Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying

In their March issue, Daily Star newspaper’s monthly magazine Forum has published our article on Bangladesh’s declaration of independence. The article, entitled "Swadhin Bangla Betar Kendro and Bangladesh’s Declaration of Independence", is based on the post we wrote in January.

The March issue of Forum commemorates March 26, 1971, Bangladesh’s independence day. Of particular note are reprinted articles originally written in March 1971 by Rehman Sobhan and Dr. Hameeda Hossain, who were Executive Editor and Editor respectively of the original Forum. These articles offer a fascinating glimpse into the days leading up to the independence of Bangladesh.

Our article is reprinted below:

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Swadhin Bangla Betar Kendro and Bangladesh’s Declaration of Independence

Mashuqur Rahman and Mahbubur Rahman Jalal present new research

The last message from Dacca Betar Kendro was delivered by announcer Nazma Akhtar.

She declared:

"The 75 million people of Bangla Desh, freedom-loving as they are, have been subjected to brutal genocide by the army. The people of Bangla Desh will shed more blood rather than forget the injury. We will never allow the sacrifice to go in vain."

Soon after the Pakistan army took over Dacca Betar Kendro in the early hours of March 26, 1971. The Pakistanis renamed the radio station "Radio Pakistan Dacca" and used it to announce martial law orders. The Pakistan army’s attempt at silencing the voice of the Bengalis had begun. Bengalis, however, fought back. The war of Bangladesh’s Liberation had begun.

On the evening of that same day a small radio station started broadcasting defiantly in the face of the Pakistan military’s bloody onslaught on the Bengalis. The clandestine radio station, located in Kalurghat, north of the city of Chittagong, declared to the world: "The Sheikh has declared the 75 million people of East Pakistan as citizens of the sovereign independent Bangla Desh." The station called itself Swadhin Bangla Betar Kendro.

For the next four days the radio station engaged in a propaganda battle with the Pakistan army. While the Pakistan army claimed all was calm in Bangladesh, the clandestine radio station declared liberation forces were marching on the capital and Pakistani soldiers were surrendering. While the Pakistan army claimed it had crushed the will of the Bengalis, the clandestine radio station declared that the Pakistani military governor General Tikka Khan had been assassinated. While the Pakistan army claimed the Bengalis had been defeated, the clandestine radio station claimed that a provisional government of Bangladesh had been formed.

In those early days of the genocide, Swadhin Bangla Betar Kendro declared to the world that Bengalis would not give up, that Bengalis would fight, and that the sacrifice would not go in vain. And the world listened. The small radio station in Kalurghat during those five crucial days in March refused to be silenced. It rallied the morale of the Bengalis and it frustrated the Pakistani army.

The men and women of Swadhin Bangla Betar Kendro and the men of the East Bengal Regiment who defended the station from attack, and announced to the world that an organised Bengali resistance was fighting back, ensured that Pakistani tanks and airplanes could not silence the voice of the 75 million people of Bangladesh.

The changing historical record
Recently, the Bangladesh government undertook an effort to revise the history textbooks in Bangladesh to more accurately reflect the history of how the independence of Bangladesh was declared on March 26, 1971. In the tug of war between the Awami League and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, the history of Bangladesh has been rewritten several times over the past three decades. School textbooks have been written and rewritten to reflect varying narratives of the role of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and Ziaur Rahman in the declaration of Bangladesh’s independence.

In revising the history books, the current government relied on the government’s official history of the war of independence published in 1982 by the Bangladesh government.

The official history has given rise to the following timeline:
-Sheikh Mujibur Rahman wrote down an independence declaration sometime after midnight on the morning of March 26,1971
-Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s declaration was broadcast on the day of March 26, 1971 from Kalurghat in Chittagong. However, very few people heard that broadcast.
-Ziaur Rahman, then a major in the East Bengal Regiment, broadcast a declaration from Kalurghat on behalf of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman on March 27, 1971, that was picked up by the foreign press, and the world came to know about Bangladesh’s declaration of independence.

The above timeline suggests that until Major Ziaur Rahman broadcast his speech on March 27, the outside world did not hear about Bangladesh’s independence.

This version of events is widely accepted and reflects the conventional wisdom that has developed over the last three decades. For example, the article on the Kalurghat radio transmitter on Wikipedia, the popular Internet encyclopedia, states:

"An English translation of the first declaration of independence by M A Hannan on 26th March 1971 … It is believed that the first declaration of independence was not widely noticed by international media and the international community."

Major Ziaur Rahman’s opening words in Bangla, "Ami Major Zia Bolchi," that is, "I am Major Zia speaking," were picked up by news agencies and given wide publicity across the globe. "Ami Major Zia Bolchi" was followed by a declaration of a sovereign and independent Bangladesh.

These words were first picked up by a Japanese ship anchored in Chittagong harbour, and flashed to the world. News of Zia’s declaration was first broadcast by Radio Australia, and the world at large came to know of birth of Bangladesh.

The facts and the available documentary evidence however paint a starkly different picture.

March 26, 1971: The Declaration from Kalurghat
A survey of leading English lan-guage newspapers from around the flashed around the world on news wires on the evening of March 26, 1971. world shows that the world came to know about the independence of Bangladesh from Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s original message received in Calcutta on the morning of March 26 and from broadcasts from Swadhin Bangla Betar Kendro on the evening of March 26.

The following English newspapers were surveyed to examine how Bangladesh’s declaration of independence was reported in the world press in March, 1971: The Statesman and The Times of India from India; Buenos Aires Herald from Argentina; The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald from Australia; The Guardian from Burma; The Globe and Mail from Canada; Hong Kong Standard from Hong Kong; The Jakarta Times from Indonesia; Asahi Evening News from Japan; The Rising Nepal from Nepal; The Manila Times from the Philippines; The Straits Times from Singapore; The Pretoria News from South Africa; The Bangkok Post from Thailand; The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, The Times of London from the United Kingdom; and, Baltimore Sun, The Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Christian Science Monitor, Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, San Francisco Chronicle and The Washington Post from the United States.

The Statesman published from New Delhi on March 27, 1971 and explained the two messages received on March 26:

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman made two broadcasts on Friday following the Pakistani troops move to crush his movement, says UNI.

In a message to the world broadcast by an unidentified wireless station monitored in Calcutta, the Awami League leader declared that "the enemy" had struck and that the people were fighting gallantly.

In a subsequent broadcast over a radio station, describing itself as "Swadhin Bangla Betar Kendra" (Free Bengal Wireless Station), monitored in Shillong, he proclaimed Bangla Desh an independent republic.

The Statesman published from Calcutta on March 27, 1971, lays out the timeline of the two messages from the previous day:
Mr. Rahman, in a message to the world broadcast by an unidentified wireless station monitored in Calcutta this morning declared that the enemy had struck and that the people were fighting gallantly.

In a subsequent broadcast over a radio station, describing itself as "Swadhin Bangla Betar Kendra" (Free Bengal Wireless Station) monitored in Shillong, Mr. Rahman proclaimed Bangla Desh an independent republic.

The Times of India published from Bombay on March 27, 1971, provides the text of the message received from the first broadcast in the morning:

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman said in a message to the world today that the people of Bangla Desh were fighting gallantly for their freedom.

The message, broadcast by an unidentified wireless station, was picked up here.

It was believed that the station was located at Chittagong or Chalna in East Pakistan.

Mr. Rahman said in the message: "Pakistani armed forces suddenly attacked the East Pakistan Rifles base at Bilkhana and Rajarbagh near here at zero hours today, killing a lot of [unarmed people].

"Stern fighting is going on with the EPR in Dacca and the police force. The people are fighting the enemy gallantly for the cause of the freedom of Bangla Desh.

"Every section of the people of Bangla Desh must resist the enemy forces at all costs in every corner of Bangla Desh.

"May Allah bless you and help you in the struggle for freedom from the enemy. Jai Bangla."

The Statesman from New Delhi on March 27, 1971, also provides the text of the first message:

Mr. Rahman said: "Pakistan armed forces suddenly attacked the East Pakistan Rifle base at Pielkhana and Rajabag police station in Dacca at zero hours on March 26, killing a number of unarmed people. Fierce fighting is going on with East Pakistan Rifles at Dacca.

"People are fighting gallantly with the enemy for the cause of freedom of Bangla Desh. Every section of the people of Bangla Desh are asked to resist the enemy forces at any cost in every corner of Bangla Desh. May Allah bless you and help in your struggle for freedom from the enemy. Jai Bangla."

