Few years back I devoted 7 years of my life to this subject. I collected evidence from every source imaginable. Books, magazines, independent studies, research papers, Newspapers going back to 1940’s from all over the world and placed all of this along with pictures and videos from archives of television news, and associated press. Pictures and videos of executions of unarmed young men at Dhaka Stadium who were first tortured and then murdered to the thundering applause of the audience in broad day light and in presence of the international press.
I traveled to US and met author of “Blood and Tears” from Pakistan Mr. Qutubuddin Aziz, former MD of United News International and a distinguished journalist. He impressed with my interest in the subject gave me to republish or translate his book in to Urdu and other languages. I found a devoted Gentleman from Lahore who translated into Urdu and published it successfully from Lahore. Mr. Aziz Had interviewed nearly 5,000 returnees from East Pakistan and documented their stories of horrible crimes committed against them. In all people from 110 communities across Bangladesh.
I also met a wonderful lady Loraine Mirza in California, who visited Bangladesh and Pakistan several time in the 80’s and wrote a book titled “Internment Camps of Bangladesh”. She captured their stories like no one else has. This book is available in a public library in California. A third source was the white paper published by Government of Pakistan in August 1971, after her army had been accused of committed wholesale violence against the Bengalis.
Several years after my interest in this subject had waned I turned over my library of all resources in hardcopy to “Baydil Memorial Library” in Karachi and there I hope it still sits. The library also contains a copy of constitutional petition I authored and filed at the Supreme Court of Pakistan in 2010, in cooperation with Aligadh Muslim University Law school. A gentleman in Vancouver, BC, became interested in keeping the site alive and I hope he is still doing it.
One of the best and most authentic resource was the http://Newpaperarchive.com This site gives you access to millions of newspapers from 1706 to date in dozens of country but mostly in US. You can search by date, keyword, country or newspaper name. It costs just a few dollars a day. I also searched archives of New York Times and Washington Post for important snippets.
The reason why these atrocities aren’t well known is at first government of Pakistan hid them from the public as all news coming from East Pakistan was censored. GOP used rationale that if this news becomes public in West Pakistan it will be hard for us control public sentiment against the East and we are trying to keep the two wings together. After the war and defeat they still kept all this tightly controlled because they didn’t want Pakistanis and the world to know that they had turned their back on their own citizens when they needed Pakistan the most. In fact Pakistan stabbed the Urdu-speaking minority of East Pakistan in the back. Their betrayal of their own citizens is without a parallel in history. To me the villians of this story is the people of Pakistan. I used the word “People” quite advisedly, once west Pakistani forces and civilians were safely in the hands of Indian Army, neither the government nor the people of Pakistan showed any interest in them. Urdu-speaking minority of East Pakistan, are the people who gave their all including their lives for Pakistan.
Source: Quora Digest 24 August 2019
