Editorial
The dark night of genocide
A supreme sacrifice writ in blood
Tonight we remember a night which came steeped in murder and mayhem forty one years ago in this land. On this night in March 1971, the Pakistan army launched Operation Searchlight to put an end to the democratic aspirations of the people of Bangladesh. Despite the rising demand for a transfer of power to the elected representatives of the people, despite the concerted civil disobedience movement launched by Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman at the beginning of the month in order for the state of Pakistan to transit peacefully to democracy following the general elections of three months earlier, the military junta led by General Yahya Khan opted to ride roughshod over popular aspirations through injecting fear into the heart of every Bangali. On the evening of March 25, Yahya Khan stole away to Rawalpindi, but not before he had issued the orders for a sweeping military operation.
On the night of March 25, 1971, the Pakistan army killed thousands of people in Dhaka. The brutality was unprecedented as academics, students, policemen, East Pakistan Rifles personnel and sleeping rickshaw pullers were put to the gun and the bayonet. The ferocity with which the Shaheed Minar and the Kali Mandir were destroyed in the early hours of what was to be a genocide over the next nine months has rarely been matched in the annals of modern history. Eminent academics, among whom were the venerable GC Dev and the scholar Jyotirmoy Guhathakurta, were shot. Students of Dhaka University were lined up, shot and then dumped into hastily dug mass graves. The home of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman came under assault and sometime after midnight the undisputed leader of the Bangali nation was taken into custody by the army, to be soon transported to what was then West Pakistan. Across the city, newspaper offices were put to the torch.
The action by the Pakistan army made things unambiguously clear for the people of this country. That a war had been imposed on them was no more in doubt. That they would need to wage a long twilight struggle to earn their political freedom as a nation was the truth which dawned on them even as the army went on brutalising lives.
This morning, in profound tribute, we recall the men and women who died at the hands of the Pakistan occupation army on March 25. They did not die in vain. It is their cause we must uphold today, all these years after the mediaeval barbarity let loose by the Pakistan army.
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