In the evening on March 26, 1971, Swadhin Bangla Betar Kendro at Kalurghat came alive for the first time and broadcast multiple messages. These broadcasts were all monitored and reported on. Most significantly, one report from Kalurghat on that evening was monitored in India as saying: "The Sheikh has declared the 75 million people of East Pakistan as citizens of the sovereign independent Bangla Desh."

This announcement as well as the previous message was flashed around the world on news wires on the evening of March, 26, 1971. Bangladesh’s declaration of independence thus became front page news on nearly all, if not all, major newspapers around the world published the following day on March 27, 1971. For example, The Los Angeles Times reported on its front page on March 27:

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman declared independence for East Pakistan Friday as the long smoldering feud between the two wings of the Islamic nation flamed into open civil war.

A clandestine radio broadcast monitored here from a station identifying itself as "The Voice of Independent Bangla Desh (Bengali homeland)," said, "The sheik has declared the 75 million people of East Pakistan as citizens of the sovereign independent Bangla Desh."

The documentary evidence confirms that Bangladesh’s declaration of independence was heard on March 26, 1971, from Swadhin Bangla Betar Kendro at Kalurghat and reported on in world newspapers the following morning.

According to an article in the Bangladesh Observer published on April 23, 1972, the first persons to broadcast Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s declaration of independence in the evening on March 26, 1971, from Swadhin Bangla Betar Kendro in English were Ashikul Islam, a WAPDA engineer, and in Bengali, Abul Kashem Sandwip. Later in the evening M. A. Hannan also broadcast the declaration in a speech.

March 27, 1971: Major Zia’s announcement
Swadhin Bangla Betar Kendro continued to broadcast from Kalurghat from March 26 till March 30, when Kalurghat was abandoned due to Pakistani air attacks.

On March 28, 1971, Indian newspapers reported that a Major "Jia Khan", or "Zia Khan", had also broadcast an announcement on March 27. Zia Khan was identified by the announcer as "Chief of the Liberation Army of Bangla Desh."

The Statesman published from New Delhi on March 28, 1971, reported:

In another broadcast the radio claimed that freedom-loving people of Baluchistan, the North West Frontier Province and Pakhtoonistan had declared independence, following the example of Bangla Desh.

The person who spoke on the radio was identified as "Major Jia, Chief of the Liberation Army of Bangla Desh."

The Times of India published from Bombay on March 28, 1971, reported:
Major Zia Khan, chief of the Bangla Desh liberation army, declared over the free Bangla Radio tonight that Bangla Desh would be rid of the Pakistani military administration in two or three days.

The West Punjabi soldiers "will be annihilated" if they did not surrender, he said.

The reports misidentified Major Ziaur Rahman as "Zia Khan" or "Jia Khan." The reports did not make any mention of a declaration of independence by Major Zia on March 27, 1971.

These two reports in the Indian newspapers on March 28 were not picked up by the world press. Beyond the Indian newspapers, a survey of major English language newspapers around the world on March 28, 1971, found no reports on Major Zia’s broadcast on March 27.

March 28, 1971: Major Zia and the "provisional government" of Bangla Desh
On March 28, 1971, broadcasts from Swadhin Bangla Betar Kendro monitored in India announced that a provisional government of Bangla Desh had been formed and that Major Zia Khan, or Major Jia Khan (again misidentifying Major Ziaur Rahman) had been declared the temporary head of the provisional government. The Kalurghat broadcasts announced that the provisional government "would be guided by Banga Bandhu Mujibur Rahman."

The Statesman published from New Delhi on March 29, 1971 reported a speech by Major Zia declaring himself the provisional head:

In a broadcast over the Free Bangla Radio Major Jia Khan, commander-in-chief of the "liberation army" said: "I hereby assume the powers of the provisional head of the liberation army of Swadhin Bangla Desh.

"As provisional head I order the freedom fighters of Bangla Desh to continue the struggle till ultimate victory. Jai Bangla." He said the enemy was bringing additional troops both by the sea and by the air."

He appealed to all peace-loving peoples of the world to come to help of "the democratic minded fighting people of Bangla Desh."

Major Jia claimed that the "liberation army" had killed 300 men of the Punjab Regiment at Comilla. Other men of the regiment fled at the end of the fighting.

This report of the formation of a "provisional government" with "Major Zia Khan" as its temporary head was picked up and widely reported in the world press on March 29, 1971. For example, The Age from Australia reported on March 29:

Supporters of the East Pakistani leader, Sheik Mujibur Rahman, today formed a provisional Government under the temporary leadership of Major Zia Khan.

A rebel radio, announcing the new Government, identified Major Zia as head of the liberation army of Sheik Mujib’s Awami League. The radio did not explain why Sheik Mujib had not been appointed leader of the Government.

There is however no report of Major Zia’s declaration of independence in the world press on March 29, 1971.

March 30, 1971: The Dalil Potro and news reports
The official Bangladesh government document on the Liberation War, published in 1982 as 15 volumes is called Bangladesh Swadhinata Juddho: Dalil Potro, used by the current government to revise the textbooks, contains the text of Major Ziaur Rahman’s Declaration of Independence in Volume 3. It reads as follows:

"Major Zia, Provisional Commander-in-Chief of the Bangladesh Liberation Army, hereby proclaims, on behalf of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the independence of Bangladesh.

"I also declare, we have already framed a sovereign, legal Government under Sheikh Mujibur Rahman which pledges to function as per law and the constitution. The new democratic Government is committed to a policy of non-alignment in international relations. It will seek friendship with all nations and strive for international peace. I appeal to all Government to mobilige public opinion in their respective countries against the brutal genocide in Bangladesh.

"The Government under Sheikh Mujibur Rahman is sovereign legal Government of Bangladesh and is entitled to recognition from all democratic nations of the world."

The date of this speech is given in the Dalil Potro as March 27, 1971, and was sourced in the Dalil Potro to The Statesman published from New Delhi on that day. However the March 27, 1971, issue of The Statesman does not contain this speech.

The first reports of Major Zia’s speech cited in the Dalil Potro appeared in the Indian newspapers on March 31, 1971. According to Indian reports the speech was broadcast from Swadhin Bangla Betar Kendro on the morning of March 30, 1971.

The Statesman published from New Delhi on March 31, 1971 reported on page 9:

Calcutta, Mar 30 - The Government under Sheikh Mujibur Rahman is the sovereign legal Government of Bangla Desh and is entitled to recognition by all democratic countries of the world, Maj Jia Khan, provisional Commander-in-Chief of the Liberation Army, declared this morning, reports UNI.

In a broadcast over Free Bangla Radio on behalf of the Sheikh, Maj Jia Khan said: "The new democratic Government is committed to a policy of non-alignment in international relations. It will seek friendship with all nations and strive for international peace.

"We have already formed a sovereign legal Government under Sheikh Mujibur Rahman which pledges to function as per law and the constitution.

"We therefore appeal to all democratic and peace-loving countries of the world to immediately recognize the legal democratic Government of Bangla Desh." He appealed to all Governments to mobilize public opinion in their respective countries against the "brutal genocide" in Bangla Desh.

Maj Jia Khan said the Pakistan Government was trying to confuse and deceive the people of the world through contradictory statements.

"But nobody will be deceived by Yahya Khan and his followers," he said.

The Times of India published from Bombay on March 31, 1971, reported on page 15:

Calcutta, March 30. The Government under Sheikh Mujibur Rahman is the sovereign, legal Government of Bangla Desh and is entitled to "recognition from all democratic countries of the world." Major Zia Khan, Provisional Commander-in-Chief of the Liberation Army, declared this morning.

In a broadcast over Free Bangla Radio on behalf of the Sheikh, Maj. Zia Khan said: "The new democratic Government is committed to a policy of non-alignment in international relations. It will seek friendship with all nations and strive for international peace."

Maj. Zia Khan began the broadcast with these words: "I, Major Zia, Provisional Commander-in-Chief of the Bangla Liberation Army, hereby proclaim on behalf of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman the independence of Bangla Desh.

"I also declare," he continued, "we have already formed a sovereign legal government under Sheikh Mujibur Rahman which pledges to function as per law and the Constitution."

This speech by Major Zia on March 30 that was reported in the Indian press on March 31 was not widely reported in the world press. The declaration of independence, as announced on the morning of March 30, 1971 by Major Zia, was not reported in any of the English language world newspapers outside India that were surveyed.

