It was one of top five genocides

15 July 2013, 18:43 PM

UPDATED 16 July 2013, 02:53 AM

Staff Correspondent

The atrocities committed during Bangladesh's Liberation War in 1971 are listed in the Guinness Book of Records as one of the top five genocides of the 20th century. International Crimes Tribunal-1 yesterday mentioned this in its verdict in the war crimes case against ex-Jamaat chief Ghulam Azam. During the nine-month-long Liberation War, three million people were killed and nearly a quarter million women were raped. Ten million Bangalees reportedly took refuge in India to avoid massacre by the Pakistan army, and 30 million people were internally displaced within the country, said the tribunal. Stating that the literal meaning of genocide is the killing of a race, tribunal member Justice Anwarul Haque read out extracts from books by Pakistan army officials, letters written by diplomats in 1971 and news reports published in 1971 and 1972, which made references to the genocide and atrocities by the Pakistan army and its local collaborators. He cited a news item published in The Daily Observer on January 5, 1972, which referred to Russia's Communist Party newspaper “Pravda'' reporting the killing of more than 30 lakh people across Bangladesh by the Pakistan occupation forces during the Liberation War. The same report also mentioned the killing of “about 800 intellectuals in the capital city of Bangladesh alone”, said Haque. He said journalist Mort Rosenblum's report, “Vultures too full to fly”, published in the Washington Evening Star on May 12, 1971 gave a grim picture of the killing of half a million people in Bangladesh. He also referred to books written by Pakistani army officials in which they admitted that the Pakistan armed forces killed “thousands of innocent people and unarmed Bangalee civilians”. The books that have been mentioned in the verdict include ex-Pakistan president Ayub Khan's “Friends not Masters”, Pakistani General Niazi's “The Betrayal of East Pakistan” and Robert Payne's “Massacre”. Haque also quoted from US Senator Edward Kennedy's statement, as noted in the US Congressional Record for April 1, 1971, “It is a story of indiscriminate killing, the execution of dissident political leaders, students, and thousands of civilians suffering and dying every hour of the day. It is a story of dislocation and loss of home.” From these citations, the tribunal concluded that the West Pakistanis maintained a bad impression about the Bangalee people of East Pakistan and did not hesitate to commit crimes against humanity and genocide against them in 1971. Pakistani forces and their collaborators attacked the unarmed civilians in a planned way in 1971 with intent to wipe out in whole or in part the Bangalee nation, said the judge. Occurrences of these crimes against humanity had been confirmed by documentary evidence such as books on the Liberation War, scholarly articles, and reports in both foreign and local media, he said.