Verbatim of Operation Searchlight: The Blueprint of Bengali Genocide in 1971

[Arnab]

As far as I can see, I am not misrepresenting anything. And your second paragraph may score point for using emotional rhetorics, but I am not interested in that either. I very clearly asked a few questions about your line of thinking behind giving the "benefit of the doubt" to the calculated nature of these thugs, and doubting the existence of such a document/documents which may help establish their connection to these cold-blooded murders if there is a trial.

[Zobair]

Do you have relatives who are actually related to these thugs? Why such outpourings "benefits of the doubt" regarding their cold-blooded calcualtions?

wowowow careful now buddy! You are starting to sound like Bush Jr. and Rumsfeld now! You are more narrow-minded and pig-headed than I thought! (I know that sounds like a personal attack...but you just called us or our kins potential razakars and that is pretty damn low!) I suggest you don't go down that lane again.

[Edited on 18-12-2003 by pompous]

[Zobair]

Please stick to your arguement and please avoid such insinuations in the future...I still can't believe you said that......

[Zobair]

This is my last post on this...dude! you can think whatever you want...I really don't care...you are talking (and obviously thinking) like a fool...worse! an educated sophisticated fool!...forget it! I am going to ignore your trash talk from now on...Man! I can't get over what you said?!?! I need to go cool off...

[Edited on 18-12-2003 by pompous]

[Arnab]

Wow! I really touched a nerve, didn't I?

Let me make a CLEAR statement:

I don't even KNOW you by person. If you think that by my posts I am actually CALLING you a relative of those thugs without even knowing anything about you,and get all riled up by it, then it's a result of YOUR imagination and assumption.

DON'T PLAY THE VICTIM. YOU KNOW EXACTLY WHAT I MEAN BY THOSE REMARKS.

For the last time, I am not personally attacking you with my remarks. It's impossible and ludicrous to do so. AND YOU KNOW IT.

---------

And this stupid charade is not really helping at all as far as the topic is concerned.

[Zobair]

Don't play the victim?!?!?....do you ever read the TRIPE you write?!?!? Do you ever LISTEN to what OTHER people say?! Do you ever apologise?! Man! you have to be one of the most arrogant people on the messageboard (if not the most)...never ready to give an inch...and have the nerve to call others arrogant... just read that quote of yours over again, and TELL ME how exactly YOU meant it....every RATIONAL (your fav word!) person would read it the way I did! Now you are talking about how you don't know me so you possibly couldn't mean such and such...hah! buddy if that's your pathetic attempt at an explanation or an excuse try again coz THE WRITING IS ON THE BOARD PLAIN FOR EVERY ONE TO SEE! Every one can judge if I am taking you out of context or not.

Haha! what do you know about justice?! What do you know about the law?! You want justice by hook or crook? You are ready to accept that this is indeed the "blueprint" of genocide even if it is not?! You don't even care if it is not! You are not interested in the Truth are you? You have already made up your mind! (shows in all your other arguements about other issues too!). I certainly hope you are not put in charge of getting justice for the VICTIMS of 71 (inshallah when we get it). Coz you will probably bungle it in your eagerness to find the 'smoking gun' instead of seeking the truth! There is enough evidence, living evidence of what happened! Independent Historians have confirmed and even provided vivid accounts of the blood and gore!!! who needs a piece of paper to prove anything?!?!? Justice starts with seeking the ABSOLUTE TRUTH (neither EXAGERRATE nor WATER IT DOWN), not vindictiveness. You, my friend, are the vindictive emotional sort, much like.....! Lets say you should consider standing for the president of United States, coz for all your shortcomings you might actually do a better job than bush jr. On that positive note I end my rant My apologies if I hurt your feelings



[Edited on 18-12-2003 by pompous]

[Arnab]

Haha! Wow! I didn't know there was so much fire in you! Even after I have CLEARLY spelled out what I meant by my remarks.

To quote you: "THE WRITING IS ON THE BOARD PLAIN FOR EVERY ONE TO SEE!"

Yes they are, indeed. Do you want me to make a laundry list of the sweet sounding phrases you have used for me in your last few posts?

