The Ekattorer Ghatak Dalal Nirmul Committee is a pressure group founded to demand the trial of war criminals from Bangladesh Liberation War. It advocates for secularism in Bangladesh.[1]
History
Ekattorer Ghatak Dalal Nirmul Committee was founded on 19 January 1992 by 101 Bangladeshi activists to seek justice for the
genocide carried out during the
Bangladesh liberation war led by
Jahanara Imam.[2][3][4] Operating in Bangladesh and Britain they claim the policies of the
Jamaat-e-Islami are similar to those of the
British National Party.[5] The London branch protested against the arrival of
Delwar Hossain Sayeedi at a Mosque in East London and demanded his British visa be revoked.[6]
In 2000, the committee's leaders established the secular heritage group
Swadhinata Trust to raise youth awareness of, and pride in, Bengali history and culture.[6]
In 2015, leaders of the committee, Justice Mohammad Gholam Rabbani,
Shahriar Kabir, and
Muntasir Mamun criticised Bangladesh Nationalist Party chairperson Khaleda Zia for questioning the number of dead in the Bangladesh Liberation war.[7] Ekattorer Ghatak Dalal Nirmul Committee in 2016 asked the government to make denial of Bangladesh genocide a crime.[8] It established a European chapter with Tarun Kanti Chowdhury as its president.[9]
Shariar Kabir was elected president and Kazi Mukul was elected general secretary of the committee in 2017.[10] Justice Mohammad Golam Rabbani was elected president of the 31 member advisory board.[10] The general executive board had 61 members.[10]
In 2020, the President of the committee, Shahriar Kabir, asked UN Human Rights Commission to resettle the
Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh to a third country.[11] Describing them as victims of genocide it collected the testimonies of 10 thousand
Rohingya refugees.[12] It criticized Muslim extremists who dug out the body of a
Ahmadiyya baby from a Muslim graveyard in
Brahmanbaria District.[13]
In April 2022, the committee called for the release of a Hindu college teacher detained for "insulting" Islam describing the charges as a conspiracy by religious extremists.[14] It called for a judicial committee to investigate the incident.[15] The committee created People's Inquiry Commission on Fundamentalist and Communal Violence (Gono Commission) with the Parliamentary Caucus on Indigenous and Minorities to investigate religious violence and published a white paper which identified 116 Islamic scholars as money launderers and financiers of terrorism.[16] In response, the Islamic Cultural Forum Bangladesh asked the government to investigate the wealth of Ekattorer Ghatak Dalal Nirmul Committee members.[16] The
Minister of Home Affairs,
Asaduzzaman Khan, initially supported the report but later changed his position.[16] In June it organized an event criticizing the Digital Security Act and highlighting victims of its use.[17]
^Shehabuddin, Elora (15 August 2008). Reshaping the Holy: Democracy, Development, and Muslim Women in Bangladesh. Columbia University Press. p. 67.
ISBN978-0231141574.
^Wemyss, Georgie (1 December 2009). The invisible empire: white discourse, tolerance and belonging. Ashgate.
ISBN978-0754673477.
^
abKibria, Nazli (15 May 2011). Muslims in Motion: Islam and National Identity in the Bangladeshi Diaspora. Rutgers University Press. pp. 104–105.
ISBN978-0813550565.
^Murshid, Tazeen M. (2001). "State, Nation, Identity: The Quest for Legitimacy in Bangladesh". In Shastri, Amita;
Jeyaratnam Wilson, A. (eds.). The Post-Colonial States of South Asia: Political and Constitutional Problems. Curzon Press. p. 170.
ISBN978-1-136-11866-1.
^Mookherjee, Nayanika (26 November 2009). Sharika Thiranagama, Tobias Kelly (ed.). Traitors: Suspicion, Intimacy, and the Ethics of State-Building. University of Pennsylvania Press. p. 54.
ISBN978-0812242133.