Fall of Dhaka: A debacle borne of self-censorship and lies

Western media has long upheld a biased narrative of the situation in East Pakistan


Azmat Ansari December 16, 2019

KARACHI: The East Pakistan debacle was prompted by a biased press. The series of grand lies that have been perpetuated through ceaseless repetition resulted in a biased and distorted vision among audiences in both the East and West. It is a sad story of self-imposed censorship by the western media.

The responsible media and investigative journalists could never see that it is physically impossible to carry out one million rapes in a span of two years by an army of 60,000. Even if we include rapes committed by Mukti Bahini and the Indian Army, the figure of one million is impossible to reach.

For almost 50 years, not a word was printed in the western press about the rapes committed by the Indian troops and the rebel militia. Thanks to some brave Bangladeshi investigators, we have come to know that both their hands are soiled.

The editors of Western newspapers and those working in TV channels never thought for a while that they were giving a false and concocted figure. But the story of self-censorship does not end here. The Western media was completely blind in seeing the worst imaginable kind of atrocities committed by Bengalis on non-Bengalis. Even this scribe who was a part of the whole story after a lapse of fifty years is shaky in telling the truth. Such is the power of propaganda and brainwashing. But the fear that people will not believe you should not stop one from stating facts.

Yahya Khan, who is blamed for massacring Bengalis was actually their greatest friend. It was he who ordered that no news of the atrocities of Bengalis on non-Bengalis will be printed. You can imagine my frustration when a press release I drafted which showed that several West Pakistanis were killed by Bengalis was stopped.

I was then on a two-month war correspondent’s course in Dacca working in the ISPR cell in the Eastern Command. I protested to my senior officer, insisting that if we impose a blackout on all atrocities of Bengalis, we would appear to be the culprits. The Western and the Indian media is ever-hungry to capitalise on every mistake we make. My senior said: “Whatever. These are orders of General Yahya Khan. Any news of the Bengali atrocity that trickles out would put the whole of Pakistan on fire. All Bengalis living in West Pakistan would be killed to a man.”

This order of ‘Do not fire, no matter what’ did not produce the desired effect. On the contrary, groups fed and funded by India became bolder. The head of a Pakistan Army major was cut off and paraded on the streets of Dinajpur.

Fall of Dhaka: The genocide debate that wasn’t

On many occasions the drivers and other security staff beseeched and implored “For God’s sake allow us to open fire,” but the officers always said ‘No’. Thus it was because of Yahya Khan that hundreds of lives were spared .

West Pakistani womenfolk often said ‘the army should wear bangles’. Some of them even sent sets of bangles to the GHQ. This rebuke was something Pakistani forces heard again and again, in Dinajpur and in the rest of East Pakistan. Constraint was entirely misunderstood and taken as a sign of weakness. The jawans and officers of the army could have killed in self-defence, but their restraint was not taken as an act of magnanimity.

West Pakistanis heaved a sigh of relief when Tikka Khan arrived. They knew that senseless killings of innocent people would stop. The killers on the other side who had shown the most horrendous kind of brutality towards people from West Pakistan had shut off all doors for negotiation. Tikka Khan’s frame of mind seems to suggest that he was thinking: “The killers have exceeded all limits. I will pay them in the same coin.”

The Western press and media were thoroughly one-sided and compromised. Despite trumpeting the freedom of the press, the West’s own media imposed strong self-censorship. I searched hard on the internet for any story on the brutality in Dinajpur and elsewhere, but I did not find much.

Apparently, it is enlightening when one side commits rape and murder, but if the victims retaliate, it is brutality in the eyes of the West. No story about constraint and the extreme sacrifices that this constraint gave birth to figured ever in the Western press.

The situation of the time is depicted by a Pakistani newspaper : “Between January and April 1971 there was no State writ in East Pakistan. Massive massacre of non-Bengali population was committed by criminal gangs all over the country. Women were molested and raped before being killed. Bayonet strength of Pakistan Army was around 12,000 in March 1971 and swelled to 33,000 by the time surrender took place.”

(The writer is a former journalist and broadcaster who served as a military spokesman during the 1971 crisis)

 

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