Bangladesh is a beautiful country in South East Asia. People of Bangladesh are generally peace-loving and very tolerant. This has lured the rulers and politicians to ignore public demand many times in the history. But they forget that we, the Bangladeshi people, are concerned citizens no matter where in the world we live. We have risen to the occasions many times in the history, when the time demanded.

In 2013, on February 5th, time again demanded that Bangladesh shows its true spirit. On this day, the whole country were waiting to hear the verdict against war criminal Kader Mollah. He was one of the collaborators of Pakistan Army during Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971. Five out of six allegations were proved against him and still he was given life sentence – which is not more than fifteen years in prison according to the law. Here are a couple of his proven crimes: taking part in killing 344 village people in one afternoon, decapitating a woman journalist and hanging her head in the ceiling with her own hair.

This is not at all acceptable. In 1971, the Pakistani army and their Bangladeshi collaborators (called razakar, al-bodor, al-shams) conducted genocide and rape all over the Bangladesh to scare our people away from demanding liberation from the most awkward country in the history. They killed millions of people and raped hundreds of thousands of women during the war that continued from March to December, 1971. Some of the main collaborators are Golam Azam, Matiur Rahman Nizami, Abdul Kader Mollah, Ali Ahsan Mohammad Muzahid, etc. The heinous crimes that they and their followers committed, even death penalty is too lenient for them. The whole country is therefore shocked by the verdict against Mollah and is afraid that if people do not rise at this moment, political leaders are going to take away the final opportunity to punish these enemies of our motherland.

We are unfortunate enough that their political party Jamat-e-Islami (which has nothing to do with Islam, rather than using it to disguise their crimes) has got support from all major political parties over the time, mostly to gain undue advantage. Our politicians forgot that we watched all that happened, we tolerated, but not forever. As you have seen that people led the movements in 1952, 1971, 1990 and you followed us, 2013 has become such a year. Enough is enough, and this is time to obey people's voice and act accordingly. Hundreds of thousands of Bangladeshis are staying and protesting at Shahbag (Projonmo Square) more than a week now. This movement will end only after ensuring capital punishment of all war criminals.

We, Bangladeshi students at Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan, are hereby express our solidarity with the Shahbag movement. We designed banners and posters and posted pictures of protest in electronic media to show our support. We joined a bigger protest arranged by Bangladeshis living in Detroit area. Our minds are in Shahbag, and we are going to find out ways to get more involved with them. Farhana Dewan, Ahmed Imtiaz Uddin, Sangida Mazumder, and Sharmine Alam planned and organized the protest. Rajiur Rahman, Shamsad Zaman, Sharrukh Zaman, Masuma Khandaker and baby Sanzid Zaman joined. Amin Mohammad Sharfuzzaman and his family from Oklahoma State University and Zahed Zia from Grand Valley State University also joined the protest.

If you are reading this, please do spread the word. You do not need to be a Bangladeshi to demand capital punishment for war criminals. War criminals are criminals against humanity and it is a duty of every human to help bring justice to the ones who suffered.

- Sharrukh Zaman, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI