Rep Greg Landsman introduced the resolution, which was referred to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.
More than five decades on, the genocide during the Liberation War in 1971 remains unrecognised. Photo: UNB
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More than five decades on, the genocide during the Liberation War in 1971 remains unrecognised. Photo: UNB
A resolution is calling on the US House of Representatives to formally recognise the mass atrocities committed against the people of Bangladesh in 1971 as genocide and urging President Donald Trump to declare them crimes against humanity.
Rep Greg Landsman introduced the resolution on Friday (20 March), which was referred to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, according to the US Congress website.
The measure condemns the actions of the Pakistani Armed Forces and their “radical Islamist” allies during Operation Searchlight, the military campaign launched on the night of 25 March 1971, which the resolution describes as involving “widespread massacres of civilians.”
Estimates of the death toll range from tens to hundreds of thousands, the resolution states, also citing accounts of more than 200,000 women subjected to sexual violence during the conflict.
The resolution draws heavily on contemporaneous US government documentation.
On 28 March 1971, US Consul General in Dhaka Archer Blood sent a telegram to Washington warning of targeted killings of both Bengalis and Hindus with the support of the Pakistani military.
Nine days later, in what became known as the “Blood Telegram,” Blood and 20 members of his diplomatic staff formally objected to the US government’s silence, stating that the term “genocide” applied to the conflict.
A subsequent telegram from Blood specifically called out the “naked, calculated and widespread selection of Hindus for special treatment…”
The resolution notes that Hindu minorities were singled out for extermination through mass killing, gang rape, forced conversion and expulsion, while Bengalis of all backgrounds, including political leaders, intellectuals and students, were targeted indiscriminately.
The measure also cites a 1971 Senate report by Senator Edward M Kennedy, which documented a “systematic campaign of terror” and noted that members of the Hindu community had been “systematically slaughtered” and in some places marked with yellow patches bearing the letter “H.”
In its operative clauses, the resolution calls on the president to formally recognise the atrocities against ethnic Bengali Hindus as genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, while also affirming that “entire ethnic groups or religious communities are not responsible for the crimes committed by their members.”
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