DHAKA: Here are some key points about Bangladesh's 1971 independence war:
• In 1947, when colonial power Britain withdrew from the subcontinent, modern-day Bangladesh was known as East Pakistan, geographically separated from West Pakistan but governed from Islamabad.
• The 1971 war began after thousands of people were killed on the night of March 25 when Pakistani troops launched Operation Searchlight, a campaign intended to deter Bangladeshis from seeking independence.
• The war ended on December 16 after India invaded the country and helped vanquish Pakistani forces.
• The Dhaka government says three million people were killed and more than 200,000 women were raped during the conflict. Independent researchers put the death toll between 300,000 and 500,000.
• More than 90,000 Pakistani troops surrendered at the end of the war. They included 195 officers accused of most of the war atrocities. They were sent back home by 1974 following an Indo-Pakistani agreement and were never prosecuted.
• Bangladeshi Islamic parties including Jamaat opposed secession from Pakistan. Its activists formed the core of the pro-Pakistani militias that took part in mass killings, rapes, arson and religious persecution during the war.
• Independence leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the father of current premier Sheikh Hasina, ordered the arrest of