Muktijudho
Genocide Day Today is March 25, the day of the 1971 genocide
Own Correspondent, Dhaka, March 25: Today is March 25. At the end of this day in 1971, a terrible night came down in the life of the Bengali nation. At midnight, the barbaric Pakistani aggressors, armed with sophisticated weapons, attacked the unarmed Bengalis all over the country, including the capital Dhaka, with the abominable aim of silencing the voice of the Bengali nation forever according to the blueprint of their pre-planned operation 'Search Light'.
March 25 is observed as Genocide Day in Bangladesh. A symbolic "black out" will be observed across the country from 9 pm to 9:01 pm today (Friday), the day of the genocide, according to an official statement.
At this time no lighting can be done in all government, semi-government, autonomous and private buildings and installations. However, lighting will be available from the evening of March 26. KPIs and emergency installations will be exempted from the black-out.
'Operation Searchlight' was an armed operation carried out by the Pakistani military to wipe out the Bengali nation on the night of March 25, 1971. The instructions for the operation were prepared by two Pakistani military officers, Major General Khadim Hossain Raja and Major General Rao Farman Ali. No written documents were kept in this instruction manual. That whole order of genocide was conveyed verbally to the Formation Commander or the persons concerned.
Much later, in 2012, Major General Khadim Hossain Raja published an autobiography, 'A Stranger in My Own Country'. For the first time in his autobiography, published by Oxford University Press, some information about Operation Searchlight was published.
U.S. journalist Robert Payne wrote on the night of March 25, "About 7,000 people were killed that night, and 3,000 more were arrested. The incident had just started in Dhaka. The death toll continued to rise across East Pakistan. Houses, shops and jute started burning. Looting and destruction became their addiction. The corpses lying on the streets turned into food for crows and foxes. All of Bangladesh became a vulture-infested cremation ground."
The recognition of this genocide is also in the documents published by the government of Pakistan itself. The White Paper on the Crisis in East Pakistan published by the Pakistani government during the War of Liberation states: "More than 100,000 people were killed between March 1 and the night of March 25, 1971."
