Balkan Tragedy: A Re-enactment of the 1971 Genocide in Bangladesh

I must commend Mr. Jamal Hasan`s for his excellent analysis in the article, ``Balkan Tragedy: A Re-enactment of the 1971 Genocide.`` The article says it all and doesn`t need my comments to make it any more explicit. But I do wish to comment on Reply #5 by Ras Siddiqui which, I believe, diverts our attention in the wrong direction.

I must commend Mr. Jamal Hasan`s for his excellent analysis in the article, ``Balkan Tragedy: A Re-enactment of the 1971 Genocide.`` The article says it all and doesn`t need my comments to make it any more explicit. But I do wish to comment on Reply #5 by Ras Siddiqui which, I believe, diverts our attention in the wrong direction.

I must commend Mr. Jamal Hasan`s for his excellent analysis in the article, ``Balkan Tragedy: A Re-enactment of the 1971 Genocide.`` The article says it all and doesn`t need my comments to make it any more explicit. But I do wish to comment on Reply #5 by Ras Siddiqui which, I believe, diverts our attention in the wrong direction.

Mr.Omar Mirza is Brigadier Z.A.Khan`s nephew.

To Sensible Pakistani and Bangladeshi writers:

I see we are derailed from the main issue from time to time. I appreciate OMAR1974 when he wrote in another thread to de-Ziaul Haqify the Pakistani military machine.

That is our point. From 1958 till today the Pakistani military establishment is highly controlled by the ghosts of Ayub, Yahya and Ziaul Haq clique.

It is not a case of Bangladeshi people vs. Pakistani people. Was there mob violence where non-Bengali innocent civilians got killed by Bengalis in 1971? Yes, there were. Was there instances of innocent Bengalis got killed by angry Urdu speaking mobs in 1971? Yes, there were many such cases. But one wrong act does not justify to do another wrong. We are talking about Pakistani army junta of 1971 which never represented the common man of Pakistan.

So we may blame the Pakistani army rulers of 1971 and their cohorts as we blame the military juntas of Chile, Guatemala, Argentina for human rights violation.

Unfortunately the ordinary citizens of former West Pakistan were kept in the dark about the magnitude of the Pak army atrocity in 1971. I thing the time is now ripe to get to the bottom of it and clear it once for all. Quite a few Pakistani writers discussed about the atrocity in Baluchistan engineered by the so-called ``Butcher of Baluchistan``, Lt. General Tikka Khan. The same Tikka Khan was instrumental in letting loose his army attack the Dacca University Professors` Houses on the black night of the 25th March, 1925. The Bangladeshi concerned citizens are ready to share notes with their Pakistani counterparts about the criminal acts of the ``Butcher of Baluchistan``. Is there any listener ready to give his/her 10 cents regarding the atrocity in Baluchistan?

Sincerely,

Mohammad Nawaz Khan

TO OMAR1974 #128

wich third state you are talking about. You say Junagadh, Hyderabad and a third state. Be more accurate in your details if you want to be taken more seriously.

Another thing, India`s annexation of Goa is completely justified as the Portugese failed to vacate Goa, long after colonialism had ended all over Asia. What do you think, we should let any one holding our land do so and let our people be subjects of a foreign power. Think over it.

As for Kashmir, I belong to the small monority of Indians who think, that Kashmir should have gone to Pakistan at partition, but that was 50 years back. After which Kashmiris were reconciled to their Indian identity and were almost into the mainstream, until the elections in 1988 were rigged and Pakistan sensing opportunity instigated the reactionary elements of the Kashmiris and stoked the insurgency, to later only add mercenaries from Taliban to the terrorists.

As if now, India will be committing suicide, if it conceded Kashmir to hate mongering and innately hostile state like you. So you are not going to get Kashmir on a platter, santch it if you can.

But remember, you need to take care of the foundation of your already moth eaten nation.If really want to venture even more in Kashmir, remember that you may evoke hostile reactio, which may prove to be the last blow.