- narrow-minded and pig-headed [Ad hominem]

- that I just "called" you or your kins potential razakars. [obviously I didn't do that, an explained it clearly in a later post]

- that I am talking (and obviously thinking) like a fool [more AH, sure]

- an educated sophisticated fool [never heard that one before]

- Do I ever read the TRIPE I write? [No reasoning why what I wrote is tripe, it just is ]

- I have already made up my mind [on what? I don't even know myself, you tell me]

- I am the vindictive emotional sort [Oh the irony! Could you please point out the "emotional" and "vindictive" parts of my post? "Vindictive" against who? Some guy on the internet? "Emotional" as in hurling ad hominems? ]

But, fret not, I am not going down the same path as you. The only thing from your last post I seriously consider worth replying is this:

"My apologies if I hurt your feelings"

Apology accepted. You didn't hurt my feelings. I like natokyo posts like this. They entertain me.

And

I LOVE YOU, POMPOUS!

[In a non-homoerotic way of course]

[Edited on 18-12-2003 by Arnab]

[Zobair]

Alright then...you sire! have the last word. I give up...sigh!

[Pundit]

Not reading the contents on pg.2 of this topic, I am just inquiring about what you all think about the possibility of this document even getting admission as evidence should there have been a Nurenburg like trial ?

And who authored, used it to decree, directed e.t.c the following massacre ?

You see Arnab, had there been a trial in say, 1972, it would have been clouded with too much confusion and vested interests (not that that ought to have prevented one from holding a trial). Tell me why Mr. Sheikh Mujib had to go to Pakistan in 1972 - the very year after our independence. He couldn't even stop himself from going their (OIC donor money was imperative), and you are talking about a trial here ? Also, who pardoned all of these "hardened BD based war criminals." If these chipmunk jamaatees got away scott free, what were the odds of bringing the stalwarts protected within Pakistani fortresses, to justice ?

And about holding trials 30 yrs after, seeking apologies..., you must be kidding ? Hate them as much as you want, but no one will voluntarily deliver one to you. Shed as many tears as you want, all you'll get back is a smirk !! Instead, just go out and beat the heck out of them whenever opportunity allows..whether its on the cricket field or not.

You are actually asking for their charity in the name of parity. If I were you, I would as an individual, as a Bangladeshi individual, seek to better myself, so that one day we could collectively get the last laugh. Why should we not strive to be better and not limit ourselves to their benovelence ? Become a manager one day at work and have 3 Pakistanis work for you. That's how you overcome.

In the end it is what Mr. Rafiq here said that rings true the most - we should continue to remember, continue to hold a Bijoy Dibosh, and continue to write more for our children, and for children of others, so that these horrible deeds do not get repeated. Afterall, that's why they movies like Shiendeler's list , Malcom X etc.

Some facts above may not be entirely accurate, and I would appreciate your politely pointing it out. But please, no more "gasps" or the likes of it.

[Arnab]

I think that was the most coherent post I have ever read from Pundit! And for once, no obscure passive-agressive snides either! Yes! I am a happy guy.

I am just inquiring about what you all think about the possibility of this document even getting admission as evidence should there have been a Nurenburg like trial ?

I think there is a big possibility! IF there is a trial in the first place, of course. Why do you think it would NOT make admisison into such a trial, given it took place, even hypothetically?

I wholeheartedly agree with most of the other stuff you said. Bettering myself, etc I am. But, no, I don't think I do it for beating Pakistanis or having them work under me. I find this type of attitude also very interesting.

If you read my posts carefully, I am not really suggesting that token apologies and Nuremberg-like trials have to happen RIGHT NOW or anything like that. I am well aware of the reality. I am doing just what you said Pundit: "continuing to remember", so that these horrible deeds don't get repeated.

[Shubho]

and beat the heck out of them whenever opportunity allows..

Oh, I like that...For once, I agree with Ponditmoshai.

[rafiq]

Although I am not a qualified international human rights lawyer, or any other kind of lawyer, I don't believe there is any reason to think this document would not be admissable in a war crimes tribunal, if there ever was one held on behalf of Bangladeshi victims. If the document is a fake, and I don't have any knowledge that it is, than of course it would not be admissable. In the interest of some closure, I will ask international human rights lawyer friends of mine their opinion on the admissability question and report back should there be an intelligent answer.

I don't believe there is a statute of limitations on war crimes, in other words time to prosecute doesn't expire, but the willingness and feasibility to execute the prosecution does.

War crime prosecution has everything to do with global political conditions. I don't believe we have the conditions inside or outside of Bangladesh to carry out such a prosecution, and I have no reason to believe these conditions will change in my lifetime.

[rafiq]

http://www.drishtipat.org/1971/war.htm

The above site is geared towards a just launched fundraising drive for some 1971 war women, but the link will take you to several documents worthy of your attention. I include the text of an article written by Dr. Hameeda Hossain of Dhaka-based Ain-O-Shalish Kendro.

