An Assignment on “Recognition of the Genocide in Bangladesh:

Challenges and Options”

Course Name: Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law

Course Number: 513

Submitted To:
Dr. Md. Rafiqul Islam (Rafiq Shahriar)
Professor
Department of Peace and Conflict Studies
Faculty of Social Sciences
University of Dhaka

Submitted By:
Niaz Makhdum Asif
Batch-17, Roll: 3437
Master’s 1st Semester
Department of Peace and Conflict Studies
University of Dhaka
Submission Date: 23.06.2022
“Recognition of the Genocide in Bangladesh: Challenges and Options”

Introduction:

Genocide is the intentional and systematic killing of a group of people because to their race,
religion, nationality, or ethnicity. Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-born lawyer who advised the U.S.
Department of War during World War II, created the phrase, which is derived from the Greek
words "genos" (which means "race," "tribe," or "country") and "cide" (which means "killing"). In
an effort to quell Bengali calls for self-determination, West Pakistan launched Operation
Searchlight on March 26, 1971, marking the beginning of the genocide in Bangladesh. Bangladesh
is a wonderful example of how to comprehend genocide. Members of the Pakistani military and
supporting militias killed approximately three million people and raped between two and four
hundred thousand Bangladeshi women during the nine-month-long Bangladesh war for
independence. During the war, there was also sectarianism between Bengalis and Urdu-speaking
Biharis. There is academic agreement that the events of the Bangladesh Liberation War constituted
genocide.

In this assignment, I will briefly discuss what genocide is. Later on the background of 1971
genocide in Bangladesh and its impact. After that I will analyze what are the challenges and options
of Recognition of the Genocide in Bangladesh and finally will conclude it.

What is Genocide?

Genocide was first recognized as a crime under international law in 1946 by the United Nations
General Assembly (A/RES/96-I). It was codified as an independent crime in the 1948 Convention
on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (the Genocide Convention). The
Convention has been ratified by 149 States (as of January 2018). The International Court of Justice
(ICJ) has repeatedly stated that the Convention embodies principles that are part of general
customary international law. This means that whether or not States have ratified the Genocide
Convention, they are all bound as a matter of law by the principle that genocide is a crime
prohibited under international law.
The definition of the crime of genocide as contained in Article II of the Genocide Convention was
the result of a negotiating process and reflects the compromise reached among United Nations
Member States in 1948 at the time of drafting the Convention. Genocide is defined in the same
terms as in the Genocide Convention in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court
(Article 6), as well as in the statutes of other international and hybrid jurisdictions. Many States
have also criminalized genocide in their domestic law; others have yet to do so. (Definition of the
crime of genocide - the United Nations, 2022)

United Nation’s definition: Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of
Genocide Article II. In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts
committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious
group, as such:

 Killing members of the group;

 Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
 Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its
physical destruction in whole or in part;
 Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
 Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Importantly, the victims of genocide are deliberately targeted - not randomly – because of their
real or perceived membership of one of the four groups protected under the Convention (which
excludes political groups, for example). This means that the target of destruction must be the
group, as such, and not its members as individuals. Genocide can also be committed against only
a part of the group, as long as that part is identifiable (including within a geographically limited
area) and “substantial.” (Definition of the crime of genocide - the United Nations, 2022)
The background of the 1971 Genocide in Bangladesh:
The conflict between Bengalis in East Pakistan and West Pakistan based non- Bengali rulers first
started over the issue of Bengali language and culture. Though the Bengalis comprised 54% of
Pakistan’s population, in 1948 the ruling elites declared their intention to make Urdu, which was
the language of only 7% of the population, the sole state language. Bengali students immediately
protested the decision and launched a movement that continued for the next eight years, until the
Pakistan Constitution, adopted in 1956, recognized both Bengali and Urdu as state languages
(Ahmed, 1967)

In the 1950s, attempts were made to force Bengalis to substitute Bengali words with Arabic and
Urdu words. Then, in the 1960s, state controlled media such as television and radio banned songs
written by Rabindra Nath Tagore, a Bengali Hindu, who won the Nobel Prize in 1913 and whose
poetry and songs were equally beloved by Bengali Hindus and Muslims. The attacks on their
language and culture as “Hindu leaning” alienated the Bengalis from the state- sponsored Islamic
ideology of Pakistan, and as a result the Bengalis started emphasizing a more secular ideology and
outlook. The Bengali nationalist movement was also fueled by a sense of economic exploitation.
Though jute, the major export- earning commodity, was produced in East Pakistan, most of the
economic investments took place in West Pakistan. A systematic transfer of resources took place
from East to West Pakistan, creating a growing economic disparity and a feeling among the
Bengalis that they were being treated as a colony by Pakistan (Jahan, 2004)

