Genocide ignored by the world

Obviously, it was a fact that West Pakistani armies committed genocide in East Pakistan. People may try to ignore the veracity of the attack and downplay the atrocities committed by the members of Pakistani army and some of their stooges like the members of Al-Badr and Al Shamas, “two separate wings” of Razakar’s organisation permitted to function by the central authority in August of 1971 at the local level by recruiting members from the disgruntled political party like Jamat-e-Islam and Muslim League. “Well- educated and properly motivated students from the schools and madrasas were put in Al-Badr Wing, where they were trained to undertake ‘Specialized Operations’, while the remainder were grouped together under Al-Shams, which was responsible for the protection of bridges, vital points, and other areas,” Niazi wrote. However, Niazi did not elaborate on “Specialized Operations,” but those who lived through the period were very much aware of the meaning of “Specialized Operations”—killing innocent Bengalis. One author writes, “Most recruits were drawn from the Urdu-speaking Bihari population. The Razakaras’ state-sponsored terrorism completed the social, political and cultural divide between the Biharis and the Bengali majority.” (Talbot, 1998: 209).

Currently, for political purposes, many may try to minimise the magnitude of the sufferings of ordinary people by siding with those who unlashed the atrocities, but in the core of their hearts, they knew the fateful night of March 25 in 1971, the historical day for all the Bengalis for time immemorial. One thing is certain that while the Pakistani Army targeted the Bengalis, no Urdu speaking people were attacked by the Pakistani Army. Rather, there were stories about how many Bengalis survived the initial attack by speaking Urdu loudly and gave the attacking army an impression that they were non-Bengalis by ethnicity. Pakistani army tried to diffuse the genocide issue by suggesting that the army was targeting “Bengali separatists,” and was suggesting that they were not all Bengalis who favoured the creation of Bangladesh by separating from Pakistan. Even a foreigner opposed this view,”[W]e object to the use of term the “Bengali separatists” as being inaccurate and pejorative. The struggle in East Pakistan is between West Pakistan Armed Forces and non-Bengali civilians on one side and Bengalis on the other side,” (Blood, 2002: 279) thus is called a “Selective Genocide”.

Nixon’s administration not only supported Yahya, there were other international organisations that were under the US administration that were also viewing the East Pakistan situation the way West Pakistani leadership was propagandising it. At the beginning of November 1971, the Agency for International Development was making the observation that “[T]he’ reality is that Army policies and operation—behind the façade of a civilian government—are progressively and seriously alienating the Bengali population in East Pakistan” (The American Papers, 2000: 704) as if the 25th March crack down had not alienated the Bengalis yet. Politics moves in a very strange fashion. The British government could not condemn Pakistan’s government, but British politicians had to recognize the atrocities committed by Pakistani military due to the fact that some British journalists were providing very convincing stories of atrocities. A British Parliamentary Delegation visited Pakistan in June “for an on-the-spot enquiry into what was actually happening” in East Pakistan. The delegation was composed of four MPs, two Conservatives and two Laborites, under the leadership of Arthur Bottomley, former Commonwealth Secretary. One of the members made this comment after the completion of the visit: “ I feel bound to say that it now seems clear beyond all shadow of

doubt that the Pakistan Army has acted in a manner which goes far beyond what could be reasonably thought of as necessary to restore law and order, as President Yahya Khan says was the aim. They

have behaved in an utterly uncivilized manner which would be a disgrace to any country, in the 1970s.” (The Gurdian, 2 July, 1971).

The West Pakistani attack in March was an attack on a specific ethnic group to suppress their hopes and aspirations, destroy their identity and eliminate their existence; thus it was genocide. Genocide is the deliberate act, typically of a state, to destroy a specific group, typically defined in ethnic terms (Dictionary of Sociology, 2000). The polish jurist Raphael Lemkin coined the term during the implementation of Hitler’s Final Solution (mass extermination of the Jewish people). The word is derived from the genos (people or race) and the Latin caedere (to kill). The target of Pakistani armies was the Bengalis and not any other ethnic group. The members of the whole command force of Pakistan who were responsible for the genocide

should be indicted according to the United Nations’ General Assembly Resolution 96(I) of December 11, 1946. The Pakistan leaderships who desired to stay in power created a belief in its own superiority which led to racism, persecution, exploitation and finally genocide. In the world political scene, for years the powerful committed genocidal attacks on powerless ethnic groups with the intention to eliminate them totally from the face of earth. The most publicized act of genocide was the Nazis attempts to exterminate the Jews and other groups during World War 11. The Serbs, in the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s were accused of the wholesale slaughter of Muslims in an attempt at ethnic cleansing. The policies and practices of European immigrants to the New World during and after the 1500s came very close to genocide of the native populations of the Americas. For instance, the Portuguese decimated the Brazilian Indians, the Natchez people were almost completely wiped out by France after the Natchez became upset with French encroachment on their territory and attacked a trading post. Estimates are that at least two thirds of the Indian population in the United States (US) was annihilated by the direct and indirect actions of the white Europeans (Sullivan. 2001: 241). However, these were instances that took place before the world conscience had taken shape against genocide in 1946.

The genocide of Pakistanis against the Bengalis took place after the world accepted a resolution against genocide. General Yahya, General Niazi, General Forman Ali and General Tikka Khan of Pakistan were never indicted for genocide or for war crimes in the International Court of Justice. The Pakistan government initiated an inquiry commission to deflect the real charges and made some officers as scapegoats of the whole problem. This inquiry commission was known as Hamdur Rahman Commission, and its goal was not to find out whether the army committed war atrocities and genocide but what happened that they had to surrender to the Joint Command. The goal was to find the causes of their military failure. The people of West Pakistan never got the message that one cannot fight against the will of the masses. Where did the West Pakistanis get the idea that all problems could be solved militarily? Their intelligence was nothing but a scam. Otherwise they could not know that it was not only Sheikh Mujib or his party members and some leftist politicians who were fighting for the independence of Bangladesh, but that it was people’s fight for their survival and existence. Like the Pakistani Army, the Bangladeshi people were not performing a job they were paid for.

The Army leadership totally forgot that one could fool all the people for sometime, but one could not fool all the people for all the time.

In an undemocratic society like Pakistan, formation of an inquiry committee like the Hamoodur Rahman Commission was just a political strategy to diffuse public opinion and shift the focus from the real problem to some scapegoats. And the commission succeeded in doing so.

Though the Commission concluded that widespread atrocities, the abuse of power by Pakistani generals, and a complete failure of civilian and martial law leadership were responsible for the loss of East Pakistan (Cohen, 2004: 78), it failed to recognize the political connections the army has had with other societal forces. The military solution the Pakistani army visualized for the East Pakistan crisis was checked out with the collaboration of West Pakistani political forces.

Moreover, the Commission never did address the other socictal factors responsible for the rise of the East Pakistan crisis. What forces were behind the postponement of National Assembly? West Pakistani scholars also hardly tried to recognize those forces.

The Pakistani Generals got away with murders and atrocities without being indicted in the court of law because of the lack of integrity of some who managed to capture political power in newly established Bangladesh, but the genocidal actions of Pakistanis could not be hidden forever. History will speak for itself, and it would be exposed to the newer generation of the world population and the Pakistanis will have to bear the burden of the shameful actions their army took in Bengal in 1971.

Dr Mokerrom Hossain is Professor, Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice, Virginia State University, USA. The piece is excerpted from author’s book titled From Protest to Freedom: The Birth of Bangladesh first published in 2010.