history-of-dhaka

"In November 1969, Bengali versus non-Bengali riots broke out in Dhaka. The traditional trouble spots, Mirpur and Muhammadpur- predominantly Bihari areas-had been the scenes of police firing. Later, the army was called in and the police withdrawn. The army was made up entirely of West Pakistanis while the police was East Pakistani. This caused much resentment and distrust amongst the Bengali police hierarchy and bureaucracy, and made yet another dent in the facade of martial law. Curfew had to be imposed despite the martial law as local and non-local feelings were aroused."

"This riot was the tip of an iceberg, and the first manifestation of the latent antagonism between Bengalis and non-local Urdu-speaking people. This reached unprecedented heights during the 1971 War of Independence."

"খসরু, মন্টু ও সেলিমের ১৪ বছরের সশ্রম কারাদণ্ড হয়। শেখ মুজিব তাদের বাচানাের যথেষ্ট চেষ্টা করেছিলেন। তিনি এত দূর পর্যন্ত বলেছিলেন, যে তারিখে এ ঘটনা ঘটে সেই দিন অভিযুক্ত ব্যক্তিরা তাঁর সঙ্গে ছিলেন। এমনকি গভর্নর আহসানও তাদের সঙ্গে ছিলেন। তারা তখন বাঙালি-বিহারি দাঙ্গা উপদ্রুত ঢাকার মােহাম্মদপুর এলাকা সফর করছিলেন।"

"৬৯ সালে বিহারিরা আমগো মারছে। বোম মাইরা, আগুন লাগাইয়া দিত। আমরা বাঙালি পরিবার যে দিকে থাকতাম, ওই দিকে নির্যাতন করত। এখন যেইডা আসাদ এভিনিউ, ওইটা আইয়ূব এভিনিউ ছিল। ওইখান দিয়া পাকিস্তানি গাড়ি যাইত। আমরা পাকিস্তানিগো হারিকেন দিয়া সিগন্যাল দিতাম, আমগো বাঁচান। হ্যারা আমরা না বাঁচাইয়া, উল্টা আমগো দিকে গুলি করত। তখন আমগো তিনজন মারা গেছিল।"

"And the students at the university Asleep at night quite peacefully The soldiers came and shot them in their beds And terror took the dorm awakening shrieks of dread And silent frozen forms and pillows drenched in red Bangladesh, Bangladesh Bangladesh, Bangladesh When the sun sinks in the west Die a million people of the Bangladesh"

"Midnight, March 25, 1971: past the University, which was being shelled, the buddha led troops to Sheikh Mujib's lair. Students and lecturers came running out of hostels; they were greeted by bullets, and Merchurichrome stained the lawns . . ."

"That first night, army units also attacked the University of Dacca. Four American-built M-2 tanks shelled student dormitories at close range, killing many men and women students.13 Those students who survived until the morning were forced to dig mass graves for the dead and then themselves were lined up and shot."

"The news was confirmed at around 10.30 p.m. and I was live on air for hours. It was clear from the beginning that this attack was on the lines of 26/11... It was ironical that the ISIS struck on the same day Owaisi had declared to help its operatives in India."

"Sydney Schanberg of the New York Times was stuck at the Intercontinental Hotel, beside himself with frustration. On that night, he was jolted by explosions. The army corralled the foreign press. “They kept pushing us into the hotel,” he remembers. They ended up watching from the tenth floor of the Intercontinental Hotel. They could see flames from Dacca University, which was a mile and a half away, where, Schanberg says, the army seemed to be shooting artillery. The trapped reporters watched a Pakistani soldier on a jeep that had a mounted machine gun—equipment probably provided by the United States. He recalls, “They started shooting at students coming from the university, up the road about a mile. They were singing patriotic songs in Bengali. And then the army opened up. We couldn’t tell when they hit the ground if they were ducking or killed.”"

