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I am very disappointed that the platform has published this article by a biased party.
1. Salman Al-Azami is the son of one of the defendants in the war crimes trial and is thus not a disinterested or objective party.
2. Azami’s father is the notorious Ghulam Azam, a man who was the head of the Jamaat i Islami in the then East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) in 1971 who worked with the Pakistani army to suppress the native population of Bangladesh which included massacres, rapes and organizing brothels.
3. Azami is linked to the radical and communal Jamaat i Islami which has threatened Bangladesh with civil war over these trials, refuses to apologize for its war crimes in 1971, has launched attacks against government institutions and also murdered policemen.
4. The Jamaat also lobbied middle eastern countries against the recognition of Bangladesh in the 1970s and cultivates and maintains good ties with middle-eastern regimes and its partisans often call for the mass expulsion of Bangladeshi workers from the gulf as a punitive measure for Bangladeshi domestic policies, which by the way have no impact on Saudi Arabia or the gulf.
Mass expulsion of Bangladeshi workers is collective punishment and is a grave violation of human rights, and it also destroys the lives of millions and their needy dependents.
This gives us just one flavour of the sort of ruthless organization that the so-called Jamaat i Islami is.
Azami ends his article with veiled threats of international sanctions against Bangladesh and a civil war. I do not believe that a civil war despite what Azami and Jamaati supporters may desire will happen.
The Platform has made a grave mistake in allowing a controversial figure with links to a controversial organization, “Jamaat e Islami” in writing this one-sided and biased article.