Historians, freedom fighters urge UN to recognise 1971 genocide

Historians, freedom fighters, and genocide researchers from home and abroad have called upon the United Nations to immediately recognise the mass killings perpetrated by the Pakistani occupation army during the Liberation War in 1971 as an act of genocide.

"Around 52 years ago they (the US, China) supported the Pakistani regime, which perpetrated a genocide in the name of religion. Pakistan is still their alley. Some convicted war criminals and the then Jamaat-e-Islami leaders – currently leading Islamic organisations in Sweden, the UK and the US – are still misrepresenting the history in the name of religion," said Shahriar Kabir, president of Ekattorer Ghatak Dalal Nirmul Committee, at a conference yesterday.

"Genocide will continue in other places until we can bring the perpetrators to book. In that case mass killings in Bangladesh in 1971 should be recognised as 'genocide' immediately," Shahriar Kabir said at the "International Conference on Bangladesh Genocide Recognition 2023" organised by the European Bangladesh Forum, Amra Ekattor, and Projonmo Ekattor at Dhaka University.

Mofidul Haq, a trustee of the Liberation War Museum, said, "Global community is on our side, we have to wage a movement and raise our voices in this regard."

A European delegation consisting of representatives from 10 countries participated at yesterday's seminar.

Chris Blackburn, communications director of Swiss Inter-strategy Group, said, "What happened in 1971 in Bangladesh is not a secret. The demand for its recognition as genocide has been raised after 50 years, but it should be addressed."

"You might even have seen that Pakistan's former prime minister Imran Khan often addresses his country's atrocity towards Bangladesh in 1971. Even the Pakistani media outlets publish those pieces, so it is high time to get a recognition of that genocide," he said. 

Bir Pratik Lt Col Sazzad Zahir, who fled the Pakistan Army and joined the Liberation War, said, "Pakistanis who inflicted atrocities on Bangladeshis have to compensate the victims' families. They have to send back all the wealth that they snatched away from us. They must apologise to us as well as to the world for their grave crimes."

"To get the recognition, we have to take the movement to the new generation at the grassroot level. Even in the remote areas you would find that families of the genocide victims grieve in such a way that it would appear that their father was killed just yesterday. The grief is still fresh."

Prof Anthonie Holslag of Vrije Universiteit of Amsterdam, said "Genocide is not all about killing or death of a certain number of people. It is about ethnic cleansing, cleansing away a language or a culture. All of them occurred in 1971."