Black_cats
ELITE MEMBER
- Joined
- Dec 31, 2010
- Messages
- 10,031
- Reaction score
- -5
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina at a reception in New York last year hosted by the US President Joe Biden. Photo courtesy: bssnews.net
USA's recent moves on Bangladesh will only strengthen Islamists & anti-liberation forces
Anjan Roy | @indiablooms | 20 Aug 2023, 03:03 pm#Bangladesh, #USA, #China, #BNP
The USA had announced that it will deny visas to any Bangladeshi involved in electoral “malpractices”. The moves by the USA have irked PM Sheikh Hasina whose party Awami League shares a difficult relationship with America since the 1971 war.
The then Nixon administration had backed the Pakistan Army which tried to suppress the freedom struggle led by Awami League. The USA still finds outlawed Jamaat-e-Islami as a moderate Islamic party while Jamaat’s track record is akin to radicals. It has often been accused of promoting terrorists and terror masterminds.
The 2001-06 rule by the BNP-Jamaat-e-Islami encouraged the Indian insurgents on Bangladesh territory besides cross-border terror by Islamists.
In 2021 the sudden decision by the Biden administration to pull out from Afghanistan was a major setback to several countries in South and Central Asia. The US decision to exit Afghanistan after decades of trying to maintain a US friendly democratic government has not only let down the people of Afghanistan but jeopardized the whole security of the region.
Over the past few years several cross-border projects were launched across power, energy and connectivity sectors. India-Bangladesh defence partnership is being boosted and New Delhi airport is now a transshipment hub for Bangladeshi cargo. Line of Credit (LoC) extended to Bangladesh tops India’s list of LoC and Indian investments are on the rise.
India-Japan-Bangladesh has formed a trilateral for connecting Northeast to Bay of Bengal via Bangladesh. However, the Hasina government should do well by not falling into the trap of either China or Islamists.
Bengalis of East Pakistan wanted to be heard, to be recognized as equal to the West Pakistani rulers. Instead, they were killed mercilessly in their sleep. On 25th March 1971, Yahya Khan's sidekick Tikka Khan mobilized death squads to initiate 'Operation Searchlight'. They killed 7000 Bengalis in a single night. From that day till the end of the Liberation War 1971, Pakistani soldiers raped more than 200,000 women and killed more than 3 million people.
Till date the society in Bangladesh has not come to terms with this as some of the anti-Liberation figures of then East Pakistan remain at large.
International community has not recognized the genocide yet and entire episode gets subsumed into India-Pakistan war. The Sheikh Hasina government while taking laudable steps to set the record straight should walk the extra mile to bring perpetrators to justice.
Anthony Mascarenhas, a Pakistan based journalist, who was the first to report about the Bengali genocide in international media, quoted a Pakistani army major telling him: "This is a war between the pure and the impure... The people here may have Muslim names and call themselves Muslims. But they are Hindu at heart. We are now sorting them out... Those who are left will be real Muslims. We will even teach them Urdu."
The Hamoodur Rahman Commission's report is the most critical piece of evidence of the 1971 Bangladesh Genocide. This report found the Pakistani military deployed in East Pakistan guilty of widespread atrocities, serious acts of human rights violations, and other abuses of power. The then PM of Pakistan ZA Bhutto ordered to burn every copy of this report. These heinous crimes are yet to be universally recognised as genocide. Not recognising the events of 1971 as genocide will not just be severe injustice done to the memories of the victims of genocide, it will be an injustice done to history itself.
There is no doubt that the mass killing in Bangladesh was among the most carefully and centrally planned of modern genocides. A cabal of five Pakistani generals orchestrated the events: President Yahya Khan, General Tikka Khan, chief of staff General Pirzada, security chief General Umar Khan, and intelligence chief General Akbar Khan.
The genocide and gendercidal atrocities were also perpetrated by lower-ranking officers and ordinary soldiers. These “willing executioners” were fuelled by an abiding anti-Bengali racism, especially against the Hindu minority. “Bengalis were often compared with monkeys and chickens. Said Pakistan General Niazi, ‘It was a low lying land of low lying people.’
(Based in New Delhi, Anjan Roy is a keen observer of Bangladesh politics and society for several decades. The opinion expressed in the article is of the author.)
USA's recent moves on Bangladesh will only strengthen Islamists & anti-liberation forces | Indiablooms - First Portal on Digital News Management
The USA had announced that it will deny visas to any Bangladeshi involved in electoral “malpractices”. The moves by the USA have irked PM Sheikh Hasina whose party Awami League shares a difficult relationship with America since the 1971 war.
