Whats your view on this?
Rezwan, I was unable to find out from the Genocide site whether there are any active associations of survivors of the 1971 genocide, including women's associations. Do you know of any, or are the organisations trying to raise awareness mainly third-party organisations like Drishtipat?
I know of Projonmo 71, an association of offsprings of People martyred in 1971 doing that. There are organizations of wounded freedom fighters.
There are also many freedom fighters associations like http://www.sectorcommandersforum.org/.
Such organizations for civilian survivors are rare. Actually the situation was that almost every family was effected in some way, they were displaced, family members fought, tortured or killed by Pak Army or collaborators. The war shook everybody. So virtually every family are survivors and they did not need an organization to promote their plights.
Thanks, Rezwan. The reason I asked was that survivors' associations are able to play an important role in pursuing justice and working to reinforce measures to prevent future genocides.
This autumn is the 60th anniversary of the enactment of the Genocide Convention in 1948 and the plans to commemorate the anniversary include a conference in Germany of women genocide survivors organisations.
Working together can make it easier to pursue courses of action that can be daunting for individual survivors. For example on June 16 there's a court hearing in The Hague at which the Mothers of Srebrenica will be suing the Dutch Government in a civil action over their failure to protect the Mothers' relatives (it was the Dutchbat of the UN Protection Force who handed over the refugees at Potocari to their murderers).
As you describe it, the situation in Bangladesh is not dissimilar from the situation somewhere like Republika Srpska. The perpetrators often remain comfortable and unchallenged in positions of authority. It is very hard in that situation for individuals to do much more than simply endure the persistence of injustice. And that leaves poison at the heart of society. That's why survivors' and other victims' associations are important.
The Sector Commanders Forum URL has a link to a petition demanding the trial of war criminals. They say "One and only demand of the SCF has been for the trial of the War criminals by the Government by setting up a Special Tribunal under International Crimes (tribunal) Act XIX/73." I'm pretty wary of petitions because I know how they can be used to advance an organisation's own agenda but if this one's a genuine human rights and justice initiative it sounds worth supporting and circulating.
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