DHAKA: Acting Secretary-General of Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami ATM Azharul Islam asked the government to give the calculation of killings during the liberation war while raising the question what the role of Pakistani soldiers was at the time if all the murders were committed by the six leaders of his party.  

Besides making the swinging comment, he also went to the extent of challenging the authenticity of the figure of martyrs at the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War.   

He made the remarks on Wednesday afternoon while presiding over an Eid reunion organized by City Jamaat-e-Islami at the National Press Club auditorium.

Azharul Islam said, “A newspaper, which claims that they publish the whole truth, not partial, published a report that Jamaat Nayeb-e-Amir Delwar Hossain Sayedee killed 3,000 people in Pirojpur in 1971. If Sayedee did this, maybe, as a senior leader Matiur Rahman Nizami came with killing 6,000 people. And in this calculation, the entire killings were committed by the six leaders of Jamaat. Then, what really was left for the Pakistani soldiers?

He challenged the government to disclose the list of the 30 lakh martyrs and threw a bombshell: “How long will you continue to go lying?”

“Publish the list if you can, otherwise the nation will not forgive you,” said the stand-in leader of Jamaat, whose all top-most leaders are detained to stand trial on war-crime charges.    

Azharul criticized the International Crimes Tribunal and threatened its members that as they are looking for the mass graves of martyrs after 39 years, Jamaat also would hunt for them after going to power.

The nation will come to know the party orientation of these members too, he said.

He said Jamaat activists are also sons of this soil—“neither dropped from the sky, nor did they rise from the earth”.

He warned the government and the tribunal that they were “playing with fire and it would burn themselves to ashes”.

Assistant Secretary-General of Jamaat Mujibur Rahman, among others, spoke at the meeting.

BDST: 2000 HRS. SEPTEMBER 22, 2010