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Bangladesh Parliament passes motion to mark Mar 25 as Genocide Day.

http://opinion.bdnews24.com/2017/03/14/genocide-day-and-what-now-must-be-done/
Genocide Day — and what now must be done
julian.jpg

As a foreigner living and working in Bangladesh for many years, I was honoured when I was invited to participate in and speak at an international seminar in January this year, the purpose of which was to find ways in which the genocide of 1971, perpetrated by the Pakistani forces and their collaborators, will be internationally recognized as Genocide.The seminar was arranged by the ‘Forum for Secular Bangladesh & Trial of War Criminals of 1971’. I was asked to address the seminar as I am a witness to the birth of this nation and, in my capacity in 1971 when I administered a refugee relief programme for OXFAM-UK which assisted 600,000 Bangladeshis, I witnessed many of the results of the genocide and I heard eye witness reports of many more instances of genocide.Other speakers at the seminar were from Canada, India, Nepal and, of course, Bangladesh. The Bangladeshi speakers told the audience that for some years they had been demanding that the government of Bangladesh declare March 25 as National Genocide Day.

On February 15, 2017, I attended the launch of a book entitled, ‘On Recognition of Bangladesh Genocide’, which is published by ‘Forum for Secular Bangladesh & Trial of War Criminals of 1971’ and in which there are writings by a number of experts, including some of the people who attended the January seminar (including myself). At this book launch at which the Minister of Commerce, Mr Tofail Ahmed was the Chief Guest, a book was shown to the Minister entitled, ‘Creation of Bangladesh: Myths Exploded’, written by Junaid Ahmad and published in Pakistan. It is full of lies and says, among other things, that the members of the Mukti Bahini were responsible for the genocide. The Minister, who was in a hurry to join Parliament discussions that day, took the book with him and later that day in Parliament, raising a point of order, he made the demand that March 25 be observed as National Genocide Day and he made this demand while holding aloft the book written by Junaid Ahmad.

It is only right and most just that Parliament has voted that March 25 be observed as Genocide Day and I am very proud to have been a very small part of the demand that led to this. It is now up to the government to contact Members of Parliament, especially of Bangladeshi origin, or with strong connections to Bangladesh, in many countries of the world so that they can have debates in their parliaments to recognize that what happened in Bangladesh in 1971 was indeed genocide. For instance, in the British Parliament’s House of Commons, there are, to my knowledge, three Labour Party members of parliament, Tulip Rezwana Siddiq, the niece of the Bangladesh Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina; Rushanara Ali and Rupa Asha Haque.

After national parliaments of different countries have officially recognized that genocide did occur in 1971, pressure can be brought to bear on different world bodies to officially recognize the Bangladesh Genocide in the same way that the Holocaust of the Second World War is recognized. March 25 each year can then become recognised in Bangladesh in the same way and with the same respect as with February 21, EKUSHEY.

My memories of the genocide of 1971 are as follows:

In India, we had heard of the genocide from the night of 25 March. Simon Dring’s eye-witness report in the Daily Telegraph at that time estimated 7,000 killed on the night of March 25 in Dhaka alone. A bloodbath followed of hideous proportions. Thousands and upon thousands, including women and children, were rounded up and shot, machine-gunned or bayoneted and the women were raped. From 25 to 31 March, it was estimated that about 200,000 Bengalis had been killed. An Italian priest living in Jessore at the time told me that in Jessore itself about 10,000 had been killed in the 10 days after March 25.

It is most unfortunate that the details of mass graves (and how many bodies) all over the country have not been properly recorded. Only last year, in Kaliganj, Gazipur, I heard of hundreds of Bangladeshi male Christians being machine-gunned into a mass grave nearby a church in 1971.

However, what about the actual numbers? By end of May 1971, I remember a Dhaka University professor, Samir Paul, who was, as a refugee, helping us to organize camp activities, telling me that, till then, it had been estimated that one million Bengalis had been killed inside Bangladesh until that time (May 1971).