In the 1950s and 1960s, a group of Bengali economists carefully documented the process of
economic disparity and marshaled arguments in favor of establishing a “two- economy” system in
Pakistan (Sobhan, 1970). The movement toward autonomy initiated in the 1950s culminated in the
famous Six- Point Program of 1966, which not only rejected the central government’s right of
taxation, but demanded that the power to tax and establish trade and commercial relations,
including the establishment of separate accounts of foreign exchange earnings, be placed in the
hands of the two provincial governments of East and West Pakistan.

The first free democratic national elections held in Pakistan in 1970, two decades after the birth of
the country, resulted in a sweeping victory for the Bengali nationalist party, the AL. The election
results gave the AL not only total control over their own province, but also a majority nationally
and a right to form the federal government.

Once again, the ruling elites in Pakistan took recourse to unconstitutional measures to prevent the
Bengalis assuming state power. On March 1, 1971, General Yahya postponed indefinitely the
scheduled March 3 session of parliament. This, in turn, threw the country into a constitutional
crisis. The AL responded by launching an unprecedented nonviolent, non- cooperation movement,
which resulted in the entire administration of then East Pakistan coming to a virtual standstill.
Even the Bengali civil and military officials complied with the noncooperation movement. The
movement demonstrated that the Bengali nationalists had total allegiance and support of the
Bengali population.

The Yahya regime initiated political negotiations with the AL, but at the same time flew thousands
of armed forces in from West to East Pakistan, thus preparing for military action. On March 25,
1971, General Yahya abruptly broke off the negotiations and unleashed a massive armed strike,
which was named Operation Searchlight.. On March 28 they reported that the loss of life had
reached 15,000 in the countryside. On the Dhaka University campus, 17 professors and some 200
students were killed in cold blood. (Loshak, 1971)

The genocide in Bangladesh, which started with the Pakistani military operation against unarmed
citizens on the night of March 25, continued unabated for nearly nine months until the Bengali
nationalists, with the help of the Indian army, succeeded in liberating the country from Pakistani
occupation forces on December 16, 1971. The atrocities committed by the Pakistani army were
widely reported by the international press during 1971 (Mascarenhas, 1971)

The Impact of the 1971 Genocide:

The Pakistan government’s military action and genocide in Bangladesh caught outside observers
as well as the Bengali nationalists by surprise. After all, the Bengali nationalists were not involved
in any armed struggle prior to March 25, 1971. They were essentially waging a peaceful
constitutional movement for democracy and autonomy. Their only crime, as U.S. Senator Edward
Kennedy observed, appeared to have been to win an election . A brief analysis of Pakistan’s history
from 1947 till 1971 illustrates the forces and trends that led to military action and genocide in
Bangladesh. Soon after the creation of Pakistan, unelected civil–military bureaucratic elites from
West Pakistan monopolized state power and started behaving like colonial masters toward the
Bengalis in East Pakistan. The Pakistani rulers threatened the linguistic and cultural identity of the
Bengalis. They thwarted all attempts of democratic rule to keep the Bengalis, who were the
majority of the population, from gaining control of political decision- making positions (Jahan,
2004)

One of the main reasons behind the atrocities was to terrorize the population into submission. The
Pakistani military regime calculated that since the Bengalis had no previous experience in armed
struggle, they would be frightened and crushed in the face of overwhelming fire power, mass
killings, and destruction. Another factor that influenced the Pakistani military’s action was their
assumption, as previously noted, of racial superiority as a “martial race.” Cleansing of Bengali
Muslims from Hindu influence was a goal often repeated by the Pakistani military during the 1971
genocide.

