THE Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) will verify the list of freedom fighters (FFs) as per a report published in The New Nation on Thursday. It quoted the secretary of the anti-graft body as saying that the need for checking the genuineness of the persons now contained in the list was urgent as it was only becoming longer over time. He said in fact about one lakh people had directly participated in the Liberation War in 1971 with arms in hand but the list now contained the names of two lakh and it means that one in every two names is false. They may have entered the names in the list by obtaining false freedom fighters certificates. He raised questions pointing to several senior secretaries in some ministries and employees at other departments who have secured an extension of their services by using freedom fighters certificates. Many people within the service have genuine doubts about the credibility of these certificates. It is really surprising how one lakh freedom fighters during the Liberation War turned out to be two lakh now while common sense suggests that many of them should have been dead after 43 years of independence. So when the number was supposed to be at least halved now, how it rose to two lakh is the big question.The ACC has made a very highly critical move to restore dignity to real freedom fighters by dropping the fake names whose number may be two in every three persons now according to some estimates. But the question is whether or not the ACC will be able to carry out the scanning of the list under a highly political government. Moreover, there is also the need for compiling the list of martyrs and other dead persons during the liberation war at district, upazila and at village level to keep their names on record. As we see, the ruling party politics is now all about the liberation war propaganda labeling the opposition parties as anti-liberation forces. The present government sees it as the sole agent of the liberation war and has also issued freedom fighter certificates to thousand of party leaders and workers to buy their loyalty by allowing them to benefit from freedom fighters financial benefits and other facilities. Even many witnesses to war crime trials have been given freedom fighter certificates as per newspaper reports of the recent past. So the apprehension is whether or not the ACC would be able to clean the list. The entire exercise may rather slowly turn into a witch hunt to make the opposition people its target. Moreover, as we see this kind of probe is not what the ACC is actually designated to do. Its main job is to combat corruptions at high places of the government. But we see publicly harassing opposition leaders and workers is on rise in the ACC in the name of interrogation on minor issues thus giving the impression that it is increasingly becoming a political arm of the government. So while we are not opposed to ACC’s probe into the list of freedom fighters, which we believe must be cleared of false names, we also believe that the matter may be properly dealt with by a separate commission. It may also be tasked to compile the list of martyrs. Let the ACC work on fighting corruption.