It is very clear to me that many Bangladeshis died on their way to India and many more died after coming to the refugee camps as a result of the injuries and wounds suffered on the way. I saw people with bullet wounds and bayonet wounds and some of them did not manage to survive.

During the cholera epidemic of 1971, I remember that in one refugee camp of 15,000 persons, over 750 died in one month — about 5%. People should also remember that many of the refugee camps were severely flooded during the heavy monsoon of 1971. Sanitation could not be maintained and many died of gastro-enteritis as well as cholera. By September 1971, hundreds of children were dying every day from malnutrition and doctors who had also, earlier, worked in Biafra, were of the opinion that the malnutrition in the Indian refugee camps was worse than that of Biafra. Many more children died as a result of the severe cold winter. In mid-November an accepted figure of numbers of children dying was 4,300 per day in the refugee camps alone. I remember attending a coordination meeting at that time when it was estimated that by the end of December 1971 up to 500,000 children would have died largely from malnutrition.

Aid officials of the time estimated that between 20 and 30 million Bangladesh had been internally displaced inside Bangladesh and there would have been significant deaths from those numbers.

The US government archives may suggest that a total of only 300,000 died and the Pakistan archives say that only 2 million refugees came to India. Everyone should know that both these figures are complete nonsense!

Rightly or wrongly, personally I consider all the deaths of all people who left their homes as a result of the actions of the Pakistan authorities and their collaborators as genocidal deaths. Perhaps we will never know the accurate figure. It could easily be over 3 million.

Now, 45 years after the emergence of Bangladesh, it is vitally important that the world authorities officially accept and recognize that what happened in Bangladesh in 1971 was genocide. There are many eye witness accounts that have been documented. For example, the powerful writing of Anthony Mascarenhas who visited in April 1971 (his writing, entitled ‘GENOCIDE’, published June 13, 1971 in The Sunday Times).

The May 22, 1971 editorial of the US publication Saturday Review, was titled ‘Genocide in East Pakistan’. And the British magazine, The Spectator, in its issue of June 19, 1971, in an article entitled, ‘Another Final Solution’, had the following:

“We, in this country, like to think that among the reasons why we fought the Germans in the last war was to rid the world of the evil of Hitler and his gang and their genocidal ‘final solution.’ It is easier to imagine Germany’s gas chambers than Pakistan’s choleric slaughter in the Bengal Plain, but it remains the case and it ought to be declared that the Pakistani crime now matches the Hitlerian in dimension and horror and threatens monstrously to exceed it. Difficult and unpleasant though it may be, each one of us ought to endeavour to the best of his ability to imagine the enormity of the Pakistani crime.”
 
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Traitor you will pay for it.your land belongs to us. You are nothing on the map of the world.people talk about Bangladesh because they see traitors inside you.


Were you even alive when East Pakistan existed?:lol:
 
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Find a way to put B in Pakistan's name and we'll start negotiations to reunify.


Bangladesh belongs to you people and maybe a day will come you will truly be called a sovereign nation and will not be governed through indian puppets but rather by a government true to your nation.
 
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You allowed Indians into Pakistani territory and only a traitor to mother land can do this.you guys are thinking it's over? Pakistan will always remember you and at the right time,you will suffer.

Listen mate neither you nor I were alive when any of those events happened so just let it go:lol:. What do you plan to do run through a thousand miles of Indian territory with a talwar in your hand? Or maybe you'll take a boat and swim out the Bay of Bengal. :yahoo:
 
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very funny sajjad.i don't hate your people or bangladesh but you people were wrong.we were supposed to be together but now you are an independent country.it's just because of indian conspiracies.i hate when bengali people take side of indians.see kashmir,they even blinded people with pellet guns.
 
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The number of people they blame us for killing in this so-called "genocide", if that really happened, all Bangladesh would be left with at the end would have been 2 mukti bahini members, three fishermen and one Haseena.

