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Creation of Bangladesh

The Terrible Blood Bath of Tikka Khan

Ever since the Pakistani civil war broke out last March, President Mohammad Yahya Khan has done his utmost to prevent reports on the ruthless behavior Pakistani Army in putting down the Bengali fight for independence from reaching the outside world. Most foreign journalists have been barred from East Pakistan, and only those West Pakistani newsmen who might be expected to produce "friendly" accounts have been invited to tour East Pakistan and tell their countrymen about the rebellion. In at least one instance, however, that policy backfired. Anthony Mascarenhas, a Karachi newsman who also writes for London Sunday Times, was so horrified by that he and his family fled to London to publish the full story. Last week, in the Times, Mascarenhas wrote -that he was told repeatedly by Pakistani military and civil authorities in Dacca that the government intends “to cleanse East Pakistan once and for all of the threat of secession, even if it means killing off 2 million people.” And the federal army, concluded Mascarenhas, is doing exactly that with a terrifying thoroughness.”

That the Pakistan Army is visiting a dreadful blood bath upon the people of East Pakistan is also affirmed by newsmen and others who have witnessed the flight of 6 million terrified refugees into neighboring India. NEWSWEEK’s Tony Clifton recently visited India’s refugee-dogged border regions and cabled the following report:

Anyone who goes to the camps and hospitals along India’s border with Pakstan comes away believing the Punjabi Army capable of any atrocity. I have seen babies who've been shot, men who have had their backs whipped raw. I've seen people literally struck **** by the horror of seeing their children murdered in front of them or their daughters dragged off into sexual slavery. I have no doubt at all that there have been a hundred My Lais and Lidices in East Pakistan-and I think there will be more. My personal reaction is one of wonder more than anything else. I've seen too many bodies to be horrified by anything much any more. But I find myself standing still again and again, wondering how any man can work himself into such a murderous frenzy.

Slaughter: The story of one shy little girl in a torn pink dress with red and green Bowers has a peculiar horror. She could not have been a danger to anyone. Yet I met her in a hospital at Krishnanagar, hanging nervously back among the other patients, her hand covering the livid scar on her neck where a Pakistani soldier had cut her throat with his bayonet. "I am Ismatar, the daughter of the late Ishague Ali," she told me formally. "My father was a businessman in Khustia.

About two months ago he left our house and went to his shop and I never saw him again. That same night after I went to bed I heard shouts and screaming, and when I went to see what was happening, the Punjabi soldiers were there. My four sisters were lying dead on the floor, and I saw that they had killed my mother. While I was there they shot my brother-he was a bachelor of science. Then a soldier saw me and stabbed me with his knife. I fell to the floor and played dead. When the soldiers left I ran and a man picked me up on his bicycle and I was brought here."

Suddenly, as if she could no longer bear to think about her ordeal, the girl left the room. The hospital doctor was explaining to me that she was brought to the hospital literally soaked in her own blood, when she pushed her way back through the patients and stood directly in front of me. "What am I to do?" she asked. "Once I had five sisters and a brother and a father and a mother. Now I have no family. I am an orphan. Where can I go? What will happen to me?"

Victims: "You’ll be all right," I said stupidly. "You're safe here." But what will happen to her and to the thousands of boys and girls and men and women who have managed to drag themselves away from the burning villages whose flames I saw lighting up the East Pakistani sky each night? The hospital in Agartala, the capital city of Tripura, is just half a mile from the border, and it is already overcrowded with the victims of the rampaging Pakistani Army. There is a boy of 4 who survived a bullet through his stomach, and a woman who listlessly relates how the soldiers murdered two of her children in front of her eyes, and then shot her as she held her youngest child in her alms. "The bullet passed through the baby's buttocks and then through her left arm," Dr. R. Datta, the medical superintendent, explains. "But she regained consciousness and dragged herself and the baby to the border." Another woman, the bones in her upper leg shattered by bullets, cradles an infant in her arms. She had given birth prematurely in a paddy field alter she was shot. Yet, holding her newborn child in one hand and pulling herlelf along with the other, she finally reached the border.

