Freedom in the air
The Pakistani government was successful to a great extent in hiding from the West Pakistanis the massacre its army was carrying out in the East in 1971, but the international media exposed their brutality through series reports.
While mining contents for its special online repository on Liberation War -- 'Freedom in the air', The Daily Star Online gathered rare video footages, photos and reports published in local and foreign newspapers on the atrocities of the occupation army that shook the whole world.
Available at freedomintheair.thedailystar.net, the online depository also contain exclusive interviews of war heroes, key diplomatic cables including then US Consul General Archer K Blood's "Dissent Cables" famously known as “Blood Telegrams” and the report of Pakistan government-formed Hamoodur Rahman Commission which censured the politicians and army for genocide in Bangladesh in 1971.
In three of those rarely watched videos, Pakistan army's massacres stood out vividly.
Ron Nessen, in an NBC News report (Link: ow.ly/G6ga8), showed part of a massacre at Dhaka University on March 26, 1971. A professor of engineering took the video with a portable tape machine hidden on the roof of a building 300 yards from the place where the Pakistani soldiers herded students, teachers and employees of the university.
The footage was kept hidden for nine months before it made its way to NBC News.
In another report (Link: ow.ly/G6h1a), Howard Tuckner of ABC News showed a village near Dhaka on November 30, 1971, where the Pakistan army conducted a heinous raid the day earlier.
Terming the villagers “Mukti Bahini guerrilla fighters” or their sympathisers, the military indiscriminately killed civilians and raped women before charging bayonets to kill them. The army forced their families to watch the women being disgraced. They continued their rampage with bullets and bayonets. Even a year-old infant was not spared. Before leaving, they vandalised and set fire to the entire village.
A CBS News report (Link: ow.ly/G6gOx) by Peter Grant on February 2, 1972 showed a killing ground beside a narrow river on the outskirts of Khulna city. Skulls and tattered bones were seen scattered on the bank of the river.
According to a Bangladesh government report, Khulna alone experienced at least 1,00,000 deaths in the genocide. Among the killed were mostly the supporters of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Hindus, students and professionals, Grant said. The video report also showed arrests of Razakars, whom the locals openly wanted to kill for revenge.
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