Sanity lies in accepting the LOC as the actual border and developing better ties and understanding which will result in de facto unification of both Kashmirs, much to the relief of all the other hapless people of the subcontinent.

One last thing, if everything is to be decided by religion, be ready to accept the 120 million non Kashmiri muslims in India, along with the whole of Kashmir. Much as I hate to say this ( because I am a slef avowed secularist believing in the US way and also Indian way of separating state from religion), I cant help it, because you cleansed you country of virtaully all Hindus, on the basis of religion leaving a big chunk of your co religonist in India, who by the virtue of having

a common religion and also being your blood relations ( many have half their families in Pak)

are in a state of confusion about their loyalty to India and their enchantment of an Islamic country.

Think over these options. The choice is with you, whether you want yurself and us to live in peace or in a perennial state of conflict.

Regards,

Satyavadi

Exerpt from, The Way it was

More Bengali Atrocities

At Khagrachari another mass grave of the engineers brought from the Kaptai was discovered. This time there was a survivor, a fourteen year old boy who had been shot but survived by hiding in bushes, he told the story of how they had been

rounded up at Kaptai and brought up to Khagrachari.

Exerpt from, The Way it was

Bengali Atrocities

A patrol on the lake on the way to Mahalchari, found the bodies of some engineers and their family members who had been brought from the Kaptai Dam, they had been lined up on the bank of the lake, shot and their bodies left to rot.

Mass Graves, of non-Bengalis

Exerpt from, The way it was`

Who are the real war criminals?

To get to the ferry landing for the Raja Tridiv Roy’s residence one had to go some distance from the road which came from Chittagong along an un-metalled track through an area covered by shrubs. In the shrubs we found a mass grave where all

the non-Bengalis of Rangamati had been collected, killed and buried, later we were informed that this slaughter had been under the directions of the local administration.

Exerpt from `The Way it Was`

When Brigadier Iqbal Shafi resumed the command of 53 Brigade he had the commandos placed under his command. When I told him that I had been ordered to make a water-borne landing to secure Rangamati he asked me to leave a platoon in Chittagong. I left a platoon with him and moved the 2 and 3 commando elements to Kaptai Dam headworks. Just short of the dam we passed a place where about fifty bodies were lying beheaded, these were part of the non-Bengali staff of the dam and the generating station. The troops who had been carefree and bantering in their vehicles, became quiet and grim after they saw the ghastly scene.

A vivid discription of Bengali Ghaddari follows.

Bengalis were the real war criminals and traitors

They deserved fully to be shot. If we had to do it over agin, I would personally see to it myself.

The only good Bengali wearing a Pakistani army uniform in 90% of the cases in East Pakistan in 1971 was a dead Bengali. The truth is, the Pakistan army was too soft on them. You people have SOME NERVE talking about war crimes. Look at your own. Everything that was done was completely justifiable. I stand by Z.A Khan`s actions PROUDLY.

Omar Mirza, nephew of Z.A Khan

Exerpt From The Way it Was

Amongst the cantonments of East Pakistan the largest number of East Pakistani troops were located in Chittagong. Apparently Brigadier Mazumdar as the senior Bengali officer in East Pakistan was to command the Bengali forces in East

Pakistan but when he was called away to Dacca Major Zia ur Rehman, later President of Bangladesh, assumed the command of the Bengali troops. On the night 25/26 March, he woke up his commanding officer Lieutenant Colonel Janjua, took

him to the offices of 8 East Bengal in his night clothes, made him sit in the commanding officer’s chair and made the colonel’s batman shoot him dead. From this moment there was no turning back for Major Zia ur Rehman.

http://www.defencejournal.com/sept98/wayitwas1.htm

A piece of historical trivia

My great grandfather, Professor Abdus Sattar Kheiri was the first muslim to propose the creation of a seperate muslim state/homeland out of British India. He submitted a paper in this regard in French at the 2nd Socialist International in Stockholm, Sweden in 1917, at the conference which he attended. The 2 Kheiri brothers were the first to advocate the 2 nation theory. The official notes survive to this day. And a book he authored, `National States and National Minorities,` in 1947 (editor. M.Ashraf, published in Lahore) still exists in the N.Y public library collection. Forget Iqbal, he came much later (by some 13 years) to espouse. the 2 nation theory.

