Declare Pakistan atrocities against Bengali Hindus in 1971 as genocide: US lawmaker

US Congressman Greg Landsman has introduced a resolution in the US House of Representatives seeking to recognise the atrocities committed by the Pakistani Army and its allies, Jamaat-e-Islami, against Bengali Hindus on March 25, 1971, as “war crimes and genocide”.

Landsman, a Democrat Congressman from Ohio, moved the resolution in the US House of Representatives on Friday, and it has been referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs. The resolution states that on the night of March 25, 1971, the Government of Pakistan imprisoned Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, and its military units, in conjunction with radical Islamist groups inspired by the ideology of Jamaat-e-Islami, began a general crackdown throughout East Pakistan code-named “Operation Searchlight” that involved widespread massacres of civilians.

It said that on March 28, 1971, United States Consul General in Dacca, Archer Blood, sent a telegram to Washington titled “Selective Genocide”, in which he wrote, “Moreover, with support of Pak military, non-Bengali Muslims are systematically attacking poor people’s quarters and murdering Bengalis and Hindus”.

Landsman noted that on April 6, 1971, in what became known as the “Blood Telegram”, Consul General Blood sent an objection to the official United States Government silence on the conflict, signed by 20 members of the Consulate General Dacca. “But we have chosen not to intervene, even morally, on the grounds that the Awami conflict, in which unfortunately the overworked term genocide is applicable, is purely an internal matter of a sovereign state,” the then diplomat said in the telegram.  The resolution moved by Landsman urges the House of Representatives to condemn the atrocities committed by the Armed Forces of Pakistan against the people of Bangladesh on March 25, 1971.

The resolution “recognizes that while the Pakistani Army and its Islamist allies indiscriminately mass-murdered ethnic Bengalis regardless of their religion and gender, killed their political leaders, intellectuals, professionals, and students, and forced tens of thousands of women to serve as their sex slaves.” “They specifically targeted the religious minority Hindus for extermination through mass slaughtering, gangrape, conversion, and forcible expulsion,” it added.

Noting that entire ethnic groups or religious communities are not responsible for the crimes committed by their members, the resolution calls on the President of the United States to recognise the atrocities committed against ethnic  Bengali Hindus by the Armed Forces of Pakistan during 1971 and their allies in the Jamaat-e-Islami as crimes against humanity, war crimes, and genocide.