I would actually love to see Bangladesh become an Indian state, just where Haseena is taking them. Once a part of the largest democracy in the world, the true meaning of "rape" will finally hit them. That country hasn't got that worldwide reputation for nothing, you know.
 
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very funny sajjad.i don't hate your people or bangladesh but you people were wrong.we were supposed to be together but now you are an independent country.it's just because of indian conspiracies.i hate when bengali people take side of indians.see kashmir,they even blinded people with pellet guns.

I'm going to guess unless you live in certain parts of Karachi you've never met a Bengali in real life, you've probably only seen the opinions of people on this forum and elsewhere online. Some Bangladeshis are pro-Indian, some are pro-Pakistani, most are mildly indifferent to both.
 
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http://opinion.bdnews24.com/2017/03/14/genocide-day-and-what-now-must-be-done/
Genocide Day — and what now must be done
genocide_1971-1170x660.jpg


As a foreigner living and working in Bangladesh for many years, I was honoured when I was invited to participate in and speak at an international seminar in January this year, the purpose of which was to find ways in which the genocide of 1971, perpetrated by the Pakistani forces and their collaborators, will be internationally recognized as Genocide.The seminar was arranged by the ‘Forum for Secular Bangladesh & Trial of War Criminals of 1971’. I was asked to address the seminar as I am a witness to the birth of this nation and, in my capacity in 1971 when I administered a refugee relief programme for OXFAM-UK which assisted 600,000 Bangladeshis, I witnessed many of the results of the genocide and I heard eye witness reports of many more instances of genocide.Other speakers at the seminar were from Canada, India, Nepal and, of course, Bangladesh. The Bangladeshi speakers told the audience that for some years they had been demanding that the government of Bangladesh declare March 25 as National Genocide Day.

On February 15, 2017, I attended the launch of a book entitled, ‘On Recognition of Bangladesh Genocide’, which is published by ‘Forum for Secular Bangladesh & Trial of War Criminals of 1971’ and in which there are writings by a number of experts, including some of the people who attended the January seminar (including myself). At this book launch at which the Minister of Commerce, Mr Tofail Ahmed was the Chief Guest, a book was shown to the Minister entitled, ‘Creation of Bangladesh: Myths Exploded’, written by Junaid Ahmad and published in Pakistan. It is full of lies and says, among other things, that the members of the Mukti Bahini were responsible for the genocide. The Minister, who was in a hurry to join Parliament discussions that day, took the book with him and later that day in Parliament, raising a point of order, he made the demand that March 25 be observed as National Genocide Day and he made this demand while holding aloft the book written by Junaid Ahmad.

It is only right and most just that Parliament has voted that March 25 be observed as Genocide Day and I am very proud to have been a very small part of the demand that led to this. It is now up to the government to contact Members of Parliament, especially of Bangladeshi origin, or with strong connections to Bangladesh, in many countries of the world so that they can have debates in their parliaments to recognize that what happened in Bangladesh in 1971 was indeed genocide. For instance, in the British Parliament’s House of Commons, there are, to my knowledge, three Labour Party members of parliament, Tulip Rezwana Siddiq, the niece of the Bangladesh Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina; Rushanara Ali and Rupa Asha Haque.

After national parliaments of different countries have officially recognized that genocide did occur in 1971, pressure can be brought to bear on different world bodies to officially recognize the Bangladesh Genocide in the same way that the Holocaust of the Second World War is recognized. March 25 each year can then become recognised in Bangladesh in the same way and with the same respect as with February 21, EKUSHEY.

My memories of the genocide of 1971 are as follows:

In India, we had heard of the genocide from the night of 25 March. Simon Dring’s eye-witness report in the Daily Telegraph at that time estimated 7,000 killed on the night of March 25 in Dhaka alone. A bloodbath followed of hideous proportions. Thousands and upon thousands, including women and children, were rounded up and shot, machine-gunned or bayoneted and the women were raped. From 25 to 31 March, it was estimated that about 200,000 Bengalis had been killed. An Italian priest living in Jessore at the time told me that in Jessore itself about 10,000 had been killed in the 10 days after March 25.

It is most unfortunate that the details of mass graves (and how many bodies) all over the country have not been properly recorded. Only last year, in Kaliganj, Gazipur, I heard of hundreds of Bangladeshi male Christians being machine-gunned into a mass grave nearby a church in 1971.

However, what about the actual numbers? By end of May 1971, I remember a Dhaka University professor, Samir Paul, who was, as a refugee, helping us to organize camp activities, telling me that, till then, it had been estimated that one million Bengalis had been killed inside Bangladesh until that time (May 1971).

It is very clear to me that many Bangladeshis died on their way to India and many more died after coming to the refugee camps as a result of the injuries and wounds suffered on the way. I saw people with bullet wounds and bayonet wounds and some of them did not manage to survive.

During the cholera epidemic of 1971, I remember that in one refugee camp of 15,000 persons, over 750 died in one month — about 5%. People should also remember that many of the refugee camps were severely flooded during the heavy monsoon of 1971. Sanitation could not be maintained and many died of gastro-enteritis as well as cholera. By September 1971, hundreds of children were dying every day from malnutrition and doctors who had also, earlier, worked in Biafra, were of the opinion that the malnutrition in the Indian refugee camps was worse than that of Biafra. Many more children died as a result of the severe cold winter. In mid-November an accepted figure of numbers of children dying was 4,300 per day in the refugee camps alone. I remember attending a coordination meeting at that time when it was estimated that by the end of December 1971 up to 500,000 children would have died largely from malnutrition.

Aid officials of the time estimated that between 20 and 30 million Bangladesh had been internally displaced inside Bangladesh and there would have been significant deaths from those numbers.

The US government archives may suggest that a total of only 300,000 died and the Pakistan archives say that only 2 million refugees came to India. Everyone should know that both these figures are complete nonsense!

Rightly or wrongly, personally I consider all the deaths of all people who left their homes as a result of the actions of the Pakistan authorities and their collaborators as genocidal deaths. Perhaps we will never know the accurate figure. It could easily be over 3 million.

Now, 45 years after the emergence of Bangladesh, it is vitally important that the world authorities officially accept and recognize that what happened in Bangladesh in 1971 was genocide. There are many eye witness accounts that have been documented. For example, the powerful writing of Anthony Mascarenhas who visited in April 1971 (his writing, entitled ‘GENOCIDE’, published June 13, 1971 in The Sunday Times).

The May 22, 1971 editorial of the US publication Saturday Review, was titled ‘Genocide in East Pakistan’. And the British magazine, The Spectator, in its issue of June 19, 1971, in an article entitled, ‘Another Final Solution’, had the following:

“We, in this country, like to think that among the reasons why we fought the Germans in the last war was to rid the world of the evil of Hitler and his gang and their genocidal ‘final solution.’ It is easier to imagine Germany’s gas chambers than Pakistan’s choleric slaughter in the Bengal Plain, but it remains the case and it ought to be declared that the Pakistani crime now matches the Hitlerian in dimension and horror and threatens monstrously to exceed it. Difficult and unpleasant though it may be, each one of us ought to endeavour to the best of his ability to imagine the enormity of the Pakistani crime.”
Declared liers bangla dshi where was these so called independent news sources when on 23 march 1971 traitor mujeeb took the guard of honor and declare independence and order usmani (who was self proclaim comrade) to start the civil war and kill all the Pakistani patriots (behari,punjabi,pathan) their children were killed infront of them their married women were raped their unmarried daughters were handed over to awami league workers for rape and torture on that evening many west pakistani family's women dead bodies were found undressed on the streets with sticks were putted in their vagina with bangla flags.can you denied this tell me. I m questioning to all bangla citizen because i have meet with eye witnesses
 
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@WebMaster
why posting graphic picture is allowed bending forum rule?

