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Bangladesh urges Pakistan apology for 1971 ‘crimes’

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Forget 1971, says Pakistan

PAKISTAN has asked us to let bygones be bygones, to forget 1971. Now, that is indeed a queer proposition to make before a nation that Pakistan's soldiers so happily and brutally went into the job of murdering, raping and maiming over nine months of medieval barbarism. But, of course, we are ready to forget and forgive, ready to turn a new page if only Pakistan's government and its people would do their bit in helping us forget that sordid past. The trouble is their attitude has not helped all these years since the end of Pakistan and the rise of Bangladesh. It is always attitude that matters.

And how it matters was demonstrated beautifully and poignantly by Willy Brandt, that man of peace, when he went and knelt before Israel's Yad Vashem memorial in 1970 as a mark of penance for what Nazi Germany did to six million Jews in the Hitler years.

The German chancellor could well have declined to do that, seeing that he himself had run from the Nazis, that his politics had nothing in common with that of Hitler and his brutal regime. But, then again, Brandt knew that the road to the future would stay blocked until the past had adequately been tackled.

It is a lesson Pakistan and its leaders need to learn from. To be sure, Pakistanis will tell you in their turn that Pervez Musharraf once expressed his regret over any crimes that may have been committed in Bangladesh in 1971. When they do that, you might as well inform them that there is a huge difference between an expression of regret and a clear statement of apology.

When you regret something you have done, you are not exactly contrite over your action. But when you publicly let people know that you are apologetic over a crime or sin you have committed, you give out the good feeling that you have finally been able to catch up with history. More significantly, you have finally adopted the thought that in life morality matters than anything else.

Pakistan's people and its leaders have, to our clear displeasure, never tried to take the high moral ground when it comes to dealing with 1971. The history that is taught in schools is a travesty of the truth. While a detailed analysis is provided of the circumstances leading to the creation of Pakistan in 1947, nothing really is offered as an explanation for the disappearance of East Pakistan in 1971. Or if there is something of an explanation, the clear hint is there that a conspiracy, obviously by non-Pakistanis, broke the country into two. With that kind of approach to history, you only undermine history. An angry Zulfikar Ali Bhutto visited the National Memorial in Savar in June 1974 and made it clear he saw nothing wrong in what his country had done to Bengalis in 1971.

You would have expected a different kind of response from Bhutto, for he was an educated man and comfortable in the ways of the world. Yes, he did have a big hand in the genocide, but he could have redeemed himself if he had, on that trip, apologised in unambiguous terms to the Bengalis. He did not and neither did any of his successors. His daughter Benazir, a student at Harvard in 1971, scrupulously refused to believe the reports of the killings carried by the western media at the time.

All that mattered was what her father told her in his letters. And she believed him. To the end of her life, you might reasonably conclude, she thought the Bangladesh crisis was not brought on by the army or her father but by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and his Awami League.

Naturally, therefore, you do not expect anything but professions of regret from Pakistan about the atrocities of its army in Bangladesh. Or there is the quixotic too. When Ziaul Haq travelled to Dhaka in 1985, he did a good thing of visiting the memorial at Savar. It was one opportunity he could have used to say sorry on behalf of his country. He did not do that. Instead, he told bemused Bengali journalists: "Your heroes are our heroes." So why then did his army go about picking off our freedom fighters and our innocent citizens? Imagine the Japanese telling the Chinese: "The people we massacred in Nanjing in 1937 were our brothers."

We will forget 1971 when Pakistan makes a move to remember it. That remembering ought not to be like Pervez Musharraf's. In his memoirs, the former military ruler notes that he and his fellow soldiers in Rawalpindi wept on the day the Pakistan army surrendered in Bangladesh. That weeping came a little late in the day and for the wrong reasons. For nine months the Pakistanis made Bengalis weep. And then it was their turn to cry, not because they had brutalised Bangladesh but because they had lost East Pakistan.
Roedad Khan, that incorrigible Pakistani bureaucrat, glowed at dawn on March 26, 1971. As Bengalis were shot down, he exclaimed: "Yaar, iman taaza ho gya." Pakistan must someday weep for that comment. And then we will forget.
 
