No world force can stop war crimes trial: PM

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina today reasserted that the trial of war criminals will go on and there is no force in this world that can stop it.

"If any Bangladeshi wants to stop this trial process, then I'll urge the people of the country to hate that person, and his or her trial should also be held as a war criminal," she said.

Hasina, also chief of the ruling Awami League, was addressing a discussion in the city's Engineers Institution Auditorium marking the Martyred Intellectuals Day. The ruling party organised the programme.

Hasina said the Pakistani occupation forces alongside their local collaborators, including Razakars, Al-Badars and AL Shams had tried to make Bangladesh intellectually bankrupt through the December-14 killings in 1971 so that the newly-emerged Bangladesh cannot stand on its own feet as an independent country.

"But, those who had committed such crimes are now undergoing trial and their trial would go on alongside the war crimes trial, there’s no force in the country to stop the trial of the war criminals," she added.

AL Advisory Council Member Suranjit Sen Gupta, Agriculture Minister Matia Chowdhury, among others, spoke on the occasion.

Earlier, a one-minute silence was observed remembering the martyrs of the December 14, four martyred national leaders, all the martyrs of the Liberation War, martyrs of all the democratic movements of the country and that of the August 15 carnage.