Current "Parliament" in Bangladesh is illegal one and their decision is subject to future review. Other than Doyalbaba who is cheerleader of awami league and its activities, why anyone taking act of this illegal "Parliament" seriously?
 
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http://www.nytimes.com/1971/04/07/a...ast-pakistan-tell-of-grim-fight-evacuees.html
Foreign Evacuees From East Pakistan Tell of Grim Fight
By SYDNEY H. SCHANBERG APRIL 7, 1971

Continue reading the main story Share This Page



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April 7, 1971, Page 1 The New York Times Archives
CALCUTTA, April 6—More than 100 foreign evacuees arrived here today after, a.34‐hour voyage from Chittagong, East Pakistan's major port, bringing the latest eyewitness reports about the Pakistani army's attempt to suppress the independence movement.

“It's a massacre,” said, Tohn Martinusen; a Danish, itildenti.


“We saw the army shooting civilians,” said Neil O'Toole, an American from New Rochelle, N.Y. “I don't want to say too much because I'm afraid of reprisals against our organization.” He asked that the name of his organization not be mentioned.

All foreign newsmen were expelled from the province more than a week ago, just after the army attack began. With censorship continuing, most of the information reaching the outside world is based on reports coming across the border into India.

The 119 foreigners, who arrived at the: Calcutta docks thiS afternoon aboard a British vessel that had been sitting in Chittagong harbor unable to Unload because of the fighting, were of 17 nationalities. The two largest groups were 37 Americans and 33 Britons.

Continue reading the main story


As they came down the gangplank, of the vessel, the Clan MacNair, they were met by diplomatic officials and a crowd of Indian and foreign newsmen.

Though some of the evacuees were reluctant to talk, others painted a grim picture of Chittagong, East Paidstan's second‐largest city. Until now little has been known of how that city of 400,000 inhabitants has fared in the fighting.

The foreigners said that after several days of fighting, the army—all West Pakistani troops—had pushed the East Pakistani resistance forces out of the city.

But, they added, the army's control ends five miles outside the city, at the banks of the Karnalphuli River.


Everything from the river south, they said, is in the hands of the “liberation army,” which consists of civilians and members of the East Pakistani police, the East Pakistani Rifles and the East Bengal Regiment who have come over to the independence movement.


The foreigners said that they could hear shooting on the outskirts of the city even as they were leaving for Calcutta yesterday morning. Most of the residents have fled the city and gone into the countryside, they said.

Army Burn's Slums

In the city, where fighting broke out, early Friday morning, on March 26, the foreigners said the army had burned to the ground many of the flimsy slums of tha poor, the stanchest supporters of independence.

The ashes of the bamboo huts in these neighborhoods were still smoldering, the foreigners said, as they were taken to the docks under military escort yesterday morning to be evacuated. The Pakistan Radio, speaking for the Pakistan Government, contends that all of East Pakistan is calm and that life is returning to normal.

“Nothing is calm, and nothing has come back to normal,” said. Mr. Martinussen, who came to Chittagong seven months ago with his wife Karen to study Pakistani politics as part of his master's degree program at Aarhus University in Denmark.

“They systematically burned down the districts of the poor people, apparently because they felt they couldn't search them thoroughly,” he went on. “They seemed to be enjoying killing and destroying everything.”

“Many Bengalis have been killed,” the 23‐year‐old student went on. “In the river just four days ago, you could count 400 bodies floating in one area,”

Mr. Martinussen, who related several accounts of civilians being gunned down in shops and on the street, forecast eventual victory for the 75 million East Pakistanis, who have long protested their exploitation by West Pakistan, which is situated more than 1,000 miles away across Indian territory.

Independence Movement

“So many Bengalis want their Bangla Desh,” said the slim student, “that I'm sure they will get it.”

Bangla Desh is Bengali for Bengal nation. It is the independence movement's name for East Pakistan.