"Although I know these people, I am continually amazed at how tough they are," says Datta. Still, there are some who cannot cope. I step over two small boys lying on the floor, clinging to each other like monkeys. ..Refugees say their village was burned about a week ago and everyone in it was killed except these two," the doctor says. "We have had them for three days and we don't know who they are. They are so terrified--- by what they saw they are unable to speak. They just lie there holding onto each other. It is almost impossible to get them apart even long enough to feed them. It is hard to say when they will regain their speech or be able to live normal lives again."

New Jersey Congressman Cornelius Gallagher, who visited the Agartala hospital, says he came to india thinking the atrocity stories were exaggerated. But when he actually saw the wounded he began to believe that; if anything, the reports had been toned down. A much-decorated officer with Patton in Europe during World War II, Gallagher told me: "In the war, I saw the worst areas of France-the killing grounds in Normandy-but I never saw anything like that. It took all of my strength to keep from breaking down and crying."

Rape: Other foreigners, too, were dubious about the atrocities at first, but the endless repetition of stories from different sources convinced them. "I am certain that troops have thrown babies into the air and caught them on their bayonets," says Briton, John Hastings, a Methodist missionary who has lived in Bengal for twenty years. "I am certain that troops have raped girls repeatedly, then killed them by pushing their bayonets up between their legs."

All this savagery suggests that the Pakistani Army is either crazed by blood or, more likely, is carrying out a calculated policy of terror amounting to genocide against the whole Bengali population.

The architect appears to be Lt. Gen. Tikka Khan, the military governor of East Pakistan. Presumably, Pakistan's President knows something about what is going on, but he may not realize that babies are being burned alive, girls sold into virtual slavery and whole families murdered. He told the military governor to put down a rebellion, and Tikka Khan has done it efficiently and ruthlessly. As a result, East Pakistan is still nominally part of Pakistan. But the brutality inflicted by West on East in the last three months has made it certain that it will only be a matter of time before Pakistan becomes two countries. And those two countries will be irreparably split-at least until the last of today's maimed and brutalized children grow old and die with their memories of what happened when Yahya Khan decided to preserve their country.

Newsweek June 28, 1971; pp. 43-44
 
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The extend of the East Pakistani plight under the hands of west pakistan can found from the ally of Pakistan USA's amabassador to DACCA urgent telegraph to President Nixon. Those are now released and are available, It is one of the darkest times in Pakistani history.
 
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actually a lot of the bangladeshi experts on the war agree with s bose. at least that is what they said in the recent conference.

It would be worthwhile to have the links of this conference as also of these 'experts'.

***************

Bangladesh is 'sucking' to Pakistan for a variety of reasons, that is if you wish to call it 'sucking up'.

One, is that there is this Islamist resurgence that is gripping the country. Pakistan is a soul brother and Islamists are no friends of India!

Two, Ms Zia is the wife of a ex Pakistani Army officer. If one saw the link and read the article of Brig Khan that I posted, one would realise the psyche that is built up in the Pakistani officers about India. One cannot totally avoid being influenced by the past, since military wives too get affected by the ways of the Army.

Three, India has not done much for Bangaldesh after the Liberation of Bangladesh. One cannot demand friendship. It has to be cultivated with a give and take policy. Therefore, one cannot expect any extra friendly relationship from the side of Bangladesh. It is time for the mandarins of Delhi to mull over this.
 
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care to show me?what recent conference?

Salim said:
It would be worthwhile to have the links of this conference as also of these 'experts'.

Sure

One was FS Aijazuddin OBE, another was dr Imtiaz Ahmed, another was dr Ali Riaz. There were plenty more there of course. Bose too is a Bengali. Just so that your disbelief is disproven KH-47, here is the link to the conference

Session 3:
South Asia in Crisis during the Nixon Administration

Loy Henderson Auditorium


Chair: Dr. Peter A. Kraemer, Office of the Historian, U.S. Department of State

Panelists:
‘We do not see any sign or hope:’ U.S.-Bangladesh Contacts in 1971
Dr. Ali Riaz, Illinois State University

The 1971 South Asian Crisis: U.S. Policy Revisited
Dr. Imtiaz Ahmed, University of Dhaka

Anatomy of Violence: An Analysis of Acts of Terror in East Pakistan in 1971
Dr. Sarmila Bose, George Washington University


Nixon's White House and Pakistan: The Tilt that Failed
F.S. Aijazuddin, OBE


http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ho/46059.htm

As you can see it is a recent conference that most reputed scholars accept (not the people with chips on their shoulders and vested interests).

