Dhaka, Mar 20: State minister for foreign affairs Md Shahriar Alam on Monday said that the countries which are acknowledging genocide in Myanmar must also recognise the genocide that Pakistani military had committed in Bangladesh in 1971.
‘We are immediately raising this with those countries,’ he told reporters after a seminar at Foreign Service Academy while talking about the heinous attack of Pakistani military on the unarmed civilians during the nine months of Bangladesh Liberation War.
The seminar titled Recognition of Bangladesh Genocide 1971 was held at Foreign Service Academy.
The state minister said that since there was already a Genocide Day in the UN the world body unfortunately would not recognise 1971 genocide as the UN Genocide Day.
Describing the issue as a complex one, Shahriar hoped that Bangladesh would get the recognition from the people of the majority countries if it might not be possible to get recognition from those countries officially.
The government intensified its efforts towards attaining UN recognition for the genocide committed in Bangladesh in 1971 which is one of the world’s worst such crimes.
The Awami League government has decided to observe the 25th March as Genocide Day and the Cabinet approved a proposal to observe the March 25 as a Genocide Day.
The proposal was made on March 20, 2017. Earlier, on March 11 of the same year, parliament unanimously passed a proposal to observe the day.
The issue of attaining UN recognition was as a priority of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs since it came up in parliament in March 2017.
The government’s effort is not limited to attaining the UN recognition as the UN declared December 9 as International Day of Commemoration and Dignity of the Victims of the Crime of Genocide and of the Prevention of this Crime.
The government wants recognition from the maximum number of countries that will condemn the genocide.
The issue of the 1971 genocide in Bangladesh was widely discussed among the international community and in media during Liberation War but quickly the issue of genocide became a forgotten one.
The observance of March 25 as Genocide Day will be marked as nation’s eternal memorial to the sacrifice of the martyrs in the War of Liberation and considered as a testimony of the gruesome massacre committed by the Pakistani occupation forces.
On March 25 in 1971, then-Pakistani military dictator Yahya Khan went to Pakistan secretly giving the order of genocide in the name of Operation Search Light in Bangladesh.
From that night members of the Pakistani army and their local collaborators — Rajakar, Al-Badar and Al-Shams forces — killed 3 million people all over the country in the next 9 months.
