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Friday March 29, 2024

No reason to observe BD’s ‘genocide day’

By Mian Saifur Rehman
March 25, 2017

Following consensus in Bangladeshi Parliament, the BD government of Sheikh Hasina Wajid, daughter of controversial figure, Sh.

Mujib-ur-Rahman, has decided to observe March 25 as Genocide Day in response to March 23 Pakistan Day.

It is also learnt that Bangladesh will send two senior officials to the UN headquarters in New York and the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) headquarters in Geneva to start the process of getting UN recognition of what it calls genocide of 1971. 

The idea is quite mischievous as it revolves around the old imaginary theory and propaganda launched without substance by some BD leaders including Sh Mujib-ur-Rahman that genocide was committed by Pakistan Army. Not only that, even unthinkable high figures have been given that have continued to circulate in different spheres to project Pakistan’s security establishment as an oppressor force.

However, the probe conducted by different scholars, researchers and social scientists throughout the world has proved that no genocide was ever committed by Pakistan Army in former East Pakistan.

The rot started with an editorial piece published on 23rd December,

1971 titled ‘Enemy Occupations’ by ‘Pravda’ – the mouthpiece and the main propaganda machine of the now defunct USSR (Soviet Union). The piece carried by ‘Pravda’ on Pakistan claimed that three million Bengalis had been killed in the war of 1971. This “figure”, which was not based on any body counts, expert testimonies or photo/video evidence, got ‘popularized’ after it was endorsed by Mujib-ur-Rahman in his interview with BBC’s David Frost on January 18, 1972. The people who were witness to all the pros and cons of the interview and were present on the spot, reported that Mujib ur-Rahman, during this interview, was heavily intoxicated.

This claim of Mujib-ur-Rahman was contested by Serajur Reman, former deputy head of the BBC Bangla Programme in the UK. Serajur Reman wrote a letter to ‘The Guardian’ on May 24, 2011, stating, “On January 8, 1972, I was the first Bangladeshi to meet independent leader Sh.

Mujib-ur-Rahman after his release from Pakistan. I explained that no accurate figure of the causalties was available but our estimate, based on information from various sources, was that up to three lacs

(300,000) died in the conflict. To my surprise and horror, he told David Frost later that ‘three million of my people were killed by the Pakistanis’. Whether he mistranslated ‘lac’ as a ‘million’ or his confused state of mind was responsible, I don’t know, but many Bangladeshis still believe that figures given by Sh Mujib were totally unrealistic and incredible”.

Sayyid Karim, Bangladesh’s first foreign secretary, as reported by David Bergman, a Bangladesh-based British journalist wrote in 2011, “As for the number of Bengalis killed in the course of the liberation war, the figure mentioned by Mujib to David Frost was a gross overstatement. This figure was picked up by him from an article in ‘Pravda’ the organ of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union”.

And when Mujib-ur-Rahman constituted a fact-finding Commission on January 29, 1972, to locate mass graves or other verifiable evidence, this Commission comprising representatives from the BD Army, Border Security Force, Rangers, Police and Civil Administration completely failed to locate any mass graves or other evidence of any kind. The Commission conjured up a figure of a maximum 56,743 deaths as a result of the 1971 insurgency. As a result, Mujib-ur-Rahman showed great displeasure at the Commission’s findings and disbanded it, stating, “I have declared three million dead, and your report could not come up with three scores thousands! What report you have prepared? Keep your report to yourself. What I have said once shall prevail”. This has also been mentioned in the book ‘Behind the Myth of Three Million’, published in 1973 and written by Chowdhary Abdul Mumin. With this information, it can be safely inferred that this was a man (Sh Mujib) wanting to gain power and legitimacy by creating collective delusions – or myths.

Western independent sources too solidly rubbish Sh Mujib’s imaginary figures. The Peace Research Institute in Norway, along with Uppsala University of Sweden, in their findings in 1972, estimated that about 58,000 people died in 1971. In addition to this, in June 1972, William Durmmond reported in ‘LA Times’ that “The figure given by Sh Mujib is an exaggeration so gross as to be absurd;  no more than 25,000 people died.”

On March 1, 1973, Swedish journalist Ingvar Oja reported in ‘Dagens Nyheter’, the largest daily of Stockholm: “The allegation regarding the killing of three million people is highly exaggerated; not more than 50,000 people died in East Pakistan”. Sarmila Bose, the famous Bengali Indian writer and Research Associate at Oxford University, in her book, ‘Dead Reckoning’, writes “The number three million appears to be not more than a gigantic rumour”. She estimated that around 50,000 – 100,000 people including Bengalis, Beharis and West Pakistanis may have perished in the conflict in East Pakistan.

Even senior Indian military officials have not accepted the three million dead figure. Mohammad Tajamul Hussain, noted Bangladeshi journalist/writer, in his book “Bangladesh, Victims of Black Propaganda, Intrigue and Indian Hegemony” quotes the Indian Army Chief, General Manekshaw during 1971 that “the figure of killings in 1971, as mentioned by Sh Mujib, seems fictitious, baseless and far removed from the truth”.