The introduction of violence into Bangladeshi society, politics, and culture was one of the
genocide's most significant effects. Bengalis were a largely peaceful, homogeneous community
with few serious crimes before 1971. They were extremely politicized and divided along political
lines and conflicts were typically resolved through mediation, court proceedings, and nonviolent
mass actions. Bengalis picked up weapons and, for the first time, engaged in armed conflict.
Following the Pakistani onslaught. Bangladeshi society was brutalized by the massacre, looting,
burning, and rapes. According to Sarmila Bose, between 50,000 and 100,000 combatants and
civilians were killed by both sides during the war. The population appears to have grown more
tolerant of wanton violence after watching so much of it. According to Serajur Rahman, the official
Bangladeshi estimate of "3 lakhs" (300,000) was wrongly translated into English as 3 million
(Rahman, 2011)

Regarding attitudes regarding conflict resolution, there has been a qualitative shift. In Bangladesh,
armed conflict is now far more common. The generally cohesive Bengali social fabric has been
deeply split by the collaborators' role in carrying out the genocide. Additionally, the unwillingness
to punish the collaborators for their crimes out of political expediency fostered an atmosphere of
impunity that hampered the establishment of the rule of law in the nation. The post-1975 military
regimes and the BNP-led governments protected and rewarded those who were accused of
committing war crimes, sending a message that illegal behavior would go unpunished in exchange
for political allegiance to the ruling authority.

The Challenges and Options of the Recognition of Genocide in Bangladesh:

In 1971, innumerable women were tortured, raped, and killed. The Pakistani soldiers kept
thousands of Bengali women as sex slaves in their camps and cantonments .Well-known researcher
RJ Rummel in his book published in 1997, titled 'Statistics of Democide: Genocide and Mass
Murder Since 1900', states: “In East Pakistan (Bangladesh) [General Agha Mohammed Yahya
Khan and his top generals] 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 ensure that it would be
subordinate to West Pakistan (now Pakistan) for at least a generation to come. This despicable and
cutthroat plan was outright genocide (Habib, 2022)

Pakistani governments surprisingly have continued to deny genocide and rape, but the cruelty of
its forces in 1971 was even acknowledged by many rational Pakistanis, who repeatedly urged their
governments to apologize to the people of Bangladesh. The official Hamoodur Rahman
Commission of Pakistan, as well as international media reports from 1971 and later, provide clear
evidence of what the Pakistani Occupation Forces and their auxiliary outfits did to innocent
civilians during the nine-month Bangladesh War (Habib, 2022).

The response to the genocide can be analyzed at various levels. At the official level, the world
response toward the 1971 genocide was determined by geopolitical interests and major power
alignments. Officially, from the beginning, India took cognizance of the genocide and supported
Bangladesh. The Soviet Union—India’s major superpower ally at the time—and other Eastern
Bloc countries were also supportive of Bangladesh. Predictably, Pakistan launched a propaganda
campaign denying that it had committed genocide. Pakistan’s allies, Islamic countries, and China
supported Pakistan’s stance. The official policy of the United States was to “tilt in favor of
Pakistan” because Pakistan was used as an intermediary to open the door to China.

At the non-official level, however, there was a great outpouring of sympathy for the Bangladesh
cause worldwide because of the genocide. The Western media—particularly that of the United
States, Britain, France, and Australia—kept Bangladesh on the global agenda all through 1971.
Well-known Western artists and intellectuals also came out in support of Bangladesh. George
Harrison, the former Beatle, and Ravi Shankar, master of the sitar, held a concert to support
Bangladesh. André Malraux, the noted French author, volunteered to go and fight with the Bengali
freedom fighters. In the United States, citizen groups and individuals lobbied Congress
successfully to halt military aid to Pakistan (Bose, 2005)

India played a critical role in mobilizing support for Bangladesh, both officially and unofficially.
The genocide and the subsequent influx of 10 million refugees in West Bengal and neighboring
states elicited unofficial sympathy. It is shocking, but not surprising, that genocide of this
magnitude has yet to be widely recognized internationally. This lack of recognition is primarily
due to three major factors:

Internal Politics:

All procedures that had been started to ensure justice for the atrocities of 1971 came to an abrupt
end after Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the father of the nation and the leader of the
independence movement, was assassinated on August 15, 1975. Some were even turned around.
While no diplomatic efforts were made to gain international recognition of the 1971 genocide, the
known local collaborators with war criminals were not only not punished but also pardoned and
appointed to the cabinet and other prominent government positions by succeeding governments in
Bangladesh.
International Politics:

USA and USSR: President Richard Nixon viewed Pakistan as a Cold War ally, and refused to
condemn its actions. From the White House tapes: "The President seems to be making sure that
the distrusted State Department would not, on its own, condemn Yahya for killing Bengalis."
Nixon and China tried to suppress reports of genocide emanating from East Pakistan. Nixon also
relied on Americans not paying close attention to events in Asia: "Biafra stirred up a few Catholics.
But you know, I think Biafra stirred people up more than Pakistan, because Pakistan they're just a
bunch of brown goddamn Moslems."

