A CERTAIN section of the people in Pakistan are trying to divert attention from the controversial hanging of Motiur Rehman Nizami by the Awami League government, saying it is an internal matter of Bangladesh.

I would like to remind them that it was Islamabad that showed large-heartedness and granted the Bangladesh government’s request to repatriate the mortals remains of a man who was a traitor to the uniform he wore — Pakistan Air Force — and died while committing an act of treason and in the act, taking the life of 20-year-old Pilot Officer Rashid Minhas. The man was trying to defect to India with a Pakistani plane. Isn’t this an internal matter of Pakistan?

I hold absolutely no brief for the Jamaat-i-Islami, or for that matter the JI’s Al Badar and Thunder squads. These militant outfits were set up as a reaction to the savage acts committed by Mukhti Bahini against non-Bengalis.

Take it from one who lived there in those tumultuous days, many Bengalis wanted to live in a united Pakistan but were terrorised by Mukhti Bahini militants turned into mindless killing machines by saffron agent provocateurs.

It is time Islamabad rose from slumber and, irrespective of who did what in the 1971 war, whole-heartedly and vociferously own the people who fought and stood by Pakistan. The least it can do is at least to condemn the acts of the non-democratic Bangladesh regime.

Bangladesh conferred on their Matiur Rahman, their highest military award and made a monument in his memory. We can at least condemn the victimisation and murder of a 72-year-old man whose heart beat for Pakistan.

Khuda Bakhsh

Texas, US

Published in Dawn, May 25th, 2016