Conclusion
After Swadhin Bangla Betar Kendro ended transmission Kalurghat in the afternoon of March 30, 1971, Major Zia made his way to Brahmanbaria and met up with Major Khalid Musharraf and Major Shafiullah on April 3, 1971. He would then go on to serve with distinction as a sector commander under Colonel M.A.G. Osmani, the commander in chief of the Mukti Bahini.

Contrary to the conventional wisdom that has developed over the last three decades due to the constant rewriting of Bangladesh’s official history, the world press reports from late March 1971 make clear that Bangladesh’s declaration of independence was widely reported throughout the world based on the broadcasts from Swadhin Bangla Betar Kendro on March 26, 1971. There is no doubt that Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s original message about attacks on EPR and police barracks in Dhaka at midnight was widely reported in the world press. Although Major Zia’s broadcasts from Kalurghat on March 28 about the creation of a provisional government were widely reported in the world press, Major Ziaur Rahman was not credited in the world press for declaring the independence of Bangladesh.

References
1. All foreign and local news reports surveyed for this article can be found on the Internet at http://www. docstrangelove.com/2008/01/09/swadhin-bangla-betar-kendro-and-bangladeshs-declaration-of-independence

Mashuqur Rahman is a freelance writer. Mahbubur Rahman Jalal is an archivist of Bangladesh Liberation War documents.

bangladesh bangladesh liberation war declaration of independence genocide swadhin bangla betar kendro

In their December issue, Daily Star newspaper’s monthly magazine Forum has published my article on Sarmila Bose’s recent paper. The article, entitled "The continuing rape of our history", is based on the post I wrote in October. The article benefitted significantly from the invaluable help of Tazreena Sajjad, a fellow member of the Dristipat Writers’ Collective.

The article is reprinted below:

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The continuing rape of our history

Mashuqur Rahman demolishes Sarmila Bose’s revisionist history of 1971

Genocide denial is a phenomenon that crops up to challenge almost every accepted case of genocide. The genocide committed by the Pakistan army during the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971 is no exception. Because of the scale of the atrocities in 1971 against a civilian population of 70 million people, it has proved impossible for genocide deniers to claim that the atrocities did not occur. Instead, they have focused on two tactics used to deny most genocides: that the magnitude of the killings was not that great, and that the Pakistan army had no systematic policy of genocide.

The grim numbers of 1971: Genocide versus denial
Most estimates of the 1971 genocide put the death toll between 300,000 and 3 million Bangladeshis, with between 200,000 to 400,000 women raped. R.J. Rummel, in his book Statistics of Democide: Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1900, puts the death toll at around 1.5 million. Gendercide Watch terms the 1971 genocide as one of the most concentrated acts of genocide in the twentieth century. Susan Brownmiller, in her book Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape, puts the number of women raped by the Pakistan military and their local collaborators, the razakars, between 200,000 and 400,000. According to Brownmiller, the Pakistani army raped Bengali girls as young as eight and grandmothers as old as seventy-five.

After the War, the Pakistan government produced a report — the Hamoodur Rahman Commission Report — on the actions of the Pakistan army in 1971. While the report acknowledged that the Pakistan army had indeed committed atrocities in Bangladesh, it downplayed the extent of the atrocities and denied that there was any systematic policy of genocide. The report put the death toll from the genocide at 26,000, based on "situation reports submitted from time to time by the Eastern Command to the General Headquarters."

The Pakistani report’s estimate of 26,000 dead stands in stark contrast to every other estimate of the death toll of between 300,000 to 3 million. The report was an attempt by the Pakistan government to dictate the narrative before the true extent of the genocide became evident to the world. The Pakistani report has, nonetheless, stood as the document of last resort for most 1971 genocide deniers.

Sarmila Bose’s (questionable) claims
Following up on her 2005 paper denying the extent of the 1971 genocide, published in the Economic and Political Weekly, Sarmila Bose has now published a paper denying the extent of the rape of Bangladeshi women by the Pakistan army and the razakars. In her paper titled "Losing the Victims: Problems of Using Women as Weapons in Recounting the Bangladesh War," she states:

"That rape occurred in East Pakistan in 1971 has never been in any doubt. The question is what was the true extent of rape, who were the victims and who the perpetrators, and was there any systematic policy of rape by any party, as opposed to opportunistic sexual crimes in times of war."

At the very beginning of her paper, she lays down the two tactics familiar to all genocide deniers: she questions the extent of the rape and questions whether there was any systematic policy of rape. Ms. Bose argues that claiming "hundreds of thousands" were raped trivialises "the possibly several thousand true rape victims" of the war. She, however, does not offer a good explanation as to how she reached the "several thousand" number, other than saying that so many rapes would not be possible because of the size of the Pakistani army in 1971. She also, unsurprisingly, quotes the Hamoodur Rahman Commission Report to support her assertion that so many rapes could not have occurred.

To try to bolster her argument, she claims that the size of the Pakistani army in Bangladesh was only 34,000 men. Then she asserts: "For an army of 34,000 to rape on this scale in eight or nine months (while fighting insurgency, guerrilla war and an invasion by India), each would-be perpetrator would have had to commit rape at an incredible rate."

The actual number of Pakistani forces at the end of the war, and taken POW by the Indians, was 90,368, including over 54,000 army and 22,000 paramilitary forces. It is not unreasonable to conclude that a force of 90,000 could rape between 200,000 to 400,000 women in the space of nine months. To rape 200,000 Bangladeshi women a Pakistani force of 90,000 would have to rape 2 to 3 women each in nine months. Not only is this scale of atrocity possible by an army engaged in a systematic campaign of genocide, it also has parallels in other modern conflicts (for example, the rape of between 250,000 to 500,000 women in Rwanda within 100 days).

The Pakistan army: Gentlemen in uniform at a time of war
Ms. Bose also paints a picture of the Pakistan military as a disciplined force that spared women and children. Citing her field research she writes: "Bangladeshi participants and eyewitnesses described battles, raids, massacres and executions, but told me that women were not harmed by the army in these events except by chance, such as in crossfire. The pattern that emerged from these incidents was that the Pakistan army targeted adult males while sparing women and children."

However, her field research is contradicted by all available evidence. From the early days of the war, women and girls were targeted for rape and killed. On March 30, 1971, the American Consul General in Dhaka, Archer Blood, sent a telegram to the State Department recounting the Pakistani atrocities in Dhaka. In it he wrote about the massacre at Rokeya Hall at Dhaka University where, according to Blood, the building was "set ablaze and girls machine-gunned as they fled the building."

On March 31, 1971, Archer Blood sent another telegram which recounted atrocities against girls. Blood wrote: "Six naked female bodies at Rokeya Hall, Dacca U. Feet tied together. Bits of rope hanging from ceiling fans. Apparently raped, shot and hung by their heels from fans."

The reports from the American Embassy in Dhaka give us a small window into the systematic killing spree that was Operation Searchlight, the code name the Pakistani army gave to the first stage of the genocide operation.

Throughout her paper, Ms. Bose continues to paint the Pakistan military as a disciplined force not capable of systematic rape. She cited a memo written by General Niazi that reminds his officers that they have a "code of honour" and as "gentlemen and officers" they should abide by it. She then writes that Pakistani officers she spoke to were "indignant" at charges of large-scale rape and claimed that these charges were false.

Ms. Bose follows a similar pattern throughout her paper. She gives credence to the stories told to her by the Pakistani military, the perpetrators of the rapes, and dismisses as "alleged" and not credible the accounts of the rape victims. However, contemporaneous news reports from 1971 tell a different story. For example, an October 25, 1971, a Time Magazine article, detailing the Pakistani military atrocities, reports on women and girls held captive and raped at Pakistani military headquarters in Dhaka:

"One of the more horrible revelations concerns 563 young Bengali women, some only 18, who have been held captive inside Dacca’s dingy military cantonment since the first days of the fighting. Seized from Dacca University and private homes and forced into military brothels, the girls are all three to five months pregnant. The army is reported to have enlisted Bengali gynecologists to abort girls held at military installations. But for those at the Dacca cantonment it is too late for abortion. The military has begun freeing the girls a few at a time, still carrying the babies of Pakistani soldiers."

A problematic methodology
Having portrayed the Pakistan military as a benevolent force, Ms. Bose then attempts to discredit a handful of accounts of rape victims as a way of casting doubt on the rapes committed during the 1971 genocide.

She begins by trying to cast doubt on an eyewitness, named Rabeya Khatun, whom she dismisses as illiterate, to rape at Rajarbag. Ms. Bose then dismisses accounts of two other corroborating witnesses because their testimony was similar to Ms. Khatun’s and they, too, were illiterate. Ms. Bose declares the witness’s testimony not credible because, "the language is not what would be used either by illiterate sweepers or by educated Bengalis in everyday conversation."

She then finds refuge in the account of a Pakistani Lt. Col. Taj who, unsurprisingly, "categorically denied that any molestation of women had taken place at Rajarbag by his men." Ms. Bose then informs us Lt. Col. Taj was not actually present at Rajarbag after the first night of military action. Yet, she felt the need to inject him as a fact witness.

night of military action. Yet, she felt the need to inject him as a fact witness. Then, she dismisses Ms. Khatun’s account as "highly dubious," declaring "until and unless other, credible witnesses come forward, the hellish account attributed to one illiterate woman simply will not suffice."

Dismissing witnesses simply on the grounds of illiteracy is a serious methodological fallacy. Eyewitnesses do not need to read or write to know what constitutes sexual violence. The Pakistan military did not discriminate between illiterate and literate classes in its campaign of killings and rape against Bangladeshis.

Ms. Bose then tries to cast doubt on the account of rape victim Ferdousi Priyabhashini, an educated woman and well-known sculptor. Ms. Bose’s argument here is somewhat muddled, but it appears that she is claiming that Mrs. Priyabhashini was less of a rape victim and more of a willing participant.

Ms. Bose writes: "It is highly unusual for someone of her background to admit to having been a rape victim, especially in the conservative societies like Bangladesh." Ms. Bose goes on, "According to her own account, in 1971, Ferdousi Priyabhashini was a mature woman, a divorced mother of three, working for many years."

After a muddled discussion of Ms. Priyabhashini’s account of rape by Pakistani soldiers, Ms. Bose concludes that there is an "inconsistency" in Ms. Priyabha-shini’s account because she feared she would be killed by the freedom fighters. Ms. Bose declares: "Only those who were perceived to have willingly fraternised with the Pakistani regime were at risk of the wrath of freedom fighters, not victims of the regime." It appears Ms. Bose is asserting that since Ms. Priyabhashini feared for her life, she must have consented to having sex with Pakistani soldiers.

In the legal sense, rape is an act of sexual intercourse carried out "against a person’s will by means of force, violence, duress, menace, or fear of immediate and unlawful bodily injury on the person or another." The calculated rationale of the act of war-time rape constitutes a political act, and an attack on the collective political identity of the group of females under attack, not necessarily on their individual identities. Rape during genocides is not exclusively an attack on the body — it is an attack on the "body politic." Its primary goal is not to maim or kill a person (though that does, in fact, happen, in great numbers) but to control an entire socio-political process by crippling it.

Put another way, during genocides, rape has been used as a weapon of social control and cultural destruction, of devaluation and commodification.

Genocidal rape is not rape out of control, it is rape under control. All existing evidence points to the fact that the Pakistani military specifically targeted Bengali women and girls. This targeting was not a by-product of war, but a systematic campaign of genocidal rape. The historic Akayesu trial in the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda established that rape constitutes an act of genocide, and an egregious violation of international law, when it is committed to destroy a targeted group. Given the scale and systematic way in which Bangladeshi women and girls were subjected to rape and sexual violence in 1971, even a rudimentary understanding of the effect of rape on the victim casts doubt on Ms. Bose’s argument.

Ms. Bose goes on to try to cast doubt on the account of Akhtaruzzaman Mandal — a freedom fighter who accompanied Indian soldiers as they took control of a Pakistani position. There, Mr. Mandal states, he saw the corpse of a Pakistani captain lying beside a dead Bengali woman who showed signs of rape. Mr. Mandal also states that four naked women were discovered locked in a building, and one of the women was six months pregnant. Another 16 women were also discovered locked in an adjacent high school, some showing signs of torture.

In discounting Mr. Mandal’s account, Ms. Bose writes that she interviewed Pakistani officers who told her that the dead captain was "humane" and had only recently arrived at the location. She accuses Mr. Mandal of "character assassination of an officer who had died defending his country, and therefore, cannot speak in his own defence."

Ms. Bose, once again, is ready to accept the word of the Pakistani soldiers, the perpetrators of rape. However, there are many cases of rapists in this world who appear to be "humane" to those who know them.

In critiquing accounts of seven rape victims describes in Neelima Ibrahim’s book Ami Birangona Bolchhi, Ms. Bose notes that four of the seven women were abducted by Bengalis and one by a Bihari before being handed over to the Pakistan army. Some of the women were raped by their initial abductors before being handed over to the Pakistan army, to be held in barracks and raped again. Ms. Bose neglects to mention that those who abducted the women were local collaborators, razakars, working with the Pakistani military. Nonetheless, she makes the bizarre observation that since the razakars had already raped the women, "for the majority of these women, therefore, even if the Pakistan army had done nothing, they would still be rape victims."

The point, of course, is that the Pakistani army had done something — they had raped these women. Whether their initial abductors had also raped the women does not make the Pakistani army any less complicit in their rapes.

An apologia
In this latest paper Sarmila Bose tries mightily to diminish the atrocities committed by the Pakistan military in 1971. She, however, offers very little of substance to back up her assertion that the existing research and documentation of the 1971 genocide overestimates the death toll and the rapes. Her claim that, in her words, the "unsubstantiated and implausible" claims of hundreds of thousands of rape victims distracts attention from the "true rape victims" and "insult the true victims by trivialising their suffering" is itself an insult to the victims of rape in Bangladesh. The number of rape victims does not diminish the suffering of any individual rape victim; the vast number of rapes only demonstrates the heinous magnitude of the Pakistani campaign. If there is any insult, it is that there is no acknowledgement of all the victims of the Pakistan army’s rapes; rather, there is an attempt to dismiss the experiences of rape victims by asserting that these rapes did not take place.

In her attempt at denial, Sarmila Bose relies on the Pakistan government’s report on the atrocities and the accounts of Pakistani soldiers, the perpetrators of the genocide. She overlooks news reports from the time, eyewitness accounts, academic works, and case studies. Instead of addressing the issue of genocidal rape in 1971, Ms. Bose tries to deconstruct and discredit a handful of accounts of rape. She targets personal narratives, such as that of Ms. Priyabhashini’s, to try to prove the victims were not raped. She does not engage the issue of the number of rapes in any substantial way, or address how her assertions of "several thousand rapes" can be reconciled with numbers put forward by international agencies or independent reports, nor does she engage the discussion of genocidal rape as a war strategy.

In the end, her paper is neither scholarly nor neutral. It is an apologia for the Pakistan army and for the genocide it perpetrated against the Bangladeshi people in 1971.

————————————————————————-
Notes:
1. Sarmila Bose’s paper: "Losing the Victims: Problems of Using Women as Weapons in Recounting the Bangladesh War" can be found on the Internet at http://www.Epw. Org. in/uploads/articles/11060.pdf
2. An expanded version of this article can be found on the Internet at http://www.drishtipat.org/blog/2007/10/10/the-continuing-rape-of-bangladesh.

Artworks by PABLO

Mashuqur Rahman is a US-based member of the Drishtipat Writers’ Collective.

bangladesh bangladesh liberation war genocide rape sarmila bose

Today The Progressive Bangladesh, a magazine of progressive Bangladeshi thought, published an article co-authored by me and Umme Perveen Iftikhar on the recent Transparency International report on Bangladesh. The article expands on the post I wrote last week entitled "The Myth Of The Anti-Corruption Drive".

Excerpts:

The Corruption Surprise
By Mashuqur Rahman and Umme Perveen Iftikhar

When Transparency International published its Corruption Perceptions Index—or CPI—for 2007, the leading English daily in Bangladesh greeted the news with a deliberately positive headline: “Bangladesh improves on its graft image: Climbs up to 7th position from bottom of TI’s corruption index.” Indeed it is an improvement, considering that Bangladesh had tied for the third lowest spot last year.

What’s important, position or perception?

The perception that underlies Bangladesh’s gain in rank remains exactly the same as before. Both in 2006 and in 2007 Bangladesh received a CPI score of 2.0. In other words, Bangladesh showed no improvement in corruption between 2006 and 2007. The country’s ranking improved only because seven countries of the world became more corrupt this year: Cambodia, Central African Republic, Papua New Guinea, Turkmenistan, Venezuela, Equatorial Guinea and Laos. In addition, four new countries (Afghanistan, Tonga, Uzbekistan and Somalia), also with worse corruption than Bangladesh, were added as new entrants to the list.

Policymakers and the media engaged in a hair-splitting exercise to figure out what’s more important, the rank or the score. But given the self-censorship in the country, few had the courage to say outright that the rank is an outcome of indexing. What is important is that the perception of corruption in Bangladesh remains as strongly negative as before.

That conclusion, not made forcefully in public, would be an embarrassment to the caretaker government, which has been fighting a “war on corruption.” Indeed, like authoritarian governments almost everywhere, it legitimizes its existence primarily to its anti-corruption drive. Cleaning up politics is the pretext on which it has stretched the limits of constitutional interpretation by delaying the election date till the end of 2008. But now the world’s leading corruption watchdog comes out to say essentially that the anti-corruption effort has had little or no effect so far. How can this be tackled?

[Read more]

 

bangladesh corruption coup progressive bangladesh transparency international

Last week I wrote a brief post about Congressman Jim McDermott’s introduction of a private bill, H.R. 2181, that aims to give a green card to convicted terrorist Mohiuddin AKM Ahmed. Today the leading Bangladeshi English language newspaper, The Daily Star, published an op-ed written by me about Congressman McDermott’s private bill.

The op-ed is reprinted below:

—–

Congressman McDermott’s support for Mohiuddin
Mashuqur Rahman

On May 31, the US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals issued the mandate that ended convicted killer AKM Mohiuddin Ahmed’s asylum appeals and made him deportable from the United States. However, the long saga has moved from the courts to the political arena after a congressman introduced a private bill to issue Mohiuddin a green card.

The rationale presented in the bill needs discussion both in the United States and Bangladesh; and it is time to explore whether the United States government should be actively sheltering a convicted murderer.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was set to deport Mohiuddin to Bangladesh on or around June 2. However, Mohiuddin’s lawyers managed to get a temporary stay of deportation from a lower court judge until Tuesday, June 5. A US District Court judge has scheduled a hearing for Tuesday June 5 to consider a stay of deportation.

The hearing will not reconsider the asylum case since the lower court does not have jurisdiction and cannot overrule the Court of Appeals decision. Mohiuddin’s lawyers have, instead, asked the District Court to consider whether Mohiuddin could be deported while there was a private bill on his behalf pending in the US Congress.

On May 3, while the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals was still considering Mohiuddin’s last petition, a Democratic congressman from Washington State, Jim McDermott, introduced a private bill in the US House Judiciary Committee on his behalf. A private bill is a rare legislative procedure in the United States used to pass a law that benefits only one person rather than a class of individuals.

Private bills are sometimes used in immigration cases by members of Congress to grant relief to individuals who, because of an unusual set of circumstances, may be facing deportation from the country. For example, they are sometimes used to give relief to family members who would otherwise be separated if one member were to be deported, causing severe hardship to the rest.

Private bills rarely become laws. To become a law, the bill must first be passed by the US House Judiciary Committee, then by the US House of Representatives, then by the US Senate, and finally must be signed into law by the president of the United States.

The private bill introduced by congressman McDermott, known as H.R. 2181, aims to help Mohiuddin in a number of ways. First, it aims to stay the deportation order against him indefinitely. Second, it aims to release him from custody and bars the DHS from deporting him to Bangladesh, or to any country that has an extradition treaty with Bangladesh.

Third, it aims to grant a green card to Mohiuddin, which would allow him to get preferential treatment before all other green card applicants from Bangladesh. It also aims to grant him the card by reducing the number of green cards available to other Bangladeshis by one. Finally, it states that Mohiuddin will be allowed to seek asylum in any foreign country of his choosing.

Congressman McDermott’s bill also makes some extraordinary "findings." The bill claims that Mohiuddin is an "innocent Bangladeshi citizen." It also claims that the Bangladesh court "erroneously convicted Mr. Ahmed of murder and sentenced him to death." It further claims that the trial and conviction are "sufficiently suspect as to warrant the immediate intervention" by the US government to prevent his deportation.

However, the claims in the bill directly contradict the ruling of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. In its decision denying Mohiuddin’s petition the court wrote: "Ahmed failed to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that his in absentia murder trial and conviction in Bangladesh was fundamentally unfair and, thus, deprived him of due process of law. Therefore, the IJ properly relied on the conviction." Mohiuddin failed to convince the US court that his trial was unfair.

The court did not find that Mohiuddin was "erroneously convicted," or that the trial was "sufficiently suspect." It felt that it was proper to rely on the conviction in the Bangladeshi court.

Therefore, the congressman’s claim that Mohiuddin is an "innocent Bangladeshi citizen" is not supported by the facts, and is also not something that Mohiuddin was able to convince any court of.

Furthermore, the US State Department has stated that Mohiuddin"s trial — a high profile trial observed by the world community and human rights organizations — followed due process.

The bill also claims that Mohiuddin was merely manning a roadblock on August 15, 1975, and that he "had no knowledge of, nor did he support, the violent coup that erupted that night."

Again, this claim in the bill directly contradicts the 9th Circuit’s ruling. In the ruling the court wrote: "Ahmed is ineligible for asylum and withholding of removal for two reasons:

• Because he engaged in terrorist activity,
• Because he assisted or otherwise participated in the persecution of others on account of their political opinion. Even his own account of his actions established that he assisted or otherwise participated in the persecution of persons on account of their political opinion."
  Perhaps the most inexplicable part of the bill is its reference to the Indemnity Act. The bill states "…when Sheikh Hasina Wajed, daughter of the assassinated prime minister, came to power, and then broke her promise to respect the Bangladeshi constitutional amendment which provided immunity to officers involved in the 1975 coup. Rather, Sheikh Hasina Wajed orchestrated the repeal of the constitutional amendment."

The congressman, in the bill, seems to be advocating immunity for the murderers of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and his family. It is difficult to understand why a US congressman would suggest that repealing of a grant of immunity to murderers of children and pregnant women should be called into question.

Congressman McDermott’s bill is based on false or misleading information. It claims as facts the many arguments Mohiuddin and his supporters have been publicly making, but failed to prove them in US courts of law where facts and evidence count.

By introducing the private bill, congressman McDermott has staked his reputation on the word of a convicted murderer who has been found to engage in terrorist activity by US courts of law.

At a time when the United States is engaged in a global war on terror, a Congressional intervention on behalf of an individual deemed to have engaged in terrorist activity is an extraordinary step.

Given the political sensitivity of the bill, and its awkward position within the war on terror, it is highly unlikely that the bill will ever become law. However, for Mohiuddin to get a stay of deportation the bill does not have to become law.

If the House Immigration Subcommittee takes up the bill and requests a report from the US immigration authorities, it would result in a stay of deportation. All indications are that the Subcommittee has not taken up Mohiuddin’s private bill — if it had, a stay of deportation would have already occurred.

Without such action it will be an uphill battle for Mohiuddin’s lawyers to convince the judge at Tuesday’s hearing to order a stay of deportation. It is almost a certainty that the subcommittee chairwoman will be lobbied hard on behalf of Mohiuddin in the coming days.

Having lost his asylum bid in the US courts, Mohiuddin is now appealing to American politicians to continue to evade justice. American politicians, such as congressman Jim McDermott, are now confronted with a choice between the rule of law and the word of a convicted killer.

By introducing the private bill on behalf of Mohiuddin congressman McDermott may have bought Mohiuddin a few more days of evading justice. But at what cost?

Mashuqur Rahman is a Virginia-based blogger and a member of the Drishtipat Writers’ Collective.

—–

 

bangladesh coup immigration jim mcdermott mohiuddin ahmed terrorism

Former Congressman Curt Weldon visited Bangladesh earlier this year as part of a "US security delegation." His trip was widely reported in the Bangladeshi press. The fact that he was a former congressman was conveniently left out giving the impression to the average Bangladeshi reader that he represented official US government positions.

Today the Bangladeshi English language newspaper New Age published an op-ed coauthored by Tazreena Sajjad and me about Curt Weldon’s visit. Our op-ed was based in large part on the excellent research done by mrs panstreppon at TPMCafe.

The op-ed is reprinted below:

———-

Weldon’s visit to Bangladesh

by Mashuqur Rahman and Tazreena Sajjad

It was recently reported in the Bangladeshi press that a US security delegation that visited Bangladesh in March had asked President George W Bush to give Bangladesh ‘high priority’ as a strategic partner in US foreign and national security policies. Naturally, it raised some alarm bells among the concerned citizens. However, upon further investigations some interesting facts about Weldon and his interests have emerged and questions remain concerning his recent visit.

