পাতা:বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্র (তৃতীয় খণ্ড).pdf/৮৩৫

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বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্রঃ তৃতীয় পত্র

autonomy for the long-exploited East Pakistanis, and the Pakistan army ruthlessly moved to crush the Bengali movement.

Finally, David Loshak analyses in SUNDAY TELEGRAPH of April 4, the Pakistan army elite's character and design to crush democracy. “These men never believed in the democratic process that Yahya set in motion. They did hot" believe in it because they were not democrats by nature, by upbringing or by belief, but autocratic, patriarchal and partician. Contemptuous of the mob, more of the 18th century than the 20th, they realized that their whole future as the dominant group in Pakistan was threatened by a peaceful transition to civilian Government like the one which only a month ago, seemed (but never was) so near. To them, the precisely phased programme that President Yahya Khan and his civilian Cabinet devised for the transfer of power to a elected assembly, was never more than a cloak for the realities of the power structure in Pakistan. They were counting on December's election results. This would have provided the most legitimate excuse for prolonging military rule. Instead it gave absolute majority to one man and one party the East Wing leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and his Awami League. From that day, December 7, the Generals and Colonels knew what they had to do. It was then simple a matter of waiting for an excuse.........By then the army had a carefully laid contingency plan. Its intelligence network had thoroughly infiltrated the Awami League. Clearly, the final preparation must have been in train, under the direct personal guidance of Lt. Gen. Tikka Khan, President Yahya's new Martial Law Administrator, even as the President was having the last rounds of constitutional talks with Sheikh Mujib."

"Even as he conferred with Mujib. President Yahya must have known of the preparation that the army was taking. It seems hard, on the evidence of the sequence of events, to acquit the President of charges of the deepest treachery."

GENOCIDE

 An overwhelming majority of the world is more than convinced today that Gen. Yahya Khan and his Government is guilty of genocide. His occupation Army's mission has been “to kill and burn every Bengali." Plans were drawn out and executed in meticulous detail to destroy a nation and a people. Article II of the Genocide Convention defines this crime as “acts committed with intent to destroy in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group by killing or causing serious bodily or mental harm to the members of the group......." Today in the occupied areas anyone who asserts that he is a Bengali will be shot out of hand by the Punjabi army and equally anyone who owns to being a Hindu will be eliminated. The extent of atrocities that has been committed has no paralled in modern history.

 How this operation of deliberate genocide started was written by almost all the foreign correspondents who were present in Dacca till they Were expelled on march 26 and the others who have been to Bangladesh after the military launched its attack. This is how, according to them, it all began:

 Henry Bradsher in WASHINGTON STAR said “the Army seized control of Dacca on Thursday night and gunfire including heavy artillery was heard till late on Friday morning. Huge fires burnt in the direction of the Dacca University."