Thankfully, Prof. Kheiri`s great-grandson is more than sufficiently intellectually endowed with the gifts of his creator to counter nefarious Indian and Bengali propaganda that seeks in essence nothing less than to dispute the viability of this theory. And to rewrite history, by painting themselves as angels.

Re: Rishi’s Unprincipled stance and India, and most Indians’ unparalleled duplicity

I wasn’t in the mood to address this earlier, because I did not want to debate the issue of Kashmir and India’s behavior in the course of 1947-48, but I will say this much, that Rishi accorded importance in a much earlier post-riposte in this debate to the state of Kashmir acceding to India through lawful means, an instrument of secession. He also then proceeded to explicitly and implicitly defend the annexation by force of the princely states of Hyderabad, Junadgah and a third state to India in 1947. These states India justified on the basis of having an overwhelming Hindu majority in annexing. The annexation of Goa too in 1963 by force, was justified for these very reasons. Fine, I’m willing to accept that as a rationale if it is applied as the only basis for annexing territories by India (a Hindu majority). However, this is not the case at all because on this basis, using this reasoning Kashmir should have been part of Pakistan. Frankly I can only really say that this (defending legalisms, and completely abandoning them whenever it suits Rishi and India) is a most unprincipled stance, that only goes to reinforce my view that India adopts whatever conflicting principles suit it at a given time and seem to give it an advantage, to justify anything it does. Now either the accession of Kashmir can be justified as having taken place to India on the sole basis of the legal instrument that the maharajah of Kashmir signed upon his hasty departure from a state where he no longer enjoyed any authority and that therefore this accession is completely legally valid, since this method does not take into account the overwhelming religious majority of people residing in the state and therefore, Pakistan’s army should vacate the portion of the state that is under its administration, and Pakistan’s position is therefore completely morally bankrupt, which I am willing to agree to if Rishi concedes that LEGALITY is above all else. Then however, Rishi and India cannot justify the annexation of the 3 princely states in 1947 to India by force, or the annexation of Goa also by force in 1963. Take your choice of principles, and stick to them. You can’t have it both ways, that is to say; have your cake, and eat it too. Now, however if we agree to the principle that, ‘Might makes right’ (which has been the real basis of India`s foreign policy through out its existence as an Independent state, except that they don`t like being on the receiving end of force majure)in international relations, then perhaps Rishi can justify everything that India has done logically. However, then both he and his hypocritical country’s foreign policy (which was against the U.S in the Gulf war, and is against NATO bombing in Kosovo in 1999) would stand exposed for what it is. Morally bankrupt. That is India. That has always been India. The truth is that Jawaharlal Nehru was sentimentaly too attached to Kashmir, the state of his birth, to do what was right. My own great grandfather, a member of the Muslim League spent time with him during WWII as a political prisoner in a British camp in India, and used to play tennis with him I believe, Nehru liked ordering his favorite dishes from his cook at the time. We even had notes signed by Jawaharlal Pundit Nehru in our family for a long time. But his legacy has been of the unending violence created by the Kashmir conflict for so long, with no end in sight. All the lives lost to this day in Kashmir can be layed squarely at his doorstep.

Regarding the learned Bengali professor`s comments on the U.S court system which were brief, and his exposition on International law.

Dear Sir, I am afraid you are not familiar with the Rules of Civil Procedure (Federal), or the fact that Jamal Hasan need not be sued in Federal Court at all. I hope that when the time comes you all show an equal willingness to contribute to the, non-profit, `Jamal Hasan Legal Defense Fund,`

for which Mr.Jamal would be earnestly advised to starting establishing soon. Nor it appears dear Learned professor, with all due respect, are you entirely familiar with the state defamation laws

existing in the United States, or where the burden of persusion will lie if a case is ever brought against Jamal Hasan. Furthermore, you seem

somewhat unaware of the legal standard which applies in U.S Civil Courts (includes state court systems) in Civil trials for Z.A Khan to prove a case of libel.