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Dr. Abu Reza
Wednesday, May 20, 2009 03:16 AM GMT+06:00 (13 hours ago)

While passing through a VIP lounge in Pakistan in the recent past, I discovered an official brochure on Pakistan history recorded that Bangabandhu, like Mirzafar, betrayed his country -as to why East Pakistan was lost. Nonetheless, you have reminded the case of German penenance for killing of jews. On our part we, as muslims, can ask Pakistan to pass a resolution in their national assembly seeking forgiveness, and, we, on our part, forgive them. Otherwise, Pakistan will escape the punishment. Small wonder, the remaining Pakistan has earned the reputation as the most dangerous country in the world, its economy in ruins, relatively backword in health and education compared to our situation, not to speak of law and order. We as muslims wish them well. But they must seek forgiveness, for their own good.

AK Shamsuddin
Wednesday, May 20, 2009 05:51 AM GMT+06:00 (10 hours ago)
The expression Forgive and forget is itself an oxymoron. Forgiveness is a virtue, but forgetfulness is a vice because it leads to selective amnesia. Forgetting a particular event like genocide always help to develop selective amnesia by politicians and rulers when questioned about their committed crime.

George Santanya the Spanish born American philosopher said: Those who forget the lessons of history are condemned to repeat it. William Shakespeare was more succinct: What is past is prologues.


Shafiqul Islam
Wednesday, May 20, 2009 07:23 AM GMT+06:00 (9 hours ago)
Sine never spares its father. Pakistanis must go for their soul searching and rediscover why a very potential nation has been sinking. I don't they will see the shore unless they come to their senses.

Shafiq
 
This discussion has run its course, valid points have been made on both sides. I think it is time we forgave and forgot. Lets close this thread.
 
There is a lot of emotion flowing, none of which actually does anything constructive.
The level of this is close to blinkered thinking and produces little but hatred based on emotion.

Allow me to give you an example of people getting on, in essence a form of ‘forgive and forget’.
In WWII many women were treated badly by the Japanese. These women were western, Korean, and many islanders. They received little in compensation after the war. Compensation as in the Japanese accepting responsibility of what took place.
These women got on with their lives because they realised that sitting in one place and brooding over events will get them nowhere.
Yes they approached the whole problem with sanity, yes some emotion but they did not spout the level of vitriol I see in this place by many who were not even physically involved.

These women did finally get some compensation from Japan but it was done slowly and with a level of self esteem on their part.

I can relate also many POWS who were mistreated by the Japanese and they showed more restraint and self respect in their behaviour than I see here.

Please for you own nations be it Pakistan or Bangladesh, take note of these women and show the same level of self regard.
 
While Pakistan is in bad shape now..It will indeed recover and BD can never be compared with Pakistan.Pakistan is different kind of country altogether.BD can be compared with countries like Mynamar..not Pakistan.
 
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Again with this nonsense in all due respect wat happend before happend why keep bringing up the past ! we have the outmost respect and love for BD and we show it and mean it now time to stop this rubish this is no time for Pakistan to be invloved in more tension as it has more then enough on the table lets live in peace GOD bless both nations and its people.
 
Forget 1971, says Pakistan

PAKISTAN has asked us to let bygones be bygones, to forget 1971. Now, that is indeed a queer proposition to make before a nation that Pakistan's soldiers so happily and brutally went into the job of murdering, raping and maiming over nine months of medieval barbarism. But, of course, we are ready to forget and forgive, ready to turn a new page if only Pakistan's government and its people would do their bit in helping us forget that sordid past. The trouble is their attitude has not helped all these years since the end of Pakistan and the rise of Bangladesh. It is always attitude that matters.

And how it matters was demonstrated beautifully and poignantly by Willy Brandt, that man of peace, when he went and knelt before Israel's Yad Vashem memorial in 1970 as a mark of penance for what Nazi Germany did to six million Jews in the Hitler years.

