Bangladesh Must be Resolute in its Demand for Historical Redress from Pakistan
The call for justice encompasses repatriation of stranded Pakistanis, the equitable division of pre-1971 assets, and restitution of misappropriated cyclone aid—each a lingering scar on Bangladesh’s national conscience.
By Anwar A. Khan
More than five decades after the bloody birth of Bangladesh, the wounds of 1971 remain painfully unhealed. At the recent Foreign Secretary-level consultations held in Dhaka—after a fifteen-year diplomatic freeze—Bangladesh boldly confronted Pakistan with a moral reckoning long overdue: a demand for an unconditional apology for the genocide, rape, and systemic atrocities inflicted by its military during the Liberation War.
Foreign Secretary Md Jashim Uddin made clear that diplomatic niceties cannot substitute for historical accountability. The call for justice encompasses repatriation of stranded Pakistanis, the equitable division of pre-1971 assets, and restitution of misappropriated cyclone aid—each a lingering scar on Bangladesh’s national conscience.
Yet Pakistan’s response was lukewarm, offering vague commitments without acknowledging the crimes that shattered a nation’s soul. Worse, Dhaka’s welcome of Amna Baloch—Pakistan’s envoy—has stirred outrage, seen by many as a betrayal of the martyrs’ memory.
No future can be forged atop the graves of the unacknowledged. Bangladesh must stand firm: reconciliation requires truth, apology, and justice. Until then, memory will remain a battleground, and Pakistan, an unrepentant perpetrator. In the ebb and flow of diplomatic overtures, there occasionally emerges a moment so heavily laden with history that the very air feels burdened by the weight of unresolved grief. The recent Foreign Secretary-level consultations between Bangladesh and Pakistan, held in Dhaka on 17 April 2025—the first in fifteen years—was precisely such a moment. Beneath the courteous veneer of bilateral dialogue lay festering wounds left untreated since the harrowing Liberation War of 1971, a genocide that remains unacknowledged and unapologised for by the state of Pakistan.
These consultations, while lauded for reviving dormant channels of communication, brought forth a fundamental truth: for Bangladesh, no diplomatic reengagement can bear fruit unless rooted in justice, remembrance, and accountability. Foreign Secretary Md Jashim Uddin gave voice the nation’s unwavering position—Pakistan must extend an unreserved apology for the genocide, mass rape, and crimes against humanity perpetrated by its military during the 1971 war that claimed the lives of three million Bangladeshis and scarred millions more.
This demand is neither ceremonial nor rhetorical. It is a solemn call grounded in the memory of the brutal decimation of a people. It is a cry for historical redress, not as a matter of politics, but as a moral and civilisational imperative.
Unresolved Burdens of History
The Bangladeshi delegation placed several pressing issues on the diplomatic table—chief among them, the repatriation of over 300,000 stranded Pakistanis who remain in limbo on Bangladeshi soil, the equitable division of pre-1971 state assets amounting to USD 4.52 billion, and the restitution of misappropriated foreign aid, including approximately USD 200 million originally intended for cyclone victims in East Pakistan in 1970. These are not mere policy talking points—they are festering injustices with decades of human suffering attached to them. But no response was found from the Pakistani Foreign Secretary Amna Baloch. Unblushing! Very outrageous!!
Bangladesh Foreign Secretary Jashim Uddin’s words rang with clarity and moral gravity: “These are unresolved wounds of history that continue to affect the conscience and dignity of the Bangladesh’s people.” His insistence that Pakistan confront its blood-stained legacy is not a plea—it is a demand for human decency.
Pakistan’s Foreign Secretary, Amna Baloch, designedly evaded those very valid questions, offered only vague commitments to continued engagement. But the time for euphemisms and diplomatic dithering is long past. Bangladesh’s position is resolute: accountability is not optional. An apology is not a symbolic act—it is the minimal threshold of justice.
The atrocities of 1971 are not abstract figures—they are lived horrors etched into the memory of survivors and into the soil of Bangladesh. As a direct witness of 1971, I testify to the carnage. The Pakistani military, along with their abominable collaborators—chiefly Jamaat-e-Islami—conducted a systematic campaign of slaughter and desecration.
They murdered three million of our people and subjected more than three hundred thousand women to unspeakable sexual violence. The very essence of humanity was trampled beneath boots that carried the symbols of a perverted nationalism cloaked in religious hypocrisy. Chants of “Allahu Akbar” echoed through massacres, defiling the sanctity of faith and weaponising it against an unarmed population of Bangladesh in 1971 by the brutal Pakistani army. The bodies of the slain were denied even the dignity of burial, left instead to be consumed by carrion. These are not metaphors. This is the reality of what Bangladesh endured in 1971.
Historical Amnesia and Present-Day Betrayal
More insulting than Pakistan’s silence is the appeasement it continues to receive from elements within our own polity. The current administration under Mr. Yunus, in welcoming Amna Baloch to Bangladesh, commits not merely a diplomatic faux pas, but a betrayal of our martyrs and a slap to the memory of our national suffering.
How can a sovereign nation, born of such agony, extend the hand of hospitality to an unrepentant perpetrator? What calculus of power or pragmatism permits this desecration of collective memory? Mr. Yunus and his administration must answer: is reconciliation to be pursued at the cost of historical truth?
Pakistan’s persistent effort to divert attention by raising the Kashmir issue during these talks is not only inappropriate—it is grotesquely ironic, given its own refusal to acknowledge the bloodshed it inflicted in 1971.
The road to reconciliation cannot be paved with forgetfulness. As Bangladesh prepares to host Pakistan’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, Ishaq Dar, later this month, the message from Dhaka must remain uncompromisingly clear: no genuine partnership is possible until the past is confronted with sincerity.
The soul of Bangladesh demands justice—not in vengeance, but in the healing that only truth can bring. Until Pakistan acknowledges its crimes with humility and offers a formal, unconditional apology, it remains—morally and historically—an adversary, not a partner.
We, the generation of 1971, who walked through the fire, who bore arms for the birth of this nation, who mourn still for the fallen, will not forget. And we will not forgive until the blood-stained pages of our history are read aloud, confessed to, and repented for by those who wrote them in carnage.
Let the world know: Bangladesh does not seek enmity. It seeks justice. And justice, though delayed, must not be denied.
The author was a frontline freedom fighter of the 1971 Liberation War and an eyewitness to the events that shaped the birth of Bangladesh.
Views are personal and IAR neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.