We should also take it upon ourselves to look at the reasons for the blunder of not having the war crime tribunals soon after 1971. Aside from realpolitiks, weaknesses in leadership as referred to earlier, there was the very real exchange of Bangladeshi military and civilian citizens stranded in Pakistan. In hindsight, we should have negotiated differently than we did. But perhaps there was also some genuine concern for those stranded Bangladeshis, many of who unfortunately never fully appreciated the price that was paid for their repatriation.
_______________________________

THE LESSONS WE NEVER LEARN


Hameeda Hossain

It has now become a ritual, come December and March, to bemoan why no justice was exacted from the Pakistan military and its collaborators, for the crimes of genocide and mass rape, committed in 1971. This is not for lack of evidence. In fact over the years, Bangalis have painstakingly compiled evidence and much of this has become the store of international knowledge on typology of military subjugation and brutality. First, the news filtered through the lens of foreign journalists, later after independence the government set up its own enquiry team constituted by Advocates Serajul Haq and Aminul Haq. They painstakingly compiled evidence and submitted their report on more than 1500 cases to the Home Ministry by July 1972. Those held guilty of war crimes fell into two categories: the first included war criminals - 195 members of Pakistan military and bureaucracy - who were taken into Indian custody in New Delhi. The second included the local collaborators of the Pakistan military in "committing grave criminal offence and atrocities against the people of Bangladesh and to have cooperated with the then government in oppressing and obstructing the independence movement." In his report to Amnesty International, Mr David Marshall, Q.C. and former Chief Minister of Singapore, said in 1972, that 12,000 collaborators awaiting trial in 19 jails were to be tried under the Collaborators Order before 73 Tribunals. It was to ensure the legality of their trials that two renowned criminal lawyers had been asked to prepare a draft for the Bangladesh Collaborators' (Special Tribunals) Order 1972. This law which was removed from the statute books of Bangladesh in 1976 became a standard setter for the ICC. Upto July 1972, 13 persons had been charged in Dhaka alone.

The country did not have the satisfaction of witnessing exemplary trials of even the leading collaborators, and most of them were let off. This has had consequences for peace and security of ordinary citizens. As the collaborators merged into their communities, many quietly acquired influence or gained political power and became a threat to the survivors of their violence. The war criminals were released from Indian custody to Pakistan in 1974, following the Simla Agreement, on a commitment that they would be tried in Pakistan. This denouement may have been influenced by realpolitik-and there is now ample evidence of Kissinger and Nixon's support for army action and a US tilt towards Pakistan, as revealed in Christopher Hitchen's book on The Trial of Henry Kissinger, and in Archer Blood's recent publication, The Cruel Birth of Bangladesh.

But it had serious consequences for the militarization of both Bangladesh and Pakistan. The decision not to hold trials of the war criminals led to considerable misgivings, which are recorded by Fakhruddin Ahmad, former Advisor to the Caretaker Government (1991), and at the time a member of the Foreign Service: " I believe that the most serious blunder on our part was not to start the trial of the Pakistani war criminals. The Nuremberg trial started immediately after the fall of Hitler. We could have at least tried Yahya and Tikka Khan in absentia for the murder of innocent people. I had suggested early action on the trial. I hinted that by holding a public trial of important Pakistan Generals we would be in a better bargaining position including repatriation (of Bangladeshis in Pakistan)." (See Critical Times, UPL, 1994, p 78)

Bangladesh's inability to hold the perpetrators responsible has, over the years, subscribed to a simmering of frustration in citizens, for whom a denial of justice has also represented a recurrence of history. The demand for justice is not to be seen as an act of revenge alone. More to the point, it is a means to deny impunity to war criminals, to prevent recurrence of military interventions. The failure to hold the military accountable for the genocide and mass rapes in Bangladesh has emboldened them to interfere repeatedly in civilian life in both countries.

Where disputes between two contending communities demand a peaceful resolution, intervention by military action or non-constitutional means to subject a community has led to long standing disruption of peace and security. This is one of the fears of such intemperate action expressed by conscious citizens.

Although the crimes of rape, killing and kidnapping of women in Bangladesh by military regimes were not taken up under international jurisdiction, the facts have not been denied. Contemporary foreign press reports and women's testimonies of rape and widowhood form part of our oral history. In spite of Pakistan's official silence, the Hamoodur Rahman Commission Report recorded that allegations against the military included " raping of a large number of East Pakistani women by the officers and men of the Pakistan army as a deliberate act of revenge, retaliation and torture. The mass of evidence coming before the Commission from witnesses, both civil and military, show that "there is little doubt that General Niazi, unfortunately came to acquire a bad reputation in sex matters, and this reputation has been consistent during his postings in …East Pakistan. The evidence of a Pakistani Colonel shows the source of the impunity of Pakistani soldiers for committing atrocities. The troops used to say, when the commander was himself a rapist, how could they be stopped."