The German chancellor could well have declined to do that, seeing that he himself had run from the Nazis, that his politics had nothing in common with that of Hitler and his brutal regime. But, then again, Brandt knew that the road to the future would stay blocked until the past had adequately been tackled.

It is a lesson Pakistan and its leaders need to learn from. To be sure, Pakistanis will tell you in their turn that Pervez Musharraf once expressed his regret over any crimes that may have been committed in Bangladesh in 1971. When they do that, you might as well inform them that there is a huge difference between an expression of regret and a clear statement of apology.

When you regret something you have done, you are not exactly contrite over your action. But when you publicly let people know that you are apologetic over a crime or sin you have committed, you give out the good feeling that you have finally been able to catch up with history. More significantly, you have finally adopted the thought that in life morality matters than anything else.

Pakistan's people and its leaders have, to our clear displeasure, never tried to take the high moral ground when it comes to dealing with 1971. The history that is taught in schools is a travesty of the truth. While a detailed analysis is provided of the circumstances leading to the creation of Pakistan in 1947, nothing really is offered as an explanation for the disappearance of East Pakistan in 1971. Or if there is something of an explanation, the clear hint is there that a conspiracy, obviously by non-Pakistanis, broke the country into two. With that kind of approach to history, you only undermine history. An angry Zulfikar Ali Bhutto visited the National Memorial in Savar in June 1974 and made it clear he saw nothing wrong in what his country had done to Bengalis in 1971.

You would have expected a different kind of response from Bhutto, for he was an educated man and comfortable in the ways of the world. Yes, he did have a big hand in the genocide, but he could have redeemed himself if he had, on that trip, apologised in unambiguous terms to the Bengalis. He did not and neither did any of his successors. His daughter Benazir, a student at Harvard in 1971, scrupulously refused to believe the reports of the killings carried by the western media at the time.

All that mattered was what her father told her in his letters. And she believed him. To the end of her life, you might reasonably conclude, she thought the Bangladesh crisis was not brought on by the army or her father but by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and his Awami League.

Naturally, therefore, you do not expect anything but professions of regret from Pakistan about the atrocities of its army in Bangladesh. Or there is the quixotic too. When Ziaul Haq travelled to Dhaka in 1985, he did a good thing of visiting the memorial at Savar. It was one opportunity he could have used to say sorry on behalf of his country. He did not do that. Instead, he told bemused Bengali journalists: "Your heroes are our heroes." So why then did his army go about picking off our freedom fighters and our innocent citizens? Imagine the Japanese telling the Chinese: "The people we massacred in Nanjing in 1937 were our brothers."

We will forget 1971 when Pakistan makes a move to remember it. That remembering ought not to be like Pervez Musharraf's. In his memoirs, the former military ruler notes that he and his fellow soldiers in Rawalpindi wept on the day the Pakistan army surrendered in Bangladesh. That weeping came a little late in the day and for the wrong reasons. For nine months the Pakistanis made Bengalis weep. And then it was their turn to cry, not because they had brutalised Bangladesh but because they had lost East Pakistan.
Roedad Khan, that incorrigible Pakistani bureaucrat, glowed at dawn on March 26, 1971. As Bengalis were shot down, he exclaimed: "Yaar, iman taaza ho gya." Pakistan must someday weep for that comment. And then we will forget.

Where is a link to this article or blog or where ever it is copied and posted here?
For the last part, i'll say if Bangladeshis don't wanna leave the past and move on, i'll say to hell with them, we don't give a damn about it. and for our country being the most dangerous place in the world, certainly you have fallen for the western and Indian propaganda which doesn't surprise any Pakistani and on a side note we can take care of our own problems, we don't need your support and neither your sympathy. Worry about yours instead.
 
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At the same time the Mukti bahni commited similar killings against bihari's and West Pakistani's. In fact Pakistani's troops preferred surrendering to the Indians rather than the Mukti Bahni. So the blood bath is collateral, and to rekindle it and reignite animosity is deplorable.
 