His views were echoed by Mr. O'Toole, who is 26 years old. “Chittagong is controlled by the army,” he said. “It is controlled by brute force and terror. The army kept coming in. They were shooting civilians. We saw dead bodies. We smelled the stench of death.”

“There was a lot of harass ment and beating,” he added, “and there was indiscriminate looting and burning by outsiders.”


Vengeance Reported

Mr. O'Toole did not explain what he meant by “outsiders”—but he apparently was talking about West Paidstanis living in East Pakistan.


Other refugees reported that some Bengalis had taken vengeance by killing nonBengali businessmen.

The foreigners said that 7 P.M.‐to‐5 A.M. curfew prevails in Chittagong, that electric power, cut for three days, has been restored only in some areas of the city, and that the port was virtually shut down since there were no Bengalis to work there.

Some of the evacuees left their homes during the heavy fighting and took refuge in the Hotel Agrabad, away from the center of the action.

They said that soldiers had visited some of their homes while they were away.

“The army was very polite,” Edward J. McManus, an American engineer from Montrose, N. Y., said with sarcasm. “They drank all my whisky, but they gave me all my glasses back. Very honest.’
 
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Why are you bharati hanuman licking your Pakistani master's feet this passionately?
I am really jealous of Pakistan now. So they became master of Indians too alongside some bengalis? ( in your point of view!)! Superb idea.
Anyway two threads already on same topic, when you will post the 3rd, and 4th.

Please start a thread with a big demand that you want akhand varat where army will march with flower (as shahid qadri wrote) .

and if they don't care about you declare another freedom war and gather some youth go to India , complete few weeks training.

Only use a three not three rifle because brave Bengalis need no more weapon to defeat pakistanis, rajakars and Indian fanatic
mlecchas (Muslims) ,and
specially indian Hindu rajakars. don't forget to wear old lungi and torned sando genji ( tank top type) and use a gamcha as head band; the typical mukti baini uniform, you will find how easy to defeat well trained army with those logistics!


Then go and fight with tanks.it is possible for angelic bengalis, after all they fought the whole Pakistani army with this uniform, weapon and logistics !three not three, lungi genji gamcha,and don't forget to fight bare foot,no boot, sandals are allowed because muktis fought like that.

They(brave neo mukti Bengali) don't get hungry they don't.become thirsty because patriotism is there food & water. :rofl::rofl:
Please start another water to unify akhand India and fulfill the dream of the bjp leader.
It is very easy task if you USe three not three rifle only and uniform must be short lungi and torn genji. go ahead brave Bengali take weapon and united akhand varat, hold your tiranga flag ,sing vijaha vishwa ti ranga payara ,jhanda ucha rahe hamara.

:chilli::chilli::taz::taz:

You allowed Indians into Pakistani territory
Not all Bengali but some of them who are traitor allowed India to do so.
Yet muktis even failed to hold a single village,because patriot Pakistani Bengalis fought against them. Finally Indian army attacked East Pakistan suddenly and Pakistan fall.
Indeed it is the worst day of the history of united Pakistan. Majority Pakistani ( east Pakistani) lost homeland lost identity as Pakistani given by their forefathers myrtr blood) and became cultural colony of India).
You should be empathetic to your Bangladeshi brothers who has the same Heritage as yours.
We bengalis are just the victims of Indian dalals .
yes we even can be developed as separate nation if hypocrite Indian dalals stop such propaganda.
But unfortunately Bangladeshi media is under control of Indian dalal since 71 civil war.
Its very hard to get the real story of Bangladesh from Bangladeshi media.
 
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We should send a Nuke to Haseena Bitch as a special gift and then u people observed that day a real genocide day
 
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start the civil war and kill all the Pakistani patriots (behari,punjabi,pathan) their children were killed infront of them their married women were raped their unmarried daughters were handed over to awami league workers for rape and torture on that evening many west pakistani family's women dead bodies were found undressed on the streets with sticks were putted in their vagina with bangla flags.
Sound like you were personally present during all these claimed incidence? Such a graphic description from you.o_O
 
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