Introduction

Bangladesh is one of the few countries in the world where there are two views on the independence of the
country.1 In 1971, the genocide that took place in Bangladesh and East Pakistan is considered to be one of
the worst genocide of the 20th century. But this genocide, despite the indiscriminate killings of a massive
number of innocent men, women, and children, was also very much target oriented. Despite this
significant horror, Bangali was able to overcome this tragedy and achieve independence in the same year.
Even after half a century old independence it haunts us like nightmare.

What is Genocide?
The world “Genocide” originated from the Greek word "genos," meaning "race" or
"group," with the Latin suffix "-cide," derived from "caedere," meaning "to kill".
The term was first used by Raphael Lemkin in his book "Axis Rule in Occupied Europe" in 1944, during
the Second World War. It is an act committed with the intent to destroy a part or whole of a national,
ethnic, racial, or religious group. These actions may involve the act of murdering individuals within the
targeted group, causing severe physical or psychological harm, purposefully creating living conditions
intended to lead to the group's physical obliteration, implementing measures aimed at stopping births
within the group, or forcibly relocating children from the group to another.2
Some of the cruelest genocides of the 20th century are The Armenian Genocide (1915-1923): Samantha
Power discusses the systematic killing of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire during World War I, The
Holocaust (1933-1945), the genocide of six million Jews and millions of others by the Nazis during the
Second World War, The Cambodian Genocide (1975-1979) Samantha Power explores the mass killings
and atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia, The Iraqi Kurdish Genocide (1988)
Saddam Hussein's campaign against the Kurdish population in Iraq, particularly the Anfal campaign, The
Bosnian Genocide (1992-1995) The book discusses the mass killings and ethnic cleansing in Bosnia-
Herzegovina during the Balkan wars.3

1
Sarmila Bose, 2005, Anatomy of Violence: Analysis of Civil War in East Pakistan in 1971,
2
Alexander Laban Hinton, 2016, The Crime of Genocide, Cambridge University Press
3
Samantha Power, 2002, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, Basic Books