"In Old Dacca, an area the size of two-dozen city blocks had been razed by gunfire. Pakistani soldiers had reportedly destroyed a Bengali police barracks, pounding it with heavy weapons and killing many, and had stormed Dacca University, whose leafy, shaded campus is ordinarily a relatively quiet sanctuary from the city’s tumult. Many students and professors had backed the Awami League. Iqbal Hall had evidently been blasted by mortar fire. The inside of the hall, which had been rumored to be a weapons stockpile for the Bengali nationalists, was scorched; a corpse lay nearby. (An American witness later reported that a few students in Iqbal Hall had been armed, which enraged the troops, although a Pakistan army brigadier testified that his fellow soldiers faced no resistance and acted out of “revenge and anger.”) Some of the worst killing of civilians, according to students, took place at Jagannath Hall, the Hindu dormitory."

"At the end of the meeting, Kissinger looped back to the reports of a massacre at Dacca University. “Did they kill Professor Razak?” he asked. “He was one of my students.” A CIA official replied, “I think so. They killed a lot of people at the university.” Here was a moment when the abstractions of high policy and impersonal numbers—thirty thousand troops, seventy-five million people—might have melted away, replaced with the individual human face of a pupil from more innocent days. Henry Kissinger, seemingly referring to past Muslim rulers of India, replied, “They didn’t dominate 400 million Indians all those years by being gentle.”"

"The U.S. consulate gave detailed accounts of the killings at Dacca University, ordinarily a leafy, handsome enclave. At the wrecked campus, professors had been hauled from their homes to be gunned down. The provost of the Hindu dormitory, a respected scholar of English, was dragged out of his residence and shot in the neck. Blood listed six other faculty members “reliably reported killed by troops,” with several more possibly dead. One American who had visited the campus said that students had been “mowed down” in their rooms or as they fled, with a residence hall in flames and youths being machine-gunned. “At least two mass graves on campus,” Blood cabled. “Stench terrible.” There were 148 corpses in one of these mass graves, according to the workmen forced to dig them. An official in the Dacca consulate estimated that at least five hundred students had been killed in the first two days of the crackdown, almost none of them fighting back. Blood reckoned that the rumored toll of a thousand dead at the university was “exaggerated, although nothing these days is inconceivable.” After the massacre, he reported that an American eyewitness had seen an empty army truck arriving to get rid of a “tightly packed pile of approximately twenty five corpses,” the last of many such batches of human remains."

"It was the holy month of Ramazan, the auspicious day of Jumma. The Holey Artisan Bakery in the affluent Gulshan Thana area of Dhaka was teeming with foreign guests when five militants barged in, chanting ‘Allah Hu Akbar’. Dozens of people were taken hostages on gunpoint and asked to recite the verses of Quran. Those who could recite from memory were spared in an effort to only kill non-Muslims. According to eyewitnesses, the assailants clearly stated they would not harm Muslims. Those who did not fit their criteria were slain with sharp weapons. People across religions and nationalities were aghast alike. How could the minds of these educated young men from well-to-do backgrounds be poisoned to such an extent? What was the motive behind the attack? These questions have bothered me after every such incident. I have been covering terror incidents in India for some years now and the Bangladesh attack brought back all those unhappy memories. Bangladesh is too close a neighbour to ignore such an attack occurring there."

"Two days after the Dhaka attack, the Minister of Information & Broadcasting of Bangladesh, Hasanul Haq Inu, alleged that ISI was the mastermind of this conspiracy. The notorious spy agency is known to have fomented trouble in what was East Pakistan until 1971. The Pakistani authorities are especially miffed at the Bangladeshi government’s decision to bring pro-Pakistani war criminals to justice. From Osama Bin Laden to the recent killing of Taliban chief Mullah Mansoor Akhtar in a drone attack; it is no more a secret that Pakistan is the nursery of global terrorism. It has diverted money received from the US in the name of counter-insurgency to fund terrorists of its choice. Leave apart India, Pakistani connection is now found in almost every other terror strike across the world."

"The exiled Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen lambasted hardline Islamists on Twitter for the Bangladesh attack. ‘For humanity’s sake please do not say Islam is a religion of peace. Not anymore,’ stated one of her posts."