The US government secretly encouraged the shipment of weapons from Iran, Turkey, and Jordan
to Pakistan, and reimbursed those countries for them despite Congressional objections. A
collection of declassified US government documents, mostly consisting of communications
between US officials in Washington, D.C. and in embassies and USIS centers in Dhaka and in
India, show that US officials knew about these mass killings at the time and, in fact, used the terms
"genocide" and "selective genocide," for example, in the "Blood Telegram." They also show that
President Nixon, advised by Henry Kissinger, decided to downplay this secret internal advice,
because he wanted to protect the interests of Pakistan as he was apprehensive of India's friendship
with the USSR, and he was seeking a closer relationship with China, which supported Pakistan.

In his book The Trial of Henry Kissinger, Christopher Hitchens elaborates on what he saw as the
efforts of Kissinger to subvert the aspirations of independence on the part of the Bengalis. Hitchens
not only claims that the term genocide is appropriate to describe the results of the struggle, but
also points to the efforts of Henry Kissinger in undermining others who condemned the then-
ongoing atrocities as being a genocide. Hitchens concluded, "Kissinger was responsible for the
killing of thousands of people, including Sheikh Mujibur Rahman". Some American politicians
did speak out. Senator Ted Kennedy charged Pakistan with committing genocide, and called for a
complete cut-off of American military and economic aid to Pakistan. (Smithsonianmagazine,
2016)
China:

As a long-standing ally of Pakistan, the People's Republic of China reacted with alarm to the
evolving situation in East Pakistan and the prospect of India invading West Pakistan and Pakistani-
administered Kashmir. Believing that just such an Indian attack was imminent, Nixon encouraged
China to mobilise its armed forces along its border with India to discourage it. The Chinese did
not, however, respond to this encouragement, because unlike the 1962 Sino-Indian War when India
was caught entirely unaware, this time the Indian Army was prepared and had deployed eight
mountain divisions to the Sino-Indian border to guard against such an eventuality. China instead
threw its weight behind demands for an immediate ceasefire.

When Bangladesh applied for membership to the United Nations in 1972, China vetoed their
application because two United Nations resolutions regarding the repatriation of Pakistani
prisoners of war and civilians had not yet been implemented. China was also among the last
countries to recognise independent Bangladesh, refusing to do so until 31 August 1975.

United Nations: Despite not being recognised by the United Nations and the other regional and
world bodies, the 1971 Bangladesh genocide has long found a place among the great war-time
tragedies. The global print and audio-visual media did not bypass the brutality. They began giving
coverage to the carnage from March 26. It was the very day after the Pakistan occupation army
began its notorious Operation Searchlight, a brutal killing mission, obviously to thwart the people's
movement to attain liberation. Hundreds of books have been written on the genocide that witnessed
the planned extermination of three million people in occupied Bangladesh.

With the observance of the Day beginning from this March 25, and the national campaign to
include it in the list of UN-recognised genocides, the events related to the country's birth find their
proper place in history. Though belated, the nation has not failed its future generations in keeping
them informed of the details of its creation. The United Nations on December 09, 1948
unanimously adopted a convention on genocide, identifying it as a "crime committed with the
intention to destroy in whole or part of a national, ethnical, racial or religious group." But the
Bangladesh genocide has yet to enter the chronicle of the UN-recognised planned slaughters.
The Bangladesh Liberation War and the concomitant genocide were free of any haze. In 1971, an
all-out Liberation War was fought by the Freedom Fighters against a fully equipped professional
army of Pakistan. At stake was the freedom of Bangladesh, then occupied by the Pakistani
marauding army. The virtually bogged-down in Bangladesh, the Pakistani soldiers resorted to the
killing of innocent people to avert their humiliating defeat. In the nine-month period of March,
1971- December, 1971, three million people were gunned down, burnt or tortured to death. By its
sheer extent in volume and savagery, the Bangladesh genocide dwarfs all other planned killings in
the 20th century. Many historians liken the Bangladesh genocide to ethnic cleansing. For nine
months the whole occupied country remained a land where death stalked everyone everywhere.
Hundreds of innocent people were burnt to death mercilessly after their villages or suburban
neighbourhoods had been set afire. Thousands others were gunned down. Corpses tied together
and dumped into rivers and canals were common sights during the occupation period. It's time the
UN recognized the Bangladesh genocide. (The case for UN recognition of Bangladesh genocide,
2022)

