971.

The full list of the recruits of the wartime militia units like Razakar, Al-Badr and Al-Shams would be released in phases, Liberation War Affairs Minister AKM Mozammel Huq said.

Choudhury, however, is not so optimistic about the government initiative. He urged the prime minister to make a list of the “Razakars who have infiltrated the Awami League”.

“A list of infiltrators in the Awami League should be made before making the list of Razakars. Because many anti-liberation operatives have surrounded the party. If they cannot be identified, it will be impossible to make a proper list of Razakars,” he said.

“In that case, Razakars themselves will make the list of Razakars. And freedom fighters will be Razakars on that list while Razakars will be freedom fighters,” the 86-year-old columnist remarked.

The lyricist - he of "Amar Bhaiyer Rokte Rangano Ekushey February" song fame - also hailed Hasina for her firm stance against anti-liberation forces, militancy and terrorism at the event organised by Sampriti Bangladesh.

“There is no alternative to Sheikh Hasina in the current political scenario of Bangladesh.

The country will become another Afghanistan without her. Terrorism will be established in Bangladesh and the Awami League and its affiliates will be blown away like a house of cards if something happens to Hasina,” he said.

“The prime minister is fighting communalism with courage, trying the killers of ’71, which Bangabandhu might not do if he were alive as he was soft hearted,” he added.

He said Zia and Ershad rehabilitated Razakars and anti-liberation operatives and made them even MPs and ministers.

A “killer” of martyred intellectual Abdul Alim Chaudhury became minister, according to Gaffar Choudhury.

“I was very close to martyr Abdul Alim. I took my elder daughter to him for her eye disease sometime before his killing. I advised him to change his house when I saw that the landlord was a Maulana (Islamist).    

“But he did not leave and finally it was the Maulana that killed him brutally. The killer became a minister during Ershad’s regime, and the editor of a newspaper as well. But he was not tried. He died before trial. Many Razakars like him were honoured by Zia and Ershad,” the columnist said.   

“Many Razakars, not one or two.”

State Minister for Information Murad Hasan said the government would ensure maximum punishment of the Daily Sangram for describing as a martyr Jamaat-e-Islami leader Abdul Quader Molla, who was hanged for crimes against humanity committed during the war.

“The Sangram newspaper has betrayed the Liberation War, the country and the people by calling Quader Molla a martyr. The information ministry will take steps for maximum punishment of the newspaper,” he said.

Noting that he was one of the four judges who delivered the verdict on Molla, former Supreme Court judge Justice AHM Shamsuddin Choudhury said: “I saw all the documents. Why are they so arrogant? The evil forces are yet to be eliminated.”

He demanded cancellation of the Sangram’s declaration.

Muhammad Shafiqur Rahman MP, a former president of the Press Club, alleged there were efforts to re-install Razakars in the club.

“An Al-Badr member was donned a sash in this Press Club. I rejected when I was given one,” he said.

“Some people infiltrated us by taking the opportunity of our weaknesses after [the killing of Bangabandhu in 1975] on Aug 15. They speak about the Liberation War but work for reestablishment of the Jamaat. The conspiracy is still ongoing,” Shafiqur said.

Sampriti Convenor Pijush Bandyopadhyay chaired the discussion. Martyr Abdul Alim’s daughter Nuzhat Choudhury and journalist Harun Habib also spoke at the event moderated by the organisation’s Member Secretary Mamun Al Mahtab Swapnil.