Bangladesh on Thursday observed Genocide Day recalling the beginning of the genocide carried out by the Pakistan army against the Bengalis on the night of March 25, 1971 and afterwards during the nine-month-long War of Independence.
Many parts of the country went dark for one minute from 9:00pm as a symbolic protest against the genocide and to pay tribute to the martyrs of 1971 war.
The Pakistan military launched their infamous ‘Operation Searchlight’ on March 25, 1971 killing several thousand freedom-loving Bengalis that night alone.
Three million people in the subsequent nine-month liberation war were savagely and systematically killed with the help of local collaborators.
As part of the crackdown, tanks rolled out of Dhaka cantonment and a sleeping city woke up to the rattles of heavy weapon fires as Pakistani troops attacked Dhaka University halls, the headquarters of the then East Pakistan Rifles, now Border Guard Bangladesh, at Rajarbagh Police Lines and the Old Town of Dhaka killing several thousand unarmed Bengalis.
People tried to resist the occupation army barricading streets and felling trees while members of East Pakistan Rifles and police put up a brave fight with their outmoded 303 rifles against heavily armed Pakistani troops.
At midnight, the army raided the residential quarters of Dhaka University teachers and the halls and butchered many teachers and students.
Newspaper offices in Dhaka, notably Dainik Ittefaq, Sangbad and the People, were set ablaze for espousing the cause of the Bengalis.
In simultaneous attacks that night many people were killed and injured in the port city of Chattogram and at places across the country.
The crackdown set off the nine-month-long liberation war led by the Mujibnagar government in exile which ended with the emergence of independent Bangladesh on December 16, 1971.
During the war, Pakistani army and their local collaborators also violated more than two lakh women and about one crore people were forced to leave the country.
The government on March 21, 2017 declared March 25 as Genocide Day following a parliamentary resolution adopted on March 11, 2017.