The US security delegation, it was reported, included ‘US Congressman Curt Weldon’. Weldon, however, is no longer a United States congressman. He was defeated in the November 2006 US congressional elections by the Democratic Party candidate Joe Sestak. According to press reports in the US, Weldon is currently under investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation for alleged corruption.

Weldon is currently the chief strategic officer of Defence Solutions Incorporated, a small privately-owned company headquartered in Pennsylvania that does defence-related contracting. Weldon began working for Defence Solutions in February 2007. Other members of the delegation that visited Bangladesh in March 2007 included Timothy Ringgold, chief executive officer of Defence Solutions, and Michael Kearney, a programme manager at Defence Solutions.

Defence Solutions is one of many small businesses that vie for contracts from the US government. Although the company was established in 2001, public federal procurement records show that it started to generate revenue from federal contracts in 2005. In the past two years, Defence Solutions has generated less than $1.9 million from US federal government contracts, mostly from the defence department. Defence Solutions also has offices in Israel and Hungary. According to the company’s website, from its Israeli office, Defence Solutions aims to introduce Israeli technologies and solutions to the US defence market. From its Hungary office, the company supports contracts related to the Iraq War. In 2005 Defence Solutions refurbished and delivered to the Iraqi Army seventy seven Soviet-made T-72 main battle tanks donated by Hungary. The Washington Times newspaper has referred to Defence Solutions as an international arms dealer.

Weldon did not visit Bangladesh as a US government official, but rather as a private citizen apparently lobbying to acquire business for his company. It was also reported in the Bangladeshi press that Weldon and his delegation belonged to the Global Alliance for Homeland Security. Information on GAHS is difficult to come by in the United States. What is known is that GAHS is a private organisation with ties to Bangladesh. While researching Weldon’s visit to Bangladesh, a writer at the American political blog TPMCafe.com located the company registration information for the organisation. It was registered as a non-profit organisation with New York State in late September of 2006.

GAHS gives as its mailing address an apartment in Woodside, Queens, New York. The same apartment is the mailing address for two other non-profit organizations called the American Bangladesh Friendship Society Incorporated and the American Bangladesh Friendship Club Incorporated. This apartment is also the mailing address of the Bangladeshi businessman listed in US government records as the president of the American Bangladesh Friendship Society. This Bangladeshi businessman, using the Woodside apartment as a mailing address, is also listed as the president of an organisation called World Human Rights and Development Incorporated which is registered in New York State. This last organisation, which boasts three members on its website, lists Weldon as a co-chairman.

Weldon is a controversial figure in the US. While he hailed Bangladesh government’s anti-corruption drive at Jatiya Press Club in March, Weldon himself remains under investigation in the US for alleged corruption. In October 2006 the Washington Post reported that a federal grand jury had been impanelled in Washington DC to determine whether Weldon had illegally used his political influence when he was Congressman to win lucrative contracts and favours for his family members. Weldon is under investigation for allegedly steering a lucrative contract from a Serbian businessman to his daughter. The Serbian businessman is barred from visiting or doing business with the United States because of his ties to former Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic. Weldon was allegedly trying to get the Serbian businessman off the US blacklist in the same year Weldon’s daughter received the lucrative business from the Serbian businessman’s family. Weldon is also under investigation for a consulting contract his daughter received from a Russian company, Itera, worth $170,000 in start up fee and $300,000 more in monthly retainer fees. Weldon has taken trips paid for by Itera and has advocated for Itera’s interests. As part of the investigation into alleged corruption by Weldon, FBI agents raided the homes of his daughter and one of his closest political supporters.

It is unclear how much influence Weldon still carries in Washington, given the ongoing investigation. He is also barred by ethics rules from directly lobbying the US Congress for one year after leaving office. It is also unclear who Weldon is lobbying for when, in his letter to President Bush, he calls for ‘enhanced military-to-military’ and ‘civilian-to-military’ programmes and visits. In his current capacity as the chief strategic officer of Defence Solutions Incorporated his primary responsibility is to lobby for and acquire business for his company.

Questions remain about the timing of Weldon’s visit, the motives of Defence Solutions and the nature of its relationship with the Global Alliance for Homeland Security. However, it should be clear that the delegation that visited Bangladesh in March did not represent the US government. Rather, it consisted primarily of senior management of the private company called Defence Solutions. The company, it seems, is interested in securing contracts from Bangladesh as well as the US. Defence Solutions does not represent the US government — it is one of thousands of companies that seek to do business with the government. Similarly, Weldon does not represent the US Congress. He is a former congressman who is now a private citizen working for a private company. Any other representation would be a misrepresentation of the facts.

Mashuqur Rahman is a Virginia-based blogger. Tazreena Sajjad is a PhD candidate at American University, Washington D.C. They are both members of the Drishtipat Writers’ Collective.

———-

 

bangladesh curt weldon

Bangladesh is the cover feature of the June 2007 issue of Himal Southasian magazine, published from Nepal. There are three feature articles and seven short articles on the current situation in Bangladesh. One of the short articles was written by me.

Two articles on Bangladesh in the May issue of Himal Southasian magazine were banned in Bangladesh because they were critical of the military government. It remains to be seen if the current issue will be allowed to be distributed in Bangladesh.

The three feature articles are:

• The anger of Bangladesh’s non-elite
• Inflation up, government down
• Testing time for Dhaka’s media

The seven short articles, including mine, are under the heading "Under the emergency: seven takes". I wrote my article as a member of the Drishtipat Writers’ Collective, a diverse group of writers of Bangladeshi origin who are concerned about the future of democracy in Bangladesh.

My article is reprinted below:

———-

C = M + D – A

When Iajuddin Ahmed declared a state of emergency on 11 January after two months of political turmoil, he assured Bangladeshis that a newly constituted caretaker government would “hold a free, fair, neutral and acceptable election to Parliament within the shortest possible time, in consultation with all parties concerned”. In spite of the state of emergency, Bangladesh breathed a collective sigh of relief.

That relief has now dissipated, and in its place is mounting concern. The caretaker government’s mandate to hold ‘free and fair’ elections has now mutated into an all-encompassing anti-corruption drive. The business of holding elections has taken a back seat to the business of rounding up politicians on corruption charges. A ban on political activities, the suppression of fundamental rights, and intimidation of the press have contributed to creating a state of dire uncertainty.

While the reduction of corruption, rampant in Bangladesh, is a laudable and important goal, it is far from clear that an anti-corruption drive by an unaccountable government can indeed be successful. On the contrary, all the conditions exist today for the further corruption of the political system in Bangladesh. The World Bank often uses the following formula for parsing corruption: C = M + D – A, where corruption (C) equals monopoly power (M) combined with discretion by public officials (D) minus accountability (A). According to this formula, the current caretaker government’s monopoly over all instruments of state power; its powers of arbitrary arrest without warrant, and its detention of citizens without due-process rights; and the limitations it has placed on the press as the citizens’ watchdog, all conspire to undermine the government’s stated goal of reducing corruption.

The crucial element of fighting corruption – accountability – is conspicuously missing from the current framework. Though the leaders of the caretaker government may have good intentions, the government itself, operating under a state of emergency, is institutionally stacked against them.

It is time for Iajuddin Ahmed’s caretaker government to return to its original and constitutionally supportable mandate of holding free and fair elections. To do that, a dialogue must start with the country’s political parties, to begin work on electoral reform; shackles on the press must be undone so that free flow of information, so essential to accountability, is guaranteed; and those who have committed crimes, including stealing from the public coffers, need to be brought before the courts with full due process. But time is not on the caretaker government’s side. It has a job to do – and needs to do it expeditiously.

———-

bangladesh drishtipat writers collective himal southasian

Rediff.com, India’s largest web portal, has created a portal site on the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War to commemorate the 35th anniversary of the end of the war. The site offers a primarily Indian perspective on the 1971 war. There are some very interesting articles and interviews that illuminate the Indian involvement in the war.

I was asked to contribute an article on the genocide that took place in 1971 as part of the site. My article is entitled "The Demons of 1971" and was just posted today. The article covers much of the same ground as my post from last month. However, it offers another perspective - the view from foreign journalists who reported on the massacres at the time.

I was pleased to have had the opportunity to contribute to this series on the 1971 war. My hope is that these articles will contribute to a growing body of resources that attempt to shed light on one of the most underreported acts of genocide of the 20th century. Please visit the site and read the many informative articles. Thanks.

