BANGALADESH INTELLECTUALS WERE KILLED
BY PAKISTAN ARMY DECEMBER 14,1971
The truth is that Pakistanis had planned to kill intellectuals all over the country from the very beginning, so that we could never stand up as a nation. The evidence for that is that on March 25, when they attacked Dhaka University first'
Martyred Educator (Without university) and Lawyer's list[6][edit source]
| District and Division | Educator | Lawyer's | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Primary | Secondary | College | ||
| Dhaka District | 37 | 8 | 10 | 6 |
| Faridpur District | 27 | 12 | 4 | 3 |
| Tangail District | 20 | 7 | 2 | |
| Mymensingh District | 46 | 28 | 1 | 2 |
| Dhaka Division | 130 | 55 | 17 | 11 |
| Chittagong | 39 | 16 | 7 | 1 |
| Chittagong Hill Tracts | 9 | 4 | 1 | 1 |
| Sylhet District | 19 | 7 | 2 | |
| Comilla District | 45 | 33 | 1 | 4 |
| Noakhali District | 26 | 13 | 4 | 2 |
| Chittagonj Division | 138 | 73 | 13 | 10 |
| Khulna District | 48 | 15 | 2 | 2 |
| Jessore District | 55 | 31 | 5 | 4 |
| Barishal District | 50 | 21 | 4 | |
| Patuakhali District | 3 | 1 | ||
| Kushtia District | 28 | 13 | 4 | |
| Khulna Division | 184 | 81 | 15 | 6 |
| Rajshahi District | 39 | 8 | 3 | 5 |
| Rangpur District | 41 | 22 | 9 | 4 |
| Dinajpur District | 50 | 10 | 1 | 2 |
| Bogra District | 14 | 12 | 2 | |
| Pabna District | 43 | 9 | 1 | 2 |
| Rajshahi Division | 187 | 61 | 14 | 15 |
| Bangladesh | 639 | 270 | 59 | 41 |
| Martyred Educator (without university) total = 968 | ||||
| Martyred University teacher total = 21 | ||||
| Martyred Educator total = 989 | ||||
References[edit source]
Confusion persists over the number of intellectuals who were murdered during the final days of the country’s struggle for freedom in late 1971, despite repeated demands for closure by the families of those killed.
From December 12-14, only days before the creation of Bangladesh, the assault on the pro-liberation intellectuals intensified when hundreds of professors, journalists, doctors, artists, engineers, and writers were picked up in Dhaka by al-Badr men and the Pakistani Army.
Not long after the war ended on December 16, a mass grave of the intellectuals was discovered in Rayerbazar, Mohammadpur.
Almost half a century later, the government is stalling on a past promise to provide a final list of martyred intellectuals, while independent researchers are warning that the window of time left in which to preserve this part of the country’s history is narrowing by the day.
“Forty-six years have gone by (and) within a few years you will not find anyone who can help us create this list,” Liberation War researcher and history professor Muntasir Mamun said.
Asked whether Bangali bureaucrats were deliberately targeted by Pakistan, Prof Muntasir said many of them had run away by December 1971.
“The truth is that Pakistanis had planned to kill intellectuals all over the country from the very beginning, so that we could never stand up as a nation. The evidence for that is that on March 25, when they attacked Dhaka University first,” he said.
On December 18, 1971, two days after the war was won, famous filmmaker Zahir Raihan was made convener of Buddhijibi Nidhan Tathyanusandhan Committee, a 17-member group tasked with investigating the killings.
The committee was examining a list compiled by Major General Rao Farman Ali, who left behind the list in his diary at the governor’s house.
Unfortunately, Zahir Raihan himself disappeared on January 30, 1972, while trying to locate his brother, the renowned writer Shahidullah Kaiser, who was picked up along with most of the intellectuals on December 14, 1971.
After Zahir Raihan’s disappearance, the work of the committee was disrupted by several coups and political instability.
All this has left the determination of the actual number of disappeared intellectuals in a state of disarray.
Conflicting figures
Liberation war researchers say the making the list of martyred intellectuals is a slow and arduous process and that establishing the exact number could be difficult, as contrasting figures are quoted by different sources.
In a statement on December 20, 1971, a spokesman from the Provisional Government of Bangladesh said 360 intellectuals were killed before the Pakistan Army surrendered on December 16.
Another source of the numbers is a documentary made by ASM Shamsul Arefin called “Bangladesh” that said that according to a publication of the government in 1972, the Pakistani occupation forces and their collaborators had killed 1,109 intellectuals.
Among them were 21 university teachers; 637 primary, 270 secondary and 59 college teachers; 50 physicians; 41 lawyers; 16 composers, filmmakers and cultural personalities; and 13 journalists.
A biographical encyclopedia of martyred intellectuals by the Bangla Academy “Shaheed Buddhijibi Koshgrantha” put the number at 232, but said the list was “neither complete nor comprehensive”.
Banglapedia, the national encyclopedia of Bangladesh published by the Asiatic Society in 2003, said 1,111 intellectuals were killed during the Liberation War in 19 districts.
However, Liberation War researchers argue that the number of the martyred intellectuals Could be over 10 times higher.
The list made by Buddhijibi Nidhan Tathya Anusandhan Committee contained 20,000 names recorded from the national daily newspapers of the time.
According to the committee’s report, there are more than 5,000 killing sites in the country, of which 2,000 can be memorialised while the others have been taken over by construction.
Families await closure
MA Halim Badshah saw exactly what happened on December 14, 1971. He lives in Mohammadpur and told the Dhaka Tribune that days after the killings, family members of the intellectuals flooded the mass grave trying to locate their loved ones.
Some were able to identify their family members while others took the wrong body home to be buried.
Halim recalled an elderly man who thought he had found his son, who went missing on December 9, but days later realized it was not him. He buried the body anyway, because it lay unclaimed for days.
Halim recalls that the elderly man religiously visited the site of the mass grave every year since 1972 – long before the Martyred Intellectuals Memorial was built. He was last seen in 2009.
Many other family members of those killed who are yet to get any form of closure come to the memorial and light candles on the grounds next to a pond.
Government list overdue
Researchers say they have not seen a comprehensive list of martyred intellectuals, even though one promised by the government is over three years overdue.
In a statement to parliament on February 6, 2014, Liberation War Affairs Minister AKM Mozammel Huq said the complete list would be published by June 2014. The list is yet to be completed and sources at the ministry sources said the compiling of the list “will take a lot longer”.
Officials at the ministry blamed the lack of documents for the delay. They also blamed the Ministry of Information for not fully cooperating with their efforts.
Human rights activist and lawyer Sultana Kamal said civil society members and Liberation War researchers have been asking the government for an official list for a long time, but to no avail.
She suggested the government instruct upazila level officials to confirm how many intellectuals were killed during the time to fully understand the numbers. She also suggested the Ministry of Liberation War Affairs take a census in the upazilas.
Meanwhile, Mozammel said his ministry has not yet received the information sought from all the districts.
The minister said he has only received information from eight to nine districts and is speaking to other district administrators.
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