Recognizing the Bangladesh Genocide of 1971 and protection of religious minorities in Bangladesh.

Recognizing the Bangladesh Genocide of 1971 and protection of religious minorities in Bangladesh.

Whereas, in August 1947, British rule in India ended, creating the 2 independent sovereign countries of India and Pakistan, the latter of which included the noncontiguous regions of West Pakistan (Pakistan) and East Pakistan (Bangladesh), then known as East Bengal;

Whereas the Pakistani ruling elite was comprised overwhelmingly of Punjabi West Pakistanis who concentrated the country’s resources and development efforts in West Pakistan;

Whereas West Pakistani officials harbored well-documented anti-Bengali sentiment, considering Bengalis to be a lesser people;

Whereas, during national elections held in 1970, the Awami League, led by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, won a majority in Parliament on a platform of autonomy for East Pakistan;

Whereas negotiations to form a government among the Pakistani President, General Agha Muhammad Yahya Khan, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, leader of the Pakistan People’s Party, and Sheikh Mujibur Rahman failed;

Whereas, on the night of March 25, 1971, the Government of Pakistan imprisoned Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, and Pakistani 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;

Whereas, while estimates of the number of those killed in these atrocities vary, the most reliable are in the range of tens to hundreds of thousands of people killed;

Whereas over 200,000 women were raped and, due to stigma, the full number will likely never be known, nor the victims remembered;

Whereas, in a column on June 13, 1971, for the Sunday Times, titled “Genocide”, journalist Anthony Mascarenhas wrote, “When the army units fanned out in Dacca on the evening of March 25 many of them carried lists of people to be liquidated”;

Whereas, 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”;

Whereas, 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 United States diplomatic staff of Consulate General Dacca, which reads in part, “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 internal matter of a sovereign state. Private Americans have expressed disgust” and in which objection Blood concurred;

Whereas, on April 8, 1971, Consul General Blood sent another telegram which states in part, “ ‘Genocide’ applies fully to [this] naked, calculated and widespread selection of Hindus for special treatment . . .”;

Whereas Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee To Investigate Problems Connected with Refugees and Escapees, published a report to the Committee on November 1, 1971, which states “Nothing is more clear, or more easily documented, than the systematic campaign of terror—and its genocidal consequences—launched by the Pakistan army on the night of March 25th. Field reports to the U.S. Government, countless eye-witness journalistic accounts, reports of international agencies such as the World Bank, and additional information available to the Subcommittee document the continuing reign of terror which grips East Bengal. Hardest hit have been members of the Hindu community who have been robbed of their lands and shops, systematically slaughtered, and, in some places, painted with yellow patches marked ‘H’. All of this has been officially sanctioned, ordered, and implemented under martial law from Islamabad”;

Whereas, in a legal study published in 1972 titled “The Events in East Pakistan”, the Secretariat of the International Commission of Jurists states “There is overwhelming evidence that Hindus were slaughtered, and their houses and villages destroyed simply because they were Hindus”;

Whereas the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide declares that genocide “means any of the following acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group”; and

Whereas it is of the utmost importance to recall and document crimes against humanity, war crimes, and genocide for the sake of posterity, to preserve the memory of the victims, and to deter future atrocities: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved,