Genocide

The definition of the crime of genocide as contained in Article II of the Genocide Convention was the result of a negotiating process and reflects the compromise reached among United Nations Member States in 1948 at the time of drafting the Convention. Genocide is defined in the same terms as in the Genocide Convention in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (Article 6), as well as in the statutes of other international and hybrid jurisdictions.

After endorsing that genocide is a crime under international law whether committed in time of peace or war, the 1948 convention defines genocide as “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy in whole or part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such : killing members of the group, causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

GENOCIDE IN BANGLADESH

The mass killings and brutalities by Pakistan Occupation Force and their local allies taken place in Bangladesh (then East Pakistan) back in 1971 constituted genocide. Local allies consisted of the pan-Islamic political organizations such as Jamaat e Islam, Nizam e Islam and Muslim League; supporting platform like Peace Committee; supporting force like Razakar; and killer forces like Al-Badr and Al Shams.

In an attempt to crush forces seeking independence for East Pakistan, the West Pakistani Military regime unleashed a systematic campaign of mass killing millions of Bengalis, and likely succeeded in doing so. The partition of India in 1947 was one of the great tragedies of the century. Hundreds of thousands of people were killed in sectarian violence and military clashes, as Hindus fled to India and Muslims to Pakistan – though large minorities remained in each country.

Since Pakistan was formed, vested quarter of West Pakistan remained restless to discriminate East Pakistanis in all respects. Military rule governed almost all through the Pakistan regime. Contrarily, the Bengalis turned back and protested against military rule, and for a society free from discriminations of all sorts.

Catastrophic floods struck Bangladesh in late 1970, and the regime was widely seen as having ignored its relief duties. The disaster gave further impetus to Awami League, led by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. Mujib demanded regional autonomy for East Pakistan, and an end to military rule.

In national election held in December of 1970, the League won a landslide victory across Bengalee territory. But President Yahya Khan backed by the vested quarter of West Pakistan remained reluctant in handing over power to Mujib. Instead of formation of the Mujib led government, genocide was launched on 25 March, 1971 that lasted for nine long months causing three million people brutally murdered, violating nearly 0.4 million women, and forcing ten million people take refuge in India. Bengali women were targeted for sexual assault and rape/murder from the earlier days of the Pakistani genocide.

Moreover, another heinous act perpetrated by the Jamaat and their associates during the liberation war of 1971 was the formation of killing squads named Al-Badr and Al-Shams Bahini with support from  Pakistani General Rao Forman Ali. These killer forces hatched one of the most despicable conspiracies in human history, that is, “a blue-print entailing the elimination of the intellectuals”. This murderer gang conducted an abominable rampage of killing on the great “pride” sons of the then East Pakistan known as intellectual killing, just prior to their formal defeat and surrender to the liberation forces.

BANGLADESH GENOCIDE IGNORED

In the 1970s, two Asian genocides took place – one in Bangladesh (then East Pakistan) during 1971, and another in Cambodia during 1975 – 1979.

In March 1971, the Pakistani army launched a campaign to repress the independence movement of Bengalis in the eastern half of the geographically separated nation. The campaign of murder, rape, and pillage that continued until December 1971 caused 1 to 3 million deaths.

In the same decade, Cambodia experienced horrifying Khmer Rouge regime that toppled down the United States–backed Lon Nol government in April 1975. The new communist regime continued with extreme brutalities until January 1979 causing at least 1.5 million Cambodians.

It is unfortunate that the West paid very different level of attention to these genocides despite the two events experienced almost similar death tolls (7 digits).

According to the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), this campaign of genocide involved

. . . the indiscriminate killing of civilians, including women and children and the poorest and weakest members of the community; the attempt to exterminate or drive out of the country a large part of the Hindu population; the arrest, torture and killing of Awami League activists and students, professionals, business men and other potential leaders among the Bengalis; the raping of women; the destruction of villages and towns.1

Archer Blood – the Consul General of US Consular Office at Dacca and other concerned claimed the massacre being on at that time in East Pakistan as ‘selective genocide’. Right after few weeks, Anthony Mascarenhas, a member of the journalist team assigned by Yahya Khan, came to a conclusion after visiting different places in East Pakistan that whatever happening in the territory under question is nothing but genocide.

In his book, Pyne (1973) describes scenes of systematic mass slaughter around Dacca that are strikingly similar to the case studies of genocide in Armenia and Nanjing massacre. Scholars like Rummel (1994) Kuper (1983) claimed Bangladesh case as genocide that formally lasted until Pakistani forces and their allies surrendered on 16 December, 1971. East Pakistan gained independence as the new nation of Bangladesh shortly thereafter.

Although Bangladesh received intense media coverage in 1971, there has been little scholarly interest in the question of genocide since that time despite there is substantial evidence from a variety of sources to indicate that a genocide did indeed occur.