In defiance of official silence, conscious citizens in Pakistan have protested army action against civilians in Bangladesh, Baluchistan and Sindh, as well as the usurpation of power by the military. In August 1971, 40 brave individuals, led by Faiz Ahmed Faiz issued a statement protesting the arrest of Shaikh Mujibur Rahman and army action in Bangladesh. More recently, with women in the vanguard, more and more protests have demanded an official and meaningful apology from the Government of Pakistan. The President is supposed to have regretted "excesses committed by his countrymen and asked that Bangladesh forget its history." But is excess an appropriate word for genocide! And genuine remorse would imply that the military itself would learn from its experience and not take over roles for which it has no aptitude. Each time it does so, it leaves the society in a worse shambles.

Why should Bangladesh remain silent on the war crimes on its land, particularly of rape, committed on women as a form of national punishment? And thus allow a replication of an historical experience? There are lessons to be learnt from the success of the international women's movement in attaining the recognition of rape and other gender based violence as war crimes, in demanding compensation and reparations for women victims of war, in seeking to engage with justice and peace negotiations in post conflict situations. This can be traced through developments in international humanitarian law since the second world war.

The Geneva Conventions (Art 27 and 147) specified that women be protected against rape in particular, and included it as an act of torture and inhumane treatment, because it constituted an attack on the integrity and identity of a woman. At the second set of Nuremberg trials for the trial of Nazis and the Tokyo Tribunal for War Crimes in the Far East after World War II, persecution by rape as a crime against humanity was admitted. More recently, the Security Council appointed separate Tribunals for trial of war criminals in former Yugoslavia in 1993 and in Rwanda in 1995. In 1995, these concerns were integrated into the Beijing Platform of Action and in the Rome Statutes for the International Criminal Court.

Where perpetrators of war crimes evaded official liability, people's tribunals have offered a moral condemnation. Bertrand Russell formed a People's Tribunal to indict the American forces for pre-meditated violence against the civilian population in Viet Nam. The Japanese have resisted accounting for crimes of rape and sexual slavery at "comfort stations" established by the Japanese army, but after a Public Hearing, in December 2000, on testimonies by comfort women from Korea, Philippines, China and Indonesia, a four person international jury at the Hague in 2001, indicted Emperor Hirohito and the Military Command for " the crimes committed against these survivors remain one of the great unremedied injustices of the Second World War."

War crimes on a civil population are not particular to any place and time. They have become common weapons in military and para-military action across borders, within communities and within the political divide. Whether such crimes occurring in conflicts in Palestine, Kashmir, Bangladesh, Chittagong Hill Tracts, Sri Lanka or elsewhere will ever be tried in international courts depend to some extent upon geo-political dynamics. But as the brutality of military intervention tears our societies apart, in the name of law and order, we should remember that peace and human security do not emerge from the barrel of a gun.

[Zobair]

very good article. Thank you rafiq bhai.

[Pundit]

Arnab, the only reason why my last post is coherent to you is because I wrote exactly what you wanted to hear (or atleast for the most of it) !

I just don't think I can ever get your rational or emotional assent (partially even), in any other form or manner, on this issue. Now whether that makes you arrogant, tone-deaf, or simply stubborn, I just cannot tell without knowing you any better.

But to show my cards, as long as people such as myself (who should be a good half of the BD pop) even gets the slightest whiff of an attempt to gain political upper hand through such efforts of yours (maybe yours is truly noble, but for many others, it surely is not), I will draw the line and fight you.

For I am a nationalist, and to me, being it strictly means the preservation (at any cost) of national boundary as it exists now, and living equally with all my compatriots already within it, regardless of their background.

Period, and end-of-discussion for me.

[Arnab]

Pundit, a few points:

You wrote what I wanted to hear, but does that mean you didn't really mean what you wrote?

BTW, I am not affiliated with any party whatsover. So, me gaining political upper hand by posting something related to 1971 on a cricket messageboard doesn't really make sense.

And I don't see the point behind your hulabaloo on national boundary. We are talking about the then Pakistani ruling faction's cold-blooded operation against us. The people involved in this so called "blueprint" are Pakistanis. They don't live inside our border. They live in Pakistan.

[Edited on 20-12-2003 by Arnab]