I repeat, realistically it is highly unlikely that the International Tribunal at the Hague will have anything to do with the case against Jamal Hasan. I am glad that this debate has occurred, despite the wrongful allegations made against Z.A Khan for political/emotional reasons alone. Perhaps it is indeed time that you all petition your own government to take some action after 28 years, and that the Hamood-ur-Rehman Commission report be made public in Pakistan. I am confident Z.A Khan will stand exonerated. The idea of a `Truth Commission` is not a bad idea at all.

Re: Zunaid # 121

Interesting reading. Granted there are ample references to war crimes being committed, in 1971, but that still does not qualify as an indictment for charging the alleged quilty parties or holding them accountable. To prove the guilt or the complicity of Pakistani forces as being guilty of war requires positive prove beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Those allegations, in the books and newspapers which have cited the acts of Pakistani Army as being a case of genocide, needs to be re-checked and the people who wrote those articles etc. questioned to determine where and from whom they got their stories and if the stories can be independently verfied. This is not the end, but the begining of the process to determine if Pakistani Army did commit genocide in 1971. The real usefulness of those excerpts lies not in their afixing blame, but as a secondary source to determine avenues of further research and to collate further evidence, taking those excerpts and their citations as their point of origin.

Zunaid, I can understand yours and your fellow countrymens` passion to have justice served and in this matter I am in your court, but those excerpts are not a begining of the end to this process and furthermore, they merely hint towards the commision of the crime and they in themselves do not consitute a mea culpa for the Pakistani Army.

Re:KhaledSA #123

With all due respect, that convention, which you posted, merely defines the context of war crimes and in the case of Pakistani acts during 1971 war, the debate is not to define the context of the crime, but to charge those responsible with war crimes. The fact that there is an international treaty does not automatically translates into an indictment for war crimes. For the guilty to be proscecuted, it needs more than a treaty to establish their guilt; it requires that prosecuation fulfill its burden of proof and show, with clairity and hard facts, the nature of the crime without any mitigating doubts.

Yes, I would agree with you that there is enough circumtanical evidence to indict Pakistani military officers for having committed war crimes, but you can not prosecute them on the basis of circumtancial evidence. Under the ruberic of the treaty`s articles and how it defines war crimes, you have a case to proceed against the alleged guilty persons, but you still lack the convincing evidence to convict them. There is huge differernce between indicting someone for war crimes and procecuting them for such said crimes.

Just as I mentioned in my post to Zunaid, those excerpts amount to more than a probable cause suggesting a crime and you can indict a person on the basis of that, but you can not procecute a person for war crimes on the basis of a probable cause! War crimes have a very high bar of prosecutorial standards which needs to be meet before a person can be charged with war crimes. The reason there have been so few war crimes trials is, because of this fact. It is a highly difficult process and with an exceptionally unassiable burden of criteria to prove some responsible for war crimes.

This should not mean that it is beyond impossible, because it certainly is not. War crimes can be proven and those guilty of them can be punished, but it will take more than a few excerpts in some books and the verbatim reading of the convention on war crimes to convict someone of war crimes and punish them.

Ladies and gentlemen, in this case time is both on your side and against you! War crimes have no statute of limitations and that means you, those who want to prosecute Pakistani military personnel for war crimes, can slowly and methodically built your case; document your evidence and assemble your facts. On the other hand, those alleged to be guilty are advancing in years and may not have too much time to live. Hence, you are presented with a cruel choice; you can risk a speedy process and seek to indict those on the basis of what facts and evidence you have or take your time and risk those alleged to guilty dying and thus, escaping a final curtain call!

To be honest, your have a hard task before you with a difficult choice and I do not envy you your choices!