---

The article in its original format follows:

—————————–

Thirty-five years ago, on December 16, 1971, the Pakistan Army unconditionally surrendered to the Indian Army at the Dhaka Race Course in Bangladesh. With the stroke of a pen, Bangladesh was born. That birth, however, came at an enormous cost. Before the Pakistan Army and its local collaborators were finally subdued by the Indian Army, they had managed to slaughter up to 3 million Bengalis in nine months of madness.

This is the story of that slaughter. This is the story of genocide in Bangladesh.

In 1971, Bangladesh, then called East Pakistan, was part of a geographical monstrosity created by the British in 1947. Pakistan, as created by the British, consisted of West Pakistan and

East Pakistan, separated by the vast expanse of the Indian land mass in the middle. East and West Pakistan spoke different languages and were culturally distinct. East Pakistan accounted for the majority of ’s population, yet it was economically exploited and politically marginalized by West Pakistan. Bengalis, the people of East Pakistan, were also persecuted for speaking their native language and for being either Muslims who had converted from Hinduism or for being Hindus. Pakistan, translated as "The Land of the Pure", was intolerant of Bengalis because they were not “pure" Muslims.

The tension between East and West Pakistan began to boil over in 1970 after West Pakistan’s minimal response to the devastation wreaked by the cyclone of 1970 in East Pakistan . Nearly half a million Bengalis died as a result of the cyclone and the indifferent response by the Pakistani government. In the midst of the tension, the Pakistani military rulers decided to hold the first democratic elections in ’s history. The Awami League, representing Bengalis in East Pakistan, won the majority of seats in the National Assembly. However, the military leadership of West Pakistan refused to allow the Awami League to form a government.

The siege of East Pakistan by the Pakistani Army had begun. War was now inevitable. On March 7, 1971, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the leader of the Awami League, gave a speech at the Dhaka Race Course that mobilized the Bengali nation for resistance. He began the speech with a call to arms:

The struggle this time is for emancipation! The struggle this time is for independence!

On March 25, 1971, the Pakistani Army launched Operation Searchlight to "eliminate" the Awami League and its supporters in East Pakistan . The goal was to "crush" the will of the Bengalis. The killing began shortly after 10 p.m. In the first 48 hours the orgy of killing had ravaged Dhaka city. The Hindu population of Dhaka  took the brunt of the slaughter. Dhaka University was targeted and Hindu students were gunned down. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was arrested shortly after declaring Bangladesh independent. The rest of the Awami League leadership went into hiding and those that survived eventually fled to . The genocide had just begun:

On February 22, 1971 the generals in West Pakistan took a decision to crush the Awami League and its supporters. It was recognized from the first that a campaign of genocide would be necessary to eradicate the threat: "Kill three million of them," said President Yahya Khan at the February conference, "and the rest will eat out of our hands." (Robert Payne, Massacre [1972], p. 50.) On March 25 the genocide was launched. The university in Dacca was attacked and students exterminated in their hundreds. Death squads roamed the streets of Dacca, killing some 7,000 people in a single night. It was only the beginning. "Within a week, half the population of Dacca had fled, and at least 30,000 people had been killed. Chittagong, too, had lost half its population. All over East Pakistan people were taking flight, and it was estimated that in April some thirty million people [!] were wandering helplessly across East Pakistan to escape the grasp of the military." (Payne, Massacre, p. 48.) Ten million refugees fled to , overwhelming that country’s resources and spurring the eventual Indian military intervention. (The population of Bangladesh/East Pakistan at the outbreak of the genocide was about 75 million.)

The will of the Bengali people was not broken on the night of March 25, 1971. On the contrary, while Dhaka burned so burned the illusion of a united .

At 7:45 pm on March 27, 1971 Major Ziaur Rahman, leader of a rebel army unit in East Pakistan, broadcast Bangladesh’s independence on behalf of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. With the following words, the armed resistance to the army began:

This is Shadhin Bangla Betar Kendro [Free Bangla Radio]. I, Major Ziaur Rahman, at the direction of Bangobondhu Mujibur Rahman, hereby declare that the independent People’s Republic of Bangladesh has been established. At his direction, I have taken command as the temporary Head of the Republic. In the name of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, I call upon all Bengalis to rise against the attack by the West Pakistani Army. We shall fight to the last to free our Motherland. By the grace of Allah, victory is ours. Joy Bangla.

Major Zia’s broadcast from a small radio station in Chittagong, Bangladesh was picked up by a Japanese ship in the Bay of Bengal. It was later rebroadcast by Radio and the BBC.

Yahya Khan and the Pakistan Army planned their genocide well. Yahya Khan aimed to crush the Bengali spirit once and for all. Before the crackdown all foreign journalists were expelled from East Pakistan. Only a handful managed to evade the Pakistani Army by hiding out. These few journalists exposed to the world the planned genocide that was about to unfold.

One of the journalists that remained in Dhaka was Simon Dring. On March 30, 1971 he filed a chilling report of the massacre that took place in Dhaka on the night of the 25^th of March. Dring reported that in 24 hours of killing the Pakistan Army had slaughtered as many as 7000 people in Dhaka and up to 15,000 people in all of Bangladesh. The Pakistan Army employed tanks, artillery, mortars, bazookas and machine guns against the unarmed population of Dhaka. Their targets were students, local police, intellectuals, political leaders, Awami League supporters, Hindus and ordinary citizens. They carried out their ruthless killing spree with military precision.

Simon Dring described the attack on Dhaka University as follows:

Led by American-supplied M-24 World War II tanks, one column of troops sped to Dacca University shortly after midnight. Troops took over the British council library and used it as a fire base from which to shell nearby dormitory areas.

Caught completely by surprise, some 200 students were killed in Iqbal Hall, headquarters of the militantly antigovernment students’ union, I was told. Two days later, bodies were still smoldering in burnt-out rooms, others were scattered outside, more floated in a nearby lake, an art student lay sprawled across his easel.

…

Army patrols also razed nearby market area. Two days later, when it was possible to get out and see all this, some of the market’s stall-owners were still lying as though asleep, their blankets pulled up over their shoulders.

The “old town” part of Dhaka city was singled out for destruction by the Pakistanis because of strong Awami League support there and because there were many Hindu residents in the area. Here is how Simon Dring described the attacks on unarmed civilians:

The lead unit was followed by soldiers carrying cans of gasoline. Those who tried to escape were shot. Those who stayed were burnt alive. About 700 men, women and children died there that day between noon and 2 p.m., I was told.

…

In the Hindi area of the old town, the soldiers reportedly made the people come out of their houses and shot them in groups. The area, too, was eventually razed.

The troops stayed on in force in the old city until about 11 p.m. on the night of Friday, March 26, driving around with local Bengali informers. The soldiers would fire a flare and the informer would point out the houses of Awami League supporters. The house would then be destroyed – either with direct fire from tanks or recoilless rifles or with a can of gasoline, witnesses said.

After having massacred 15,000 unarmed civilians in a single day, the Pakistani soldiers were feeling their oats. They bragged about their invincibility to Simon Dring:

“These bugger men,” said one Punjabi lieutenant, “could not kill us if they tried.”

“Things are much better now,” said another officer. “Nobody can speak out or come out. If they do we will kill them – they have spoken enough – they are traitors, and we are not. We are fighting in the name of God and a united Pakistan.”

In the name of God and a united Pakistan, genocide had just begun.

The Pakistanis began their killing spree in the major cities of Dhaka, Chittagong and Comilla. However, as terrified Bengalis fled to the countryside, the Pakistani Army followed. Pakistan began to fly in additional troops into Bangladesh to continue the genocidal campaign. The goal was the extermination of the Bengali nation. Hindus in particular were targeted for extermination. Bengali Muslims, however, did not escape the Pakistani killing machine since Bengali Muslims were considered “tainted” by their Bengali/Hindu culture. In the face of the ongoing massacres, a guerilla army formed under the leadership of rebel Bengali military officers and organized student activists. This guerilla army, known as the Mukti Bahini in Bengali, fought a war of attrition with the Pakistani army until December, 1971. The Mukti Bahini received training and support from the Indian government as it resisted Pakistani occupation. The Pakistani army was constantly harassed by the Bangladeshi resistance. In response the Pakistani army slaughtered more Bengalis.

The killing continued unabated throughout the summer of 1971. The army moved methodically from village to village, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake. In June the Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Sydney Schanberg filed a number of eyewitness accounts from Bangladeshi towns for the New York Times. In response, the Pakistan Army expelled him from the country on June 30, 1971.

