Nonsense - if by political group you mean to suggest that the separatists were a political group, then any nation that fights separatists and seeks to eliminate them is committing genocide, and that includes India and the US.
Secondly, were the objective to exterminate the entire political group, Mujib would have been the first casualty, yet he survived the entire war.
You are being disingenuous as usual.
Nice attempt at yet another
argument by re-definition. First you tried to
re-define what would constitute genocide in the context of Bangladesh. When got called on that, you quickly
re-defined what would constitute 'political group'. No, separatists didn't form the 'political group', but leadership, workers, cadres and supporters of Awami League formed the 'political group'. The separatists were a part of that group. Putting down armed rebellion is one thing, but going door to door, marked with chalk by the lackeys of PA, and gunning the residents down, or burning down village after village, simply on a suspicion that they were Awami supporters, only reveals a sinister plan to 'clean the political stable'. India has never done anything like that.
But then, what about the extermination of Hindus? If deliberately seeking them out, often by checking at random if men were circumcised or not - an obsession still very much alive within PA - and killing them without remorse do not qualify as genocide, nothing ever will. As R.J.Rummel notes:
'
In 1971 the self-appointed President of Pakistan and Commander-in-Chief of the Army, General Agha Mohammed Yahya Khan and his top generals prepared a careful and systematic military, economic, and political operation in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). They also planned to murder its Bengali intellectual, cultural, and political elite. They also planned to indiscriminately murder hundreds of thousands of its Hindus and drive the rest into India. And they planned to destroy its economic base to insure that it would be subordinate to West Pakistan for at least a generation to come. This despicable and cutthroat plan was outright genocide.'
Mujib would have been hanged if India hadn't kept the issue of Mujib on the burner, and US hadn't sat on Yahya's face. It was one of the rarest of rare moments when Yahya showed some pragmatism. The immense popularity of Mujib, not only within East Pakistan, but internationally, prevented Yahya from sending him to the gallows.
'
After several abortive attempts I reintroduced the question of how the GOP would deal with Sheik Mujib. President Yahya said that as far as he was concerned Sheikh Mujib had committed a capital crime and would be tried in a duly constitutional court, and he would be given a fair and impartial trial. After noting that in the President's last address to the people of Pakistan it appeared to me as a lawyer that Sheikh Mujib had already been prejudged, and that a change of venue was impossible, I emphasized the fact that the GOP might well weigh world opinion vis-à-vis the severity of the sentence since Sheikh Mujib had a great deal international sympathy attaining. Yahya reply was noncommittal but not necessarily negative. He indicated that he would think about it.' - Telegram from Consul General in Karachi to US State Department; 22nd May, 1971
You can post, and as I have repeatedly pointed out I will not deny that atrocities happened, especially given that the Bengali militants had massacred and raped over a hundred thousand women and children in the run-up to operation Searchlight, but isolated incidents, many unsubstantiated barring anecdotal accounts, do not establish a systematic policy by the PA high command to exterminate Bengalis, nor do they establish the numbers claimed, which has been debunked already.
You ever planning to provide evidence, other than Supplementary HRC report, of massacre and rape of 'over a hundred thousand women and children in the run-up to operation Searchlight'. There were indeed massacre of Biharis post-25 March. There were indeed stray incidents of murders in the rural East Pakistan 'in the run-up to operation Searchlight'. But so far I have never come across any independent research that says 'over a hundred thousand women and children in the run-up to operation Searchlight' were massacred and raped. You also planning to back up that figure of '100,000+', or will it continue hanging in the air?
It is also disingenuous to continuously tone down the horrendous acts of PA as 'some mistakes' and tying these down with the mythical '100,000+ deaths and massacres prior to crack down' to give an impression that PA only reacted and not acted, thereby reducing the degree of culpability of PA.
The manner of identifying homes of Awami supporters reveals plan. The manner of murdering the intellectuals, so that the Bangladeshis are left with no credible leadership, reveals plan. The manner of seeking out Hindus reveals plan. The manner of identifying non-Bengalis, so that they can be spared, reveals plan. Gutting down village after village, for miles, reveals plan. Operating death camps reveals plans. These are by no means 'stray incidents' but very much a concerted effort. Yahya's desire for '
military solution according to plan' or '
clean the political stable' or declaration, '
Kill three million of them and the rest will eat out of our hands' (refer
Massacre by Robert Payne. Incidentally, this comment is attributed to the figure of '3 million' deaths.) or Tikka khan's boastful '
I want the land not the people' or the general consensus among PA that '
a whiff of gunpowder would overawe the meek Bengalis' (refer
The Idea of Pakistan by Stephen. P. Cohen), reveal a 'systematic policy'.
You are fooling no one except for yourself and members of your tribe.
And yes, given the conflicting and contradictory accounts out of the newly established EP government and leadership, I do doubt these accounts and will unless and independent and neutral commission appointed by the UN investigates them and establishes their veracity.
Guess which country backed out from UN investigation on the plea of 'internal issue'.
"Some accounts seem simply the stuff of propaganda but come from reputable sources or eyewitnesses"
Yes, it was that much incredible that human being can be so much barbaric.
And propaganda they are, likely sown by Indians and Bengalis eager to bolster the legitimacy of their struggle by maligning Pakistan. I will need more than anecdotal accounts to believe this rubbish.
And yet you are more than willing to swallow the Supplementary HRC Report, which, by their own account, had examined a mere 213 witnesses. I understand, denial can keep a person warm and dry. But this is hilarious.
If any first hand eyewitness to the barbarity of PA is a mere anecdote and hence cant be relied on, then one wonders, what would an investigation into any massacre or genocide entail? What will then be accepted as evidence? Accounting for each and every dead body? Documents ordering massacre, signed, sealed and authenticated by the goons? Images of atrocities being committed? Then again you also reject photographic evidence of piles of dead bodies. What else do you need?
Then again, who cares what you need. The world at large is convinced.
Nice deflection, but as usual you are lying. You chose to initiate a tangential argument by raising the 'genocide' canard (debunked by now), when the topic was quite clearly limited to whether or not the PA was controlling the EP insurgency.
Thats bulls!t.
blain2 had made an assertion that Bangladesh could have been avoided, merely by subjugating the Bengalis, militarily. My question was meant to look into the political aspect of integrating an entire region of disenchanted population after that atrocious military subjugation, particularly, when the same population, before their treason, was convinced that they were consistently denied of their rights. Your good friend could have carried on with the debate with a simple rejoinder, but instead he, and now you, made the peripheral issue as primary one. Do note how he quickly forgets to explain how an administration completely devoid of Bengali representation, could at all be viable for East Pakistan or if it could be trusted by the Bengalis. The question, in the context of the thread, is not if the deaths were really that many or the massacres can be called genocide. The question is if a population which has been brandied as traitors could still be held back from eventually breaking away. That remains unanswered even now.
Now stop giving it an unnecessary spin. Although I must give credit where it is due. You have successfully turned this into the question of if PA engineered massacres qualify as genocide. To the world at large it does. No amount of wishful denial is going to change that.
Anyway, I love the way you, from time to time, hoist that victory pennant. You never get tired of stroking your ego. Do you now?
