Whats your view on this?
Rezwan, what a tremendous task you had undertaken and delivered so well !
Finally...37 years after the independence was declared, the genocide of 1971 has been documented.
Rezwan,
This is really really AMAZING!!! Very very proud of all of you folks. I have dreamt of such sites for long. This gives a huge incentive now to pump in more stuff and make it a central point of documentation for all 71 related documents. Hats off.
You have taken on a mammoth task. But this is a great beginning. Congratulations!
Rezwan and all,
Great effort! Congrats and thank you for doing this. I also liked your objectivity in instances. Appreciate it!
I thank you all, and my little girl growing up in the UK thanks you all. It's educative for us all.
Only those nations that remember and learn from their past can progress into future. Excellent project. Probably someday Pakistani military will learn to treat Pakistani citizens as humans. We cannot afford another Bangladesh.
Lahore, Pakistan
Going through the website I find the figures of atrocities committed by Pakistani army exaggerated and we have to remember that atrocities were committed on both sides, though not to the scale committed by Pakistani army.
Having said that still it is a fine project if slightly biased as can be expected.
NOTE: The genocide of Bengalis did happen regardless of anyone who denied it but to actually say an ignorant statement like "one of the worst genocide in the World history" it's total bull.
The Jews of Germany were massacred greatly than the Bengalis.
People say the genocide was 3 million without evidence, which was actually 300,000 according to my research. If you think about it 45,000 Punjabi soldiers can't kill 3 million Bengalis in 9 months, not even Adolf Hitler could do that with the Jews and he had the most advanced weapons at his time.
In Bangla 3 lakhs is written as "3,00,000" if you translate that to English it looks like 3 million. Obviously false facts were composed to gain sympathy for the Bengalis.
The Bangladeshi government needs to create a commission to actually investigate what really happened in 1971 instead of letting Bengalis absorb the lie of 3 million genocide.
NO credible academia in the world accepts 3 million Bengalis were killed but they do accept that 300,000 Bengalis were massacred.
I'm actually doing an independent research based on the US State Department's records of 1971 since they are the only credible source left of what really went on.
Facts are essential, even if they are only approximate facts - one of the features of genocide is an unwillingness on the part of the perpetrators to leave precise evidence of the dimensions of their crime. 300,000 is a grim figure, whatever.
Sunny, could you be more respectful and not call "bull" of whatever's dropped on your palate?
3 million or 300,000, it's a genocide. We are not denying Holocaust. We are rightly saying that this is ONE of the worst genocide. Rezwan bhai will also add genocide in Cambodia as well.
No wonder why GenocideBangladesh.org was born, because so called researchers like you and Sharmila Bose believe in facts that are only illusions.
As unfortunate as it may sound, there are always some "people" who would proudly declare that 1971 genocide was just foul cry.
Rezwan, Please will you email me your telephone number?
Many thanks,
Rebecca Myatt
Producer, Outlook
Many kudos to you all.
Tayyab,
As Nazzina said the figures don't really matter. Nobody plans to kill and keep count of it rather burying it. Its sad that Bangladesh did not keep count like what Yad Vashem did for the Jewish.
The thing matters is that the way the genocide is done, the racial hatred behind it and let the coming generations know what is right or wrong.
In Germany the concentration camps are kept as govt. sponsored free museums where a person can experience what happened during Jewish holocaust (I personally visited one). I saw school children being taught about that history in special seminar halls there (I hear its a must). So that they know what wrong their countrymen did and they are shamed of it.
Now instead of learning the facts of Bangladesh genocide I hear some Pakistanis cry about figures. The outlook is of forget and forgive with no realization for the younger generation about the demons the military regime unleashed.
I am sure you won't find a Bangladeshi converting this to a collective vengeance against all Pakistanis as we know that the general Pakistanis were somewhat kept in the dark. But given that benefit of doubt I wonder what makes some Pakistanis pretend that it was *only some numbers*, atrocities on both sides etc.
I am sure Mukti Bahinis killed Pakistani armies and Razakars as it was war. But they did not rape people or burn peoples houses or loot people or kill Hindus indiscriminately. What would you do when your father/brother is killed in front of you and your mother/sister raped? Take arms or be a coward like some Pakistanis who did not dare to speak against their regime's oppression?
Sunny before Bangladesh Government undertakes such steps, can we expect Pakistan government takes heed of the Hamoodur Commission report and try the Army persons who committed acts of killing innocent men and ethnic cleansing?
Hi Rebecca,
I don't have your email here. Could you please mail me? Thanks.
Rezwan, sadly many Serbs/Serbians still refuse to accept the genocide at Srebrenica in spite of the findings of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and the International Court of Justice.
It's really only since the ICJ confirmed the findings of the ICJ with regard to the responsibility of the Bosnian Serbs for the genocide while at the same time - controversially - letting Serbia itself off the hook that many of the deniers have become less aggressive in refuting the reality of the massacre.
Mladic and Karadzic are still being hidden and sheltered by their compatriots despite international pressure.
So even with the force of developments in international law since 1971 it's still difficult to get the perpetrators and their compatriots to acknowledge the substance of history.
In 1995 Scotland Yard were involved in an attempt to have Moinuddin Choudhury extradited from the UK to face war crimes charges in Bangladesh. As I understand it the political will of the Bangladesh authorities to proceed with the extradition application apparently dissipated. If there's no will to put alleged war criminals on trial in Bangladesh and secure legitimate convictions it's going to be difficult to persuade Pakistanis and the Pakistan authorities to acknowledge the substance of what happened in 1971.
Hello I am sooo happy to see this. I was trying to collect all those materials and share them within our institute. But now I think we have the archive. This archive is great and I'll try to contribute here as much as I can.
But I think the name of the archive narrows down its contents and capabilities. Cant it be a complete liberation war archive?
Thank you sooo much again for this archive. This is our history and it's us that are supposed to preserve it.
Mr Sunny wrote above that there were only 45,000 punjabi soldiers involved in the massacre. But as far as I know, 90,000 Pakistani soldiers surrendered to the Allied Force on Dec 16, 1971. According to wikipedia, the number of Pakistani soldiers was approximately 100,000. And there was also paramilitary groups and rajakars who sometimes surpassed the army in atrocities. It's not too difficult for them to kill 3 mil ppl in 260 days. In '71 someone told that ppl wont believe after 20 yrs what happened here. I think that's started to happen.
But again, a genocide is a genocide. Number matters little.
I would like to point out some small mistakes in the 'birsreshthos' page.
The portraits of Ruhul Amin has been swapped for that of Nur Mohammad Sheikh. Would you plz correct it?
Also there's a formatting problem in the title 'Sepoy Hamidur Rahman'.
And also there is controversy abt the birthplace of Lance Naik Munshi Abdur Rauf. I saw an article abt it on the daily 'Prothom Alo' or 'Shomokal' but I lost it. Would someone plz verify?
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