Declare March 25 Nat'l Genocide Day

The government should take diplomatic initiatives to gain international recognition of the genocide committed by the Pakistan army and its local collaborators during the 1971 Liberation War, speakers said yesterday.

They demanded that the authorities declare March 25 "National Genocide Day" to pay tribute to the victims of the one of the worst genocides of the 20th century.

Freedom fighters, war crimes researchers, a former justice and rights activists were among the discussants at a programme titled "Recognition of Bangladesh Genocide and De-radicalisation Strategy".

Ekattorer Ghatak Dalal Nirmul Committee organised the programme marking the silver jubilee of the organisation, a champion of war crimes trial.

Veteran war crimes researcher Shahriar Kabir said Pakistan always claims that no genocide was committed in Bangladesh, and it terms the Liberation War a “civil war”.

For this reason, most of the western media outlets, researchers and policymakers don't consider the 1971 war crimes as genocide, said Shahriar, the newly elected president of the committee.

Referring to the Armenian genocide in 1915, he said both the government and the civil society of that country worked to gain recognition of the genocide, and so far at least 40 countries have recognised it.

“Our government should take diplomatic initiatives to gain international recognition of the genocide committed in 1971,” he said.

Mofidul Hoque, another war crimes researcher, said the 1971 genocide was widely recognised by the observers and global media at that time, but it became a "forgotten genocide" after 1971.

Though all the accused in the ongoing war crimes trial claimed they were not involved in the crimes and pleaded not guilty before the International Crimes Tribunal, none of them denied the commission of genocide in 1971, said Mofidul, a trustee of the Liberation War Museum.

HT Imam, an adviser to the prime minister, said he would convey the demand for announcing March 25 as “National Genocide Day” to the PM and the cabinet.

About Pakistan army's brutality, Imam said that Pakistani General Rao Farman Ali in his desk diary wrote that he would “paint the green of East Pakistan red."

The Pakistan army was succeeded in doing that, and committed one of the worst genocides of the 20th century, he said.

The adviser noted that Archer K Blood, the then US consul general in Dhaka, sent a secret cable to the US Department of State in 1971, terming the killings “selective genocide”.

Later, Archer K Blood wrote “as far as I know, it was the first time that the term had been used, but it was not to be the last”, mentioned Imam.

Those who opposed the Liberation War, secularism and the rule of law, are now playing a key role in spreading fundamentalism in the country, he said.

Maj Gen (retd) Abdur Rashid, a security expert, said a number of countries didn't support the war crimes trial, but people and political leaders of Bangladesh made it happen.

He further said it's important to free the radicalised people from extremist beliefs.

"We have to understand how these people are radicalised…” It is necessary to track down all the militant networks in the country and destroy those, said Rashid.

The key to de-radicalisation is the separation of religion from politics, he noted.

Yaba Nath Lamsal, a journalist from Nepal, said, “Talibanisation and Laskaranisation process is going on in South Asia. We must stand against this.”

It's not possible to have true democracy without secularism, he added.

Julian Francis, who was an activist of Oxfam in 1971, made mentions of the brutality of the Pakistan army in 1971, and said it was estimated that about 200,000 Bangalees had been killed from March 25 to 31.  

Attorney William Sloan from Canada said impunity doesn't bring any good to the society.

Justice AHM Shamsuddin Choudhury Manik, former judge of the Supreme Court, said it's not possible to stop fundamentalist forces without unity among all pro-liberation people, and there can be no compromise in this regard.

Indian journalist and cultural activist Geetesh Sharma said terrorism is one of the major problems in the Saarc countries.

He said those, who don't understand religion properly, spread communalism. 

The discussants said the Bangladesh government should adopt a de-radicalisation strategy immediately to stop all the anti-liberation forces from spreading extremism in the country.

Erik Hedlund, a human rights activist from Sweden, and Professor Mir Mobashsher Ali, nayeb-e-ameer of National Ahmadiyya Jamaat, also spoke.