The International Day of Commemoration and Dignity of the Victims of the Crime of Genocide and of the Prevention of this Crime is observed annually on December 9.
"Genocide is the most heinous of crimes, encompassing all it touches in a tsunami of hate and destruction. It is an assault on our most fundamental shared values," said Antonio Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations in his message today. While most remember Holocaust, the Second World War, Rawanda and the former Yugoslavia, the genocide committed by Pakistan Army in erstwhile East Pakistan – the present-day Bangladesh – should never be forgotten.
The pain will remain there forever,” Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said when Pakistan High Commissioner to Dhaka Imran Ahmed Siddiqui met her last week. "The pain and trauma inflicted on us in 1971 motivate us to seek an end to genocide anywhere and demand justice for the victims of this heinous crime,” Hasina said in her message on Wednesday.
Slain Bengalis in front of Jessore City College, a sign of Pakistani atrocity during the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War (Courtesy: Muktijuddho e-Archive/S M Shafi)It was on March 25, 1971 that the Pakistani occupational forces started its 'Operation Searchlight', unleashing brutal mass killings on the innocent civilian population to deny the Bengali nation their legitimate demand for self-determination and annihilate their ethnopolitical identity.
The 267-day war of liberation against Pakistan witnessed a massive human death toll. "Bangladeshi authorities claim that 3 million people were killed… It was one of the worst genocides of the World War-II era, outstripping Rwanda (800,000 killed) and probably surpassing even Indonesia (1 million to 1.5 million killed in 1965-66)," says Genocide Bangladesh, an online archive of chronology of events, documentations, audio, video, images, media reports and eyewitness accounts of the 1971 Genocide in Bangladesh.
India too paid homage to the victims of Pakistani atrocities. "Let’s pay homage to 3 million killed & 200,000 or more women raped in erstwhile East Pakistan by Pakistan army & religious militias in 1971 in most horrific episode in human history," tweeted T S Tirumurti, India's Permanent Representative of India to the United Nations at New York. That was 1971. In 2020, the Islamic republic of Pakistan continues to destroy the minorities on its soil.
The bloodbath and the genocide taking place in Balochistan is highlighted every day by international agencies. The hate campaigns and genocidal operations carried by the Pakistani deep state have claimed thousands of lives from Gilgit to Gwadar.
Meanwhile, the UN agencies have also taken to task the Chinese government which is perpetrating genocide against the Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang. Last year, as many as 22 countries at the United Nations Human Rights Commission issued a joint statement, urging China to end its mass arbitrary detentions and related violations against Muslims in the Xinjiang region. Genocide and atrocity prevention organizations have called on governments to appoint a UN Commission of Inquiry to investigate the abuses, crimes against humanity and genocide taking place against Uyghurs.
