Trying and passing death sentence for war crime cannot be a continuous affair. By the latest war crime verdict in Bangladesh, the International Crimes Tribunal-1 on Thursday sentenced six war criminals to death for committing crimes against humanity at different places of the then Batiyaghata thana area in Khulna district during the Liberation War in 1971. The investigation of the case started on November 15, 2015. This is the 48th judgement of the ICT in the case of crime against humanity during the War of Liberation.
Similarly, over 76 years ago on October 16, 1946, at Nuremberg in Germany, 10 high-ranking Adolf Hitler’s Nazi officials were executed by hanging for their crimes against humanity, crimes against peace, and war crimes during World War II. Before their execution, they were found guilty by the International War Crimes Tribunal. In the first place war crime tribunal cannot exist as a continuous process.
Besides those who left the country for safety when Pakistan’s military operation began and when the India and Pakistan war did not recognise our liberation war in the defeat of Pakistan army, there is no answer as to who can call whom war criminals.
The fact is our lower courts and tribunal feel free to pass death sentences. As per the Death Penalty Database of Cornell Centre on the death penalty worldwide, in Bangladesh, at least 1,465 people were known to be under the sentence of death in 2017. Of them, at least 273 people were sentenced to death.
Death penalty is always a violation of human rights. It is an intolerable denial of civil liberties and is inconsistent with the fundamental values of democratic societies. It is also uncivilised in theory and unfair and inequitable in practice. That is why the United Kingdom and other European countries have signed up to Protocol 6 and Protocol 13 to the Human Rights Convention, which abolished capital punishment. The Amnesty International, on the other hand, also calls for the abolition of death penalty as it breaches not only the right to life, but the right not to be subjected to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.
There is no evidence that capital punishment has any impact on crime rates. More than half the states in the USA have either abolished the death penalty or have formal suspensions in place.
The Supreme Court of Bangladesh ruled in May 2015 that the mandatory death penalty is unconstitutional. The court found that Article 29, 31 and 32 of the Constitution were violated by the mandatory application of capital punishment. Those who believe life for life death penalty refuse to accept that human judgement is not infallible.
