"Denial is the final phase of genocide"
In regard to the current disturbing discussion about the genocide committed by the Pakistani army and its allies during the liberation war of 1971, I would like to add the following: the Oxford English Dictionary's definition of genocide is "the deliberate extermination of a race of people". This is exactly what happened in 1971 in the then East Pakistan. It is time that the Bangladeshi government and the UN considered taking action against the architects of this genocide.
According Genocide Watch, the number of dead in Bangladesh (that time East Pakistan) in 1971 during the War of Liberation, was almost certainly well into seven figures. It was one of the worst genocides of the World War II era, outstripping Rwanda (800,000 killed) and surpassing even Indonesia (1 million to 1.5 million killed in 1965-66). There is no doubt that the mass killing in Bangladesh was among the most carefully and centrally planned of modern genocides. A cabal of five Pakistani generals orchestrated the events: President Yahya Khan, General Tikka Khan, chief of staff General Pirzada, security chief General Umar Khan, and intelligence chief General Akbar Khan. The U.S. government, long supportive of military rule in Pakistan, supplied some $3.8 million in military equipment to the dictatorship after the onset of the genocide.
Bengali women were targeted for gender-selective atrocities and abuses, notably gang sexual assault and rape/murder, from the earliest days of the Pakistani genocide. Indeed, despite (and in part because of) the overwhelming targeting of males for mass murder, it is for the systematic brutalisation of women that the "Rape of Bangladesh" is best known to western observers. Denial of these facts is as much a crime as committing them.
Let us remember the words of the historian R.G. Hovannisian, "Denial is the final phase of genocide"
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