Amnesty Int'l welcomes UN help in war crime trial

Amnesty Int'l welcomes UN help in war crime trial Diplomatic Correspondent Amnesty International (AI) has welcomed the UN assistance to Bangladesh's efforts to investigate and prosecute crimes against humanity and other serious violations of humanitarian law during the War of Liberation in 1971. Welcoming the news, the AI said four international war crimes experts, Louis Bickford, Priscilla Hayner, Bogdan Ivanisevic and Alexander Mayer-Rieckh, have been named to assist the government. "The failure to seek truth and justice for crimes against humanity and other serious violations of human rights and humanitarian law in 1971 has encouraged the persistent nature of impunity in Bangladesh," said AI Secretary General Irene Khan. Demands from civil society for the investigation into the crimes committed in 1971 have been gathering momentum in the past few years, according to yesterday's AI news item in the website. The AI said past governments had taken no action to investigate or prosecute these crimes and no official commission had been established to provide a comprehensive account of the events of 1971. It said the Bangladeshi government is also reported to have asked Pakistan and the US, which supported Pakistan during the war, to provide Bangladesh with particular documents related to the war and evidence for the trial. The exact number of people killed by the Pakistan army and their collaborators during the 1971 Bangladesh independence war is not known. Most estimates put the figure at around one million and a further eight to ten million people, both Hindus and Muslims, fled to India in search of safety, the AI news report added. Among the dead, tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands, were farmers, fishermen, villagers and factory workers. The forces also targeted intellectuals, Hindus and women. According to some reports, an estimated 200,000 women were raped during the conflict. To date, no one has been brought to justice for these crimes. "I hope that the initiative to seek UN assistance to address the 1971 war crimes marks the beginning of a process to heal the wounds of this war in the national psyche," said Irene Khan.