government has been carrying on cold-blooded genocide in Bangladesh. By all accounts and evidence the Pakistani troops have unleashed a de facto total war against the entire population of Bangladesh. They are engaged in extensive aerial bombing and strafing on towns and villages. They are using sophisticated mass-killing weapons like tanks, cannon, mortars and machine-guns. They have also used incendiary bombs and reportedly even Napalm. The government of Pakistan has systematically killed a large section of the Bengalee intellectuals and leaders of public opinion. They have deliberately killed teachers and students in large numbers, and they are killing all able-bodied Bangalees in a systematic way. An orgy of mass killing is on.
The government of Pakistan has blatantly violated the most precious principles of international law. It has violated, inter alia, the Preamble and articles 1,55 and 56 the U N. Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Right, the International Covenant on civil and Political rights, 1966, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, 1966 Article 23(g) of the Hague Regulations, 1907, Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. 1949, the Doctrine of Immunity of Non-Combatants from Belligerent attacks and the Genocide Convention, 1948.
A systematic pattern of physical and psychological destruction became apparent even during the first night of fighting on March 25, 1971. It was soon clear that certain groups had been selected to be the victims of completely unrestrained brutality. These included students and teachers. At least nine of the top academicians of the Dacca University were shot dead by the Pakistani troops in course of the midnight massacre of March 25. Many others were murdered in the next few days. Twenty academicians of the University were lined up against the wall inside the university campus on March 28 and shot dead. Many distinguished teachers, poet’s novelists, physicians and lawyers were killed by the army firing squads at Dacca, Khulna. Jessore, Rajshahi, Pabna, Chittagong and Rangpur. Even young school children were not spared. Students of St. Francis Xavir’s School in Jessore were machine-gunned by the troops.
Many University buildings at Dacca were completely destroyed. Every room in the three-storied Iqbal Hall was ransacked after the people inside had been done to death, Similar attacks took place at Jagannath Hall, Salimullah Hall and the residence halls of the Dacca Medical College. Every individual was killed in these places.
About fifty girl students residing in the Rokeya Hall of the Dacca University jumped to their death when Pakistan troops attacked the building. Most of the other girl students were brutally treated and forcibly taken away by the troops to the cantonment. Shaheed Minar, erected in memory of the martyrs of the language movement, was totally destroyed. In the apartments of the faculty staff children were shot dead in their beds.
John Rhode, an American Aid worker was in Dacca until recently and witnessed the distinction caused by the Pakistani troops there. In a letter released by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee of the U.S.A., Rhode described how student dormitories of the Dacca University had been shelled by army tanks and all the residents slaughtered. He spoke of “the planned killing of much of the intellectual community including a majority of the professors at Dacca University.” In his opinion m “the law of the jungle