LOL Bihari women raped by the Mukti Bahini,maybe they were killed and some might have been raped but not on the same scale as were Bengali women.we do acknowledge that Biharis were killed,as they were regarded as collaborators but you don't acknowledge the extent of the barbarity made by your armed forces.Last year even a former PAF air marshal said war criminals should be brought to trial.

Perhaps you missed the point. It is easy when you have your Bonglaboboo tinted spectacles on complete with thick black rimming. Your assertion that Bengali women MUST have been raped more than Bihari women is a complete figment of your spectacle tinted imagination. I, myself, cannot even claim to know the exact figures, or even which group of people were raped more, because there were no accurate counts done. However I do know that the Muktihi Bahini did rape many Bihari women, and quite possibly the Razakhars raped quite a few Bengali women in tit for tat reprisals. Personally I doubt Pakistan Army would do it, but it's been shown in every war that rapes do occur by soldiers so I would not exclude PA. The former PAF air marshal is right, war criminals should be brought to trial in ANY way. Atrocities were committed by both sides, Muktihi Bahini thugs should also be brought to trial, as should Razakhars, and any PA soldier who committed any crime during the war (I think you'll find that many of the massacres like Jessore were committed by Muktihi Bahini soldiers, once again these have been PROVEN). I am all for every single perpetrator of crime being brought forward, including the millions of Bengali criminals.

Don't take me as anti-Pakistan.

Don't take me as anti Bengali or anti Indian.
 
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The Blood Telegram has been retracted by Archer Blood in his memoirs. He was the US ambassador in Dhakka and he claimed in a letter to Nixon in 1971 that it was a genocide, but this was based on situation reports from an Indian (aka Bharati) official. In 2002, Archer Blood retracted his comments about it being a genocide, and conceded Pakistani Army were doing what they could to secure the countryside. He admitted his error.
 
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Three, India has not done much for Bangaldesh after the Liberation of Bangladesh. One cannot demand friendship. It has to be cultivated with a give and take policy. Therefore, one cannot expect any extra friendly relationship from the side of Bangladesh. It is time for the mandarins of Delhi to mull over this.


Yeah....the Indian Politicians are behaving in a rather high-handed manner I must say.

They think B'desh owes a lifetime of debt for helping liberate them.
 
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any link about Blood's retraction?

once again, in every war, atrocities are committed, some rapes do occur, but i can bet more bihari women were raped by the muktahi bahini than the other way round. You have one disciplined army and another rag tag mango drinking army. Logically the rag tag army would be the most undisciplined.
The Mukti bahini was formed gradually.They were always on the run,hiding as Pak forces were superior in numbers and strength.I personally believe that they never had much time strolling into a Bihari house and rape the women there with Pak forces everywhere in the country.

Personally I doubt Pakistan Army would do it, but it's been shown in every war that rapes do occur by soldiers so I would not exclude PA.
yes true enough,thing is you don't accept our numbers of casualties and rape.You are saying more Bihari women were raped than Bengali women.you got any evidence?
Maybe,maybe the dead toll wasn't 3 million(God forgive me if I am wrong) but surely it was more than Pakistanis say.
 
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Pakistan: Vultures and Wild Dogs

For more than two weeks, the Pakistani Army of President Mohammed Yahya Khan had played a curious waiting game, Sitting tight in their well-fortified cantonments in the rebellious eastern wing of their divided country, the federal troops virtually ignored the taunts of the secessionist "liberation forces." But then early last week, the lull came to a sudden end, Springing from their strongholds, the Punjabi regulars simultaneously staged more than a dozen devastating attacks from one end of beleaguered East Pakistan to the other, And when the blitzkrieg was over, it was clear that the less-than-one-month-old Republic of Bangla Desh (Bengal nation) had been delivered a stunning blow.

In a civil war already marked by brutality, the lightning attacks were notable for their savagery, In the port city of Chittagong, Pakistani troops reportedly forced Bengali prisoners to ride on the front of a truck, shouting "Victory for Bengal" - an independence slogan. When other Bengalis emerged from their hiding places, the Pakistanis opened fire with machine guns. And in the cities of Sylhet and Comilla along the eastern border, West Pakistani firepower routed the folIowers of nationalist leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and left the bodies of scores of dead peasants to be picked apart by vultures and wild dogs.