Schanberg described the systematic subjugation and killing of Bengalis:

Army trucks roll through the half-deserted streets of the capital of East Pakistan these days, carrying “antistate” prisoners to work-sites for hard labor. Their heads are shaved and they wear no shoes and no clothes except for shorts – all making escape difficult.

…

Street designations are being changed to remove all Hindu names as well as those of Bengali Moslem nationalists as part of a campaign to stamp out Bengali culture. Shankari Bazar Road in Dacca is now Tikka Khan Road, after the lieutenant general governor of East Pakistan and whom most Bengalis call “the Butcher.”

…

Since the offensive began the troops have killed countless thousands of Bengalis – foreign diplomats estimate at least 200,000 to 250,000 – many in massacres. Although the targets were Bengali Moslems and the 10 million Hindus at first, the army is now concentrating on Hindus in what foreign observers characterize as a holy war.

…

Of the more than six million Bengalis who are believed to have fled to India to escape the army’s terror, at least four million are Hindus. The troops are still killing Hindus and burning and looting their villages.

When the burden of the killing became too much for the army, the Pakistanis enlisted and trained paramilitary units made up of non-Bengali Muslims and Bengali collaborators from right-wing religious parties. These paramilitary units, the al-Badr and al-Shams, worked as informers and assassins to augment the military’s gruesome task of killing Bengalis. In June 1971 Sydney Schanberg reported on the formation of these units:

Throughout East Pakistan the Army is training new paramilitary home guards or simply arming “loyal” civilians, some of whom are formed into peace committees. Besides Biharis and other non-Bengali, Urdu-speaking Moslems, the recruits include the small minority of Bengali Moslems who have long supported the army – adherents of the right-wing religious parties such as the Moslem League and Jamaat-e-Islami.

Collectively known as the Razakars, the paramilitary units spread terror throughout the Bengali population. With their local knowledge, the Razakars were an invaluable tool in the Pakistani Army’s arsenal of genocide.

At the end of June 1971, Sydney Schanberg visited the town of Faridpur and reported on the persecution there:

The Pakistani Army has painted big yellow “H’s” on the Hindu shops still standing in this town to identify the property of the minority eighth of the population that it has made special targets.

…

The campaign against the Hindus was – and in some cases still is – systematic. Soldiers fanned through virtually every village asking where the Hindus lived. Hindu property has been confiscated and either sold or given to “loyal” citizens. Many of the beneficiaries have been Biharis, non-Bengali Moslem migrants from India, most of whom are working with the army now. The army has given weapons to large numbers of the Biharis, and it is they who have often continued the killing of Hindus in areas where the army has eased off.

…

However, army commanders in the field in East Pakistan privately admit to a policy of stamping out Bengali culture, both Moslem and Hindu – but particularly Hindu.

…

In Faridpur – and the situation was much the same throughout East Pakistan – there was no friction to speak of between Hindu and Moslem before the army came.

The army tried to drive a wedge between them. In April, as a public example, two Hindus were beheaded in a central square in Faridpur and their bodies were soaked in kerosene and burned.

…

Still, there is no sign of a hate-Hindu psychology among the Bengali Moslems. Many have taken grave risks to shelter and defend Hindus; others express shock and horror at what is happening to the Hindus but confess that they are too frightened to help.

For his part in exposing Pakistani atrocities in Bangladesh, Sydney Schanberg was promptly expelled from Bangladesh.

The Pakistan Army and the Razakars did not stop at simply massacring Bengalis. They also took to raping Bengali women. During nine months in 1971, over 200,000 Bengali women and girls were raped. Many were taken as sex slaves and raped multiple times by the Pakistani Army.

By December 1971 the genocide had decimated Bengali society. On December 3, 1971 the Indian Army formally joined the war. In 13 days the Indian Army delivered a humiliating defeat to the Pakistani Army in Bangladesh. The army that had committed mass murder against an unarmed civilian population was decisively routed in less then a fortnight.

The Pakistan army, on the verge of defeat, was determined to wipe out Bengali culture in one final act of barbarism. On December 14, 1971, the Pakistan army unleashed the paramilitary units al-Badr and al-Shams to exterminate Bengali intellectuals. The goal was to find and kill Bengali political thinkers, educators, scientists, poets, doctors, lawyers, journalists and other intellectuals. The al-Badr and al-Shams fanned out with lists of names to find and execute the core of the Bengali intellectuals. The intellectuals were arrested and taken to Rayerbazar, a marshy area in Dhaka city. There, they were gunned down with their eyes blindfolded and their hands tied behind their backs.

On December 16, 1971 the Pakistani army in Bangladesh formally surrendered. At the cost of three million dead the nation of Bangladesh was born. It was the most concentrated act of genocide of the Twentieth Century. Thirty-five years after the birth of the nation, many have forgotten the sacrifices of those who are no longer with us. But for those of us who survived, for our parents who kept us safe through the months of terror, there is no erasing the horrors of 1971.

Bangladesh today has yet to exorcise the demons of 1971. Many of the Razakars who collaborated with the Pakistani Army and murdered countless Bengalis have today returned to Bangladesh. Some of the Razakar leaders from 1971 today lead the Jamaat-e-Islami party in Bangladesh. Still others are living freely in the United Kingdom and the United States. None of these Razakars have yet to face justice for the crimes they committed in 1971.

Today the secular Bangladesh that was born from the ashes of 1971 is under threat. It is under threat from the same anti-liberation forces that helped perpetrate the genocide of 1971. The future of a secular Bangladesh hangs in the balance today. Bangladeshis learned in 1971 the evils of both racism and religious extremism. It is a lesson we forget at our own peril.

References

1.       “Bangladesh: Out of War, a Nation Is Born”, Time Magazine, December 20, 1971, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,878969,00.html

2.       Video of surrender ceremony, Indian Army Archives, http://indianarmy.nic.in/armiage/PAK.surrender.WMV

       “Bangladesh Liberation War: Economic Exploitation”, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh_Liberation_War#Economic_exploitation

4.       “1970 Bhola Cyclone”, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1970_Bhola_cyclone

5.       “A Step in the Right Direction”, Time Magazine, December 21, 1970, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,904592,00.html

6.       “Bangladesh Liberation War: Political Climax”, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh_Liberation_War#Political_climax

7.       “Speech of Bongobondhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman on the 7 March, 1971”, http://www.albd.org/bangabandhu/7marchspeech.htm

8.       “Operation Searchlight”, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Searchlight

9.       “The Events in East Pakistan, 1971”, http://www.globalwebpost.com/genocide1971/docs/jurists/4_events_march_dec.htm

10.   “Case Study: Genocide in Bangladesh, 1971”, http://www.gendercide.org/case_bangladesh.html

11.   “The Declaration of Independence”, http://www.bangladesh.net/muktijuddha/doc8.htm

12.   “Killing of Intellectuals”, http://banglapedia.search.com.bd/HT/K_0261.htm

13.   “Indo-Pakistani War of 1971”, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Pakistani_War_of_1971

14.    “Dacca Eyewitness: Bloodbath, Inferno” by Simon Dring, Washington Post, March 30, 1971, http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/washingtonpost_historical/access/144576502.html?dids=144576502:144576502&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:AI&fmac=&date=Mar+30%2C+1971&author=By+Simon+Dring&desc=Dacca+Eyewitness%3A+Bloodbath%2C+Inferno

15.   “West Pakistan Pursues Subjugation of Bengalis” by Sydney Schanberg, New York Times, July 14, 1971, http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F50C1FFD395C1A7493C6A8178CD85F458785F9

16.   “Hindus Are Targets of Army Terror  in an East Pakistani Town” by Sydney Schanberg, New York Times, July 4, 1971, http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F60F12FD3D5E127A93C6A9178CD85F458785F9

17.   “The Rapes of Bangladesh” by Aubrey Menon, New York Times, July 23, 1972, http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FA091EF93E5E127A93C1AB178CD85F468785F9

18.   “Motiur Rahman Nizami”, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motiur_Rahman_Nizami

19.   “A Journalist Is Linked To Murder of Bengalis” by Fox Butterfield, New York Times, January 3, 1972, http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FB071FFC3C591A7493C1A9178AD85F468785F9

20.   “Act Now for Trial of three war criminals of the Bangladesh liberation war in 1971”, http://www.sacw.net/i_aii/pag_x.html

 

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