Lack of media coverage and materials:

Few books, academic journal articles, newspaper stories, and even fewer video documentaries and
movies have been produced on the subject of the 1971 Bangladesh Genocide, keeping it out of the
public and academic eye for unknown reasons, including domestic and international political
realities. Even the Jahanara Imam-led campaign against war criminals in the early 1990s was
unable to generate adequate coverage in the world media.

However, it is unclear how long this emphasis on genocide acknowledgment will last in
Bangladesh's political realities if the government changes. Such a difficulty offers chances as well.
I would contend that we should also be focused on other nations for bilateral engagement leading
to recognition rather than only the United Nations when seeking recognition. This is owing to the
fact that our position is not comparable to the relatively recent genocides of the Tutsis in Rwanda
or the Muslims in Bosnia, which were, for a variety of reasons, directly in front of millions of
people's TV screens and thereafter widely known and acknowledged.
We also cannot compare our situation to that of the Holocaust during World War II, where the
major players in the conflict themselves, as the winners, saw to it that the atrocities were widely
reported in order to expose the horrors of the Nazi regime, as well as subsequent Jewish efforts to
keep the memory of those who perished in the "final solution" alive through concerted efforts.

Conclusion:

The genocide in Bangladesh in 1971 provides an outstanding example of domestic and

international politics. The perpetrators of the crime deny it, let alone apologize to the government
of Bangladesh. Soon after 1971, debates over the genocide and the issue of Bangladeshi
collaborators erupted. As previously stated, the Pakistani government refused to accept that
genocide had occurred in 1971. On an official visit to Bangladesh in 2002, Pakistan's president
expressed regret for the "excesses" committed by Pakistani soldiers, but stopped short of
apologizing for the 1971 genocide. There has been very little academic debate about the 1971
genocide in the last 40 years. Although recently one Indian expert suggested that the number of
victims was significantly lower than what Bangladesh has reported, no scholar has contested the
existence of the crimes. However, some people have criticized her research technique and findings
as being defective and prejudiced.
References
Ahmed, K. (1967). A social history of East Pakistan. Dhaka. Crescent Book Store.

Bose, S. (2005). Anatomy of Violence: Analysis of Civil War in east Pakistan in 1971: Military Action:
Operation Searchlight. Kolkata: Economic and Political Weekly Special Articles.

Definition of the crime of genocide - the United Nations. (2022, june 18). Retrieved from United Nations
office on Genocide preventiopn and the responsibility to protect:
https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml

Habib, H. (2022). Bangladesh: Recalling brutality, killings and mass rapes. New Delhi: India News
Network.

Jahan, R. (2004). Genocide in Bangladesh. Imprint Routledge.

Loshak, D. (1971). Pakistan Crisis. New York: New York: McGraw- Hill.

Mascarenhas, A. (1971). The rape of Bangladesh. New Delhi: Vikas Publication.

Rahman, S. (2011). In Mujib's Confusion on Bangladeshi Deaths (pp. 1-3). The Guardian.

Smithsonianmagazine. (2016). Retrieved from The Genocide the U.S. Can’t Remember, But Bangladesh
Can’t Forget: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/genocide-us-cant-remember-
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The case for UN recognition of Bangladesh genocide. (2022, june 25). Retrieved from The financial
express: https://thefinancialexpress.com.bd/views/reviews/the-case-for-un-recognition-of-
bangladesh-
genocide?fbclid=IwAR3DDn00R5NSM33glM8ZpHfC6_cRDgEc0ryLphuL32PP_BXWLDqNerwOMd
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