All in all, the bitter campaign seemed to suggest that the West Pakistanis had more than purely military objectives in mind. In city after city, in fact, the soldiers were apparently determined to shatter the economic base of East Pakistan in order to crush the independence movement. On orders from the Islamabad high command, troops systematically gunned down students, engineers, doctors and any other persons with a potential for leadership, whether they were nationalists or not. "They want to push us back to the eighteenth century," said one Bengali soldier," so that there will be famine and we will be reduced to eating grass. They want to make sure that no head will ever be raised against them again."

Despite the devastating offensive, the Bengalis showed little inclination to throw in the towel. A group of Mujib's Awami League colleagues announced the formation of a Bangla Desh war Cabinet, promising "freedom as long as there is sun over Bengal." Beyond the rhetoric, the rebels were hoping that the approaching monsoon season would sever the West Pakistanis' already strained logistical lifeline. "The supply lines are Yahya Khan's Achilles' heel," said one pro-Bengali analyst. "By our calculations, the Pakistani Army is facing the monsoons without a supply margin. The commanders cannot be happy."

Locked Up: Happy or not, the West Pakistani leaders had, most observers said, good reason for confidence. The Westerners claimed to have Mujib locked up and awaiting trial on charges of treason. And with the dynamic, 51-year-old symbol of the rebel movement seemingly out of the way, the new government appeared to be more shadow than substance. In the field, the Bengalis have suffered staggering casualties, losing as many as 25,000 men.

More important, the fighting disposition of the Bengalis was increasingly open to question. "I met a steady stream of refugees carrying their belongings in big bundles on their heads and driving small Hocks of scrawny goats or cattle," cabled NEWSWEEK'S Milan I. Kubic after a trip into East Pakistan last week. "But I saw only one Toyota jeep of the 'Mukti fouj,' Bengal's liberation army. Its unarmed driver, a young Bengali from Jhingergacha, had an idea that the enemy was just up the road, but neither he nor the two other soldiers with him seemed anxious to seek battle. 'What would we fight with?' he asked with a grin. 'We haven't got anything'."

Neighbors: That let-someone-else-do-it attitude, combined with the absence of effective central leadership, did not augur well for Bangla Desh. But one big question mark remained: the reaction of the neighboring big powers-China and India. Almost from the beginning of the conflict, the West Pakistanis have charged that arch-rival India was an active participant on the side of East Pakistan. And last week Islamabad officials claimed to have wiped out two companies of Indian border-security forces allegedly operating within the eastern province.

For its part, New Delhi stoutly denied any direct involvement. And most observers on the scene supported that contention. Moreover, it seemed certain that President Yahya Khan was trumpeting the charges at least in part to unite his own people-many of whom had gotten queasy about the reports of full-scale slaughter in the east. But it was equally apparent that New Delhi had indeed gone out of its way to make friendly noises toward the rebel Bengalis-and to take a slap at Islamabad. Throughout the week, Indian newspapers gleefully carried accounts of purported Pakistani atrocities. And the Indian Cabinet met in a well-publicized but closed session to discuss recognition of Bangla Desh.

Chou’s Cable: In response, Peking seemed more than willing to weigh in with a tough statement in support of the West Pakistanis. In the most specific declaration since the fighting broke out late last month, Premier Chou En-Iai sent a cable to Yahya blasting "Indian expansionists” and adding that the Chinese would firmly back the Pakistanis "in their just struggle to safeguard their -state sovereignty and national independence.” On top of that, there were rumors throughout Asia last week that the West Pakistanis only instituted the military crackdown after extensive consultations with Peking.

Yet for all the ominous signs of a brewing confrontation on the subcontinent, most analysts doubted that the rhetoric would escalate to action, at least not in the near future. For one thing, China's support for Islamabad-Peking's ally in its long-haul competition with India-seemed to have been something of a pro-forma necessity. For another, the Indians are currently more than preoccupied with their own domestic problems. Still, the volatile brinkmanship of Yahya Khan and the highly emotional Indian response carried with them the threat of a major explosion. "If the fighting and the bloodshed simmer on," said one observer, "then there's always the possibility that any tiny spark may send the entire region up in flames-eventually engulfing all of Pakistan, India and maybe even China as well."

Courtesy: Newsweek April 26, 1971; pp. 35-36
 
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You seem destined to live in 1971 akzaman, even when experts from your own country admit that muktihi bahini committed a lot of the atrocities of '71, the Blood Telegram has been disproved by the author himself, and current thinking accepts that virtually all the articles you have posted are from a different era of one sided propaganda.
 
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http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ho/46059.htm

As you can see it is a recent conference that most reputed scholars accept (not the people with chips on their shoulders and vested interests).

Roadrunner,

Utter humbug.

It just gives the details of the agenda.

Who are you impressing?

Could I request you not to think all other members of the forum are foolish or are chimps, which you indicated to be of your genre!

Forgive me for the comment, but I am here for serious discussion and acquiring knowledge and not for wasting my time to discuss with people who are a trifle frivolously hyperactive!
 
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You seem destined to live in 1971 akzaman, even when experts from your own country admit that muktihi bahini committed a lot of the atrocities of '71, the Blood Telegram has been disproved by the author himself, and current thinking accepts that virtually all the articles you have posted are from a different era of one sided propaganda.

I wonder if you could live beyond a time when your country is raped.

Propaganda is your forte. Others are mere greenhorns compared to you since you pass of anyth9ing as the Gospel truth!

See the above post as an example.
 
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I can understand the Pakistani point of view and they are right in a sense that the 1971 details have been used for political propaganda and other purposes.Exaggeration of the total dead probably occurred not the rapes.Lots of women(who survived the rapes) were carted off to European nations for rehabilitation.
 
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I can understand the Pakistani point of view and they are right in a sense that the 1971 details have been used for political propaganda and other purposes.Exaggeration of the total dead probably occurred not the rapes.Lots of women(who survived the rapes) were carted off to European nations for rehabilitation.

Wow :cheesy: I guess the nonsense never stops. Why on earth would European countries take these women into rehab? Is the source for this the Bangladesh Observer by any chance? Or is it a case of the cynical "Mush-speak" in me talking?
 
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Roadrunner,

Utter humbug.

It just gives the details of the agenda.

Who are you impressing?

Could I request you not to think all other members of the forum are foolish or are chimps, which you indicated to be of your genre!

Forgive me for the comment, but I am here for serious discussion and acquiring knowledge and not for wasting my time to discuss with people who are a trifle frivolously hyperactive!

What more do you want besides the details of the conference? You want to know what was said during the conference. Alright, here's a sample to which all these people agreed

According to Professor Sarmila Bose of the George Washington University, “In all of the incidents involving the Pakistan Army in the case-studies, the armed forces were found not to have raped women. While this cannot be extrapolated beyond the specific incidents in this study, it is significant, as in many cases the allegation of rape was made along with allegations of killing in prior verbal discussions or in some cases even in written form in Bengali literature. However, when Bengali eye-witnesses, participants and survivors of the incidents were interviewed they testified to the violence and killings, but also testified that no rape had taken place.” Prof Bose was addressing a conference on the 1971 conflict arranged by the State Department to mark the release of declassified documents from that period.

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_30-6-2005_pg1_2

Of course the 3 million some luns are trying to claim on here is admitted nonsense by all parties.

During the seminar, Bangladeshi scholars acknowledged that their official figure of more than 3 million killed during and after the military action was not authentic.

They said that the original figure was close to 300,000, which was wrongly translated from Bengali into English as three million.

Shamsher M. Chowdhury, the Bangladesh ambassador in Washington who was commissioned in the Pakistan Army in 1969 but had joined his country’s war of liberation in 1971, acknowledged that Bangladesh alone cannot correct this mistake.


http://www.dawn.com/2005/07/07/nat3.htm

I guess there goes your 35 year old bharati instigated myth :wave: :whistle:
 
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I wonder if you could live beyond a time when your country is raped.

Propaganda is your forte. Others are mere greenhorns compared to you since you pass of anyth9ing as the Gospel truth!

See the above post as an example.

Pakistan has been raped many times in history, by outsiders and insiders. I'm not backing anything without strong credentials such as official meetings that lack the vested interests of people you quote as gospel like Simon Dring, the head of Dhaka TV in return for favours given during the war!
 
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