At the same time the Mukti bahni commited similar killings against bihari's and West Pakistani's. In fact Pakistani's troops preferred surrendering to the Indians rather than the Mukti Bahni. So the blood bath is collateral, and to rekindle it and reignite animosity is deplorable.

Our bihari or remaining W. Pakistani brothers still live in this country and there were not a single incidence when any bengalis ever abused them or any riot or anything violent of that kind. We have shia, we have hindus and we have buddist. No problem whatsoever. And look at the communal violence in Pakistan Muhajer vs locals, pashtu verses urdu speaker and so on and so on. The biharis/W. Pakistani whose elders once decided to go to W. Pakistan, you find the total contrast now as the newer generation faught to live here. We Bengalis or Biharis or whoever they, are not that bad of a people, may be the name Pakistan had something to do with it. :undecided:

We were having some intellectual debates here and there is nothing to be upset about it. We have some areas where we have disagreement and some areas where we still be friend both Pakistan and Bangaldesh. Covering things up never works but to work with them and refine ourselves for the better future.
 
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You seem to be taking this at the present level while I am referring to the events of 1971.
And the current situation in Pakistan is just proof that nothing has changed since then.
 
It always amuses me the lengths people will go to in order to perpetuate myths of one way genocide in East Pakistan.

The facts are

1) Biharis killed by Bengalis before any Army action
2) Mujib openly declaring war on the state of Pakistan before any Army action
3) Two sided atrocities
4) A completely bogus figure of 3 million disproved by neutral sources and just using logic, even Mujib needed to add another 2 million to his initial estimate

I'd add, I disagree there was even economic discrimination or language discrimination. East Pakistan always had more schools than West Pakistan and better educational facilities. Bengali was made the official language of Pakistan before any Army action too. You can't ask for anything more.

I'd be very happy if Balochistan, Sindh, or NWFP had more schools per square area than Punjab. Perhaps those three province were really discriminated against. East Pakistan appeared to be given it all education wise, it would seem.
 
While Pakistan is in bad shape now..It will indeed recover and BD can never be compared with Pakistan.Pakistan is different kind of country altogether.BD can be compared with countries like Mynamar..not Pakistan.

Really?? what speciallity you got except for the size and military that can never be compared to Bangladesh?? care to elaborate? This is a Pakistani forum doesnt mean you can do whatever you want. Learn to show some respect as we did.. To tell you the truth, Bangladesh stands on a far better position than Pakistan...
 
1) Biharis killed by Bengalis before any Army action

and what about Bengalis slaughtered and women raped by the Biharis?? What do you think 70 million people went insane and turned against their own brothers for no reason??
 
and what about Bengalis slaughtered and women raped by the Biharis?? What do you think 70 million people went insane and turned against their own brothers for no reason??

What do you think "two-sided atrocities" means?

Do you deny Bengalis slaughtered Biharis before any Army action by the Pakistani Army?

If so, you're lying plain and simple. It is recorded everywhere that Biharis were being killed by Bengalis prior to this.. I will go one stage further. Since Biharis were the minority in East Pakistan, I am going to put the claim that the Biharis did not start any fighting. Minorities generally know they are outnumbered so will not go looking for trouble generally.
 
What do you think "two-sided atrocities" means?

Do you deny Bengalis slaughtered Biharis before any Army action by the Pakistani Army?

If so, you're lying plain and simple. It is recorded everywhere that Biharis were being killed by Bengalis prior to this.. I will go one stage further. Since Biharis were the minority in East Pakistan, I am going to put the claim that the Biharis did not start any fighting. Minorities generally know they are outnumbered so will not go looking for trouble generally.

MUHHAHAHAHA
Hey man, did not you ever hear of riot in Pakistan? No communal tension? No shia sunni conflict? Somewhere I saw even in Pakistan Muhajer got some problems and people get killed every now and then.
Even if we do take your claim as true, what should be the rule of the army of a country? Should they stop the violence or go in a spree to start one of the heiness genocide in the history of mankind?

See my earlier post, there was not a single incidence of any violence against Biharis after 1971 in the last 38 years in Bangladesh. This track record speaks for itself.
 
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