Washington: Two prominent American legislators have presented a resolution in the House of Representatives urging the US President to recognise the genocide of Hindus and ethnic Bengalis by the Pakistani military in 1971. On Friday, Indian-American Congressmen Ro Khanna and Seve Chabot submitted a resolution in the US House of Representatives that, among other things, calls on the Pakistani government to apologise to the people of Bangladesh for its involvement in such a massacre.
‘The remembrance of the millions who were massacred must not be lost to time. Recognizing the genocide enriches the historical record, educates our fellow Americans, and sends a message to potential offenders that such atrocities will not be accepted or forgotten ‘,Chabot, a Republican, stated in a tweet. ‘It’s important to not overlook the 1971 Genocide in Bangladesh. Ro Khanna and I submitted legislation to acknowledge that the widespread atrocities committed against Bengalis and Hindus in particular constituted a genocide with the assistance of my Hindu neighbours in Ohio’s First District’, Chabot added.
Khanna, a Democrat and US Representative from California’s 17th congressional district, tweeted that he and Chabot introduced the first resolution honouring the 1971 Bengali Genocide, one of the most forgotten genocides of ‘our’ time in which millions of ethnic Bengalis and Hindus were killed or displaced. Genocide happened. In what is now Bangladesh and what was then East Pakistan, millions of people perished. Hindus made up almost 80% of those who died, according to Chabot, a US Representative for Ohio’s 1st congressional district.
‘And it was a genocide, in my opinion, exactly like earlier genocides like the Holocaust. There have also been additional incidents, like this one, which hasn’t actually been formally proclaimed by definition yet. And we are now working on this’,he said. The Bangladeshi community has applauded the resolution. After 51 years of hopelessness, Saleem Reza Noor, whose relatives were brutally killed by armed Islamists in 1971, expressed happiness. ‘The US Congress is now acknowledging our atrocity’, Noor stated.
He was happy to see Democrats and Republicans working together to introduce a historic resolution that might alter the geopolitics of the Indo-Pacific, Central Asia, and South Asia. ‘ On this 51st anniversary of Bangladesh’s independence, we hope that millions of people in Bangladesh who were systematically eliminated by the Pakistani army and their allies in 1971 will be formally memorialised,’ said Priya Saha, executive director of the Human Rights Congress for Bangladesh Minorities (HRCBM).
Aroma Dutta, a member of parliament from the Hindu minority in Bangladesh, whose grandpa and uncle were assassinated by the Pakistani Armed Forces, said: ‘On March 29, 1971, the ruthless Pakistani Army abducted my grandfather Dhirendra Nath Datta (85 years old) and his son Dilip Datta (40 Years)’.
They were transferred to the Mainamati Cantonment in Cumilla, where they were severely tortured for almost two weeks before being killed. Their lifeless remains were then dumped into a ditch and were never discovered. They still lie in a mass grave, she claimed. She remarked, ‘I want the perpetrators to be punished for killing innocent people, such the elderly, young women, and children’.
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