Bangladesh genocide

The 1971 Bangladesh atrocities refer to the widespread killings and displacement of civilians in Bangladesh (then East Pakistan) and widespread violations of human rights carried out by the Pakistan Army, which was supported by political and religious militias during the Bangladesh War of 1971. In Bangladesh, the atrocities are identified as a genocide, which is disputed by Pakistan. The actual motives, extent and destructive impact of the actions of the Pakistani forces is disputed, as are figures for the death toll. Bangladeshi authorities and some independent organisations assert that between 1-3 million people were killed. Another 10 million fled the country to seek safety in India.

At the onset of the Bengali nationalist rebellion led by the Awami League, Pakistani forces targeted Hindus, Bengali intellectuals, students and political activists, especially at college campuses in the capital Dhaka and other cities. A large section of the intellectual community of Bangladesh was murdered mostly by the Al-Shams and Al-Badr forces, at the instruction of the Pakistan army. There are many mass graves in Bangladesh, and newer ones are always being discovered, such as one in an old well near a mosque in Dhaka located in the non-Bengali region of the city which was discovered in August 1999. A smaller number of non-Bengali citizens were also killed in clashes with the Mukti Bahini. A particularly egregious instances of mass killings was Operation Searchlight a series of killings which began on 25 March 1971 and ended on 16 December 1971 and led to death of 3 million Bengalis in East Pakistan (present day Bangladesh), as well as other atrocities like rape and looting. The original plan envisoned taking control of the major cities on March 26th, and eliminating all opposition within one month. The prolonged resistance by Bengali forces was not anticipated. The response of the Pakistani Army involved massive genocides in Dhaka, Chittagong, Comilla and other regions of Bangladesh.The main phase of Operation Searchlight ended with the fall of the last town in Bengali Hands in mid June. The aftermath would continue until Pakistani Army unconditionally surrendered to the Mukti Bahini and the Indian forces in December 16th, 1971.

Casualties

The number of civilians that died in the liberation war of Bangladesh is not accurately known. There is a great disparity in the casualty figures put forth by Pakistan on one hand (26,000, as reported in the Hamoodur Rahman Commission ) and India and Bangladesh on the other hand. (From 1972 to 1975 the first post-war prime minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, mentioned on several occasions that at least three million died). The international media and reference books in English have also have published figures which vary greatly: varying from 5,000–35,000 in Dhaka, and 200,000–3,000,000 for Bangladesh as a whole. It is believed in certain quarters that the figure of three million has its origins in comments made by Yahya Khan to the journalist Robert Payne on February 22, 1971, "Kill three million of them, and the rest will eat out of our hands".

The historian branch of the United States State Department held a two-day conference in late June 2005 on U.S. policy in South Asia between 1961 and 1972. The State Department invited scholars from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh to express their views on documents recently declassified by the State Department. According to Dawn, a Pakistani Newspaper, Bangladeshi speakers at the conference stated that the official Bangladeshi figure of civilian deaths was close to 300,000, which was wrongly translated from Bengali into English as three million. Ambassador Shamsher M. Chowdhury acknowledged that Bangladesh alone cannot correct this mistake and suggested Pakistan and Bangladesh should form a joint commission to investigate the 1971 disaster and prepare a report. "Almost all scholars agreed that the real figure was somewhere between 26,000, as reported by the Hamoodur Rahman Commission, and not three million, the official figure put forward by Bangladesh and India."

In 1997 R. J. Rummel published a book which is available on the web called Statistics of Democide: Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1900, In Chapter 8 called Statistics Of Pakistan's Democide - Estimates, Calculations, And Sources he states:

In East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) [General Agha Mohammed Yahya Khan and his top generals] also planned to murder its Bengali intellectual, cultural, and political elite. They also planned to indiscriminately murder hundreds of thousands of its Hindus and drive the rest into India. And they planned to destroy its economic base to insure that it would be subordinate to West Pakistan for at least a generation to come. This despicable and cutthroat plan was outright genocide.

Rummel goes on to collate the what considers the most credible estimates published by others into what he calls democide. He writes that "Consolidating both ranges, I give a final estimate of Pakistan's democide to be 300,000 to 3,000,000, or a prudent 1,500,000."

Violence against women and minorities

Numerous women were tortured, raped and killed during the war. Again, exact numbers are not known and are a subject of debate. Bangladeshi sources cite a figure of 200,000 women raped, giving birth to thousands of war-babies. Some other sources, for example Susan Brownmiller, refer to an even higher number of over 400,000. Pakistani sources claim the number is much lower, though having not completely denied rape incidents.

Apart from Brownmiller's, another work that has included direct experiences from the women raped is Ami Virangana Bolchhi ("I, the heroine, speak") by Nilima Ibrahim. The work includes in its name the word Virangana (Heroine), given by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman after the war, to the raped and tortured women during the war. This was a conscious effort to alleviate any social stigma the women might face in the society. How successful this effort was is doubtful, though.

The minorities of Bangladesh, especially the Hindus, were specific targets of the Pakistan army. There was widespread killing of Hindu males, and rapes of women. More than 60% of the Bengali refugees that had fled to India were Hindus. It is not exactly known what percentage of the people killed by the Pakistan army were Hindus, but it is safe to say it was disproportionately high. This widespread violence against Hindus was motivated by a policy to purge East Pakistan of what was seen as Hindu and Indian influences. The West Pakistani rulers identified the Bengali culture with Hindu and Indian culture, and thought that the eradication of Hindus would remove such influences from the majority Muslims in East Pakistan.

