Washington, DC: Nearly 55 years after it took place, US Congressman Greg Landsman has introduced a resolution in the US House of Representatives seeking to recognise the atrocities committed by the Pakistan Army and its allies, Jamaat-e-Islami, in Bangladesh on March 25, 1971, as “war crimes and genocide”.
The resolution has been referred to the committee on foreign affairs after it was introduced by the Democrat Congressman from Ohio.
On the night of March 25, 1971, the Pakistan government imprisoned Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, and its military units, in conjunction with radical Islamist groups inspired by the ideology of Jamaat-e-Islami, began a general crackdown throughout East Pakistan code-named “Operation Searchlight” that involved widespread massacres of civilians, the resolution says, as reported by The Telegraph Online.
On March 28, 1971, US consul general in Dhaka, Archer Blood, sent a telegram to Washington titled “Selective Genocide”, in which he wrote, “Moreover, with support of Pak military, non-Bengali Muslims are systematically attacking poor people’s quarters and murdering Bengalis and Hindus”, it added.
On April 6, 1971, in what became known as the “Blood Telegram”, consul general Blood sent an objection to the official US government silence on the conflict, signed by 20 members of the Dhaka consulate, Landsman noted.
“But we have chosen not to intervene, even morally, on the grounds that the Awami conflict, in which unfortunately the overworked term genocide is applicable, is purely an internal matter of a sovereign state,” the then diplomat said in the telegram.
The resolution urges the House of Representatives to condemn the atrocities committed by the armed forces of Pakistan against the people of Bangladesh on March 25, 1971.
It “recognises that while the Pakistan Army and its Islamist allies indiscriminately mass-murdered ethnic Bengalis regardless of their religion and gender, killed their political leaders, intellectuals, professionals, and students, and forced tens of thousands of women to serve as their sex slaves”.
“They specifically targeted the religious minority Hindus for extermination through mass slaughtering, gangrape, conversion, and forcible expulsion,” it added.
The resolution calls on the president of the US to recognise the atrocities committed in Bangladesh by the armed forces of Pakistan during 1971 and their allies in the Jamaat-e-Islami as crimes against humanity, war crimes, and genocide.
An estimated 3-5 million people were killed during the atrocities committed by the Pakistan Army and its allies in Bangladesh. For years now, Awami League leaders have been crying themselves hoarse, asking the international community to recognise the killings as a genocide.