At the historian branch of the United States State Department two-day conference in late June 2005 on U.S. policy in South Asia between 1961 and 1972, Sarmila Bose (a Harvard-educated Indian academic related to the Indian freedom fighter Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose), presented a paper suggesting that the casualties and rape allegations in the war have been greatly exaggerated for political purposes. This work has been criticized in Bangladesh and her research methods have been attacked as shoddy and biased.

Killing of intellectuals

During the war, the Pakistan Army and its local collaborators carried out a systematic execution of the leading Bengali intellectuals. A number of university professors from Dhaka University were killed during the first few days of the war. However, the most extreme cases of targeted killing of intellectuals took place during the last few days of the war. Allegedly, the leaders of Jamaat-e-Islami and its paramilitary arm, the Al-Badr and Al-Shams forces created a list of doctors, teachers, poets, and scholars. Some sources also allege the role of the CIA in devising the plan. On December 14, 1971, only two days before surrendering to the Indian military and the Mukhti Bahini forces, the Pakistani army, with the assistance of local Islamist leaders and groups that chose to ally themselves with the Pakistani military and most notably the Al-Badr and Al-Shams systematicly executed well over 200 of East Pakistan's intellectuals and scholars. Professors, journalists, doctors, artists, engineers, writers were rounded up in Dhaka, blindfolded, taken to Rajarbag in the middle section of the city, and executed en masse. In memory of this event, December 14 is mourned in Bangladesh as Buddhijibi Hotta Dibosh ("Day of Martyred Intellectuals"). Also, the Government of Bangladesh has constructed a memorial in Mirpur.

Allegations of genocide

After the minimum 20 countries became parties to the Genocide Convention, it came into force as international law on 12 January 1951. At that time however, only two of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council were parties to the treaty, and it was not until after the last of the last five permanent members ratified the treaty in 1988, and the Cold War came to an end, that the international law on the crime of genocide began to be enforced. As such, the allegation that genocide took place during the Bangladesh War of 1971 was never investigated by an international tribunal set up under the auspices of the United Nations, so the alleged genocide is not recognised as a such under international law. However, the word ‘genocide’ was and is used frequently amongst observers and scholars of the events that transpired during the 1971 war. Within Bangladesh, ‘genocide’ is the term used to describe the event in almost every major publication and newspaper.

On December 16, 2002, the George Washington University’s National Security Archives published a collection of declassified documents, mostly consisting of communications between US officials working in embassies and USIS centers in Dhaka and in India, and officials in Washington DC. These documents show that US officials working in diplomatic institutions within Bangladesh used the terms ‘selective genocide’ and ‘genocide’ (Blood telegram) to describe events they had knowledge of at the time. They also show that President Nixon, advised by Henry Kissinger, decided to downplay this secret internal advise, because he wanted to protect the interests of Pakistan as he was apprehensive of India's friendship with the USSR, and he was seeking a closer relationship with China, who supported Pakistan.

In his book “The Trials of Henry Kissinger”, Christopher Hitchens elaborates on what he saw as the efforts of Henry Kissinger to subvert the aspirations of independence on the part of the Bengalis. In elaborating, Hitchens not only claims that the term ‘genocide’ is appropriate to describe the results of the struggle, but also points to the efforts of Henry Kissinger in undermining others who condemned the then ongoing atrocities as being a genocide.

A case was filed in the Federal Court of Australia on 20 September, 2006 for alledged crimes of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity during 1971 by the Pakistani Armed Forces and its collaborators. Raymond Solaiman & Associates acting for the plantive Mr. Solaiman, have released a press statment which amoung other things says:

We are glad to announce that a case has been filed in the Federal Magistrate's Court of Australia today under the Genocide Conventions Act 1949 and War Crimes Act. This is the first time in history that someone is attending a court proceeding in relation to the [alledged] crimes of Genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity during 1971 by the Pakistani Armed Forces and its collaborators. The Proceeding number is SYG 2672 of 2006. On 25 October 2006, a direction hearing will take place in the Federal Magistrates Court of Australia, Sydney registry before Federal Magistrate His Honor Nicholls.

References

• Pierre Stephen and Robert Payne: Massacre, Macmillan, New York, (1973). ISBN 0-02-595240-4
• Brownmiller, Susan, Against Our Will : Men, Women, and Rape, ISBN 0-449-90820-8
• Nilima Ibrahim Ami Virangana Bolchhi ("I, the heroine, speak")
• Christopher Hitchens The Trials of Henry Kissinger, Verso (2001). ISBN 1-85984-631-9

Further reading

• Genocide in Bangladesh, 1971, A Gendercide Watch case study.
• "Killing of Intellectuals", Banglapedia article by Muazzam Hussain Khan, Asiatic Society of Bangladesh, 2003.
• Martyred intellectuals: martyred history, Shaiduzzaman, The Daily New Age, Bangladesh, December 14, 2005.
• Bangladesh remembers intellectuals killed during 1971 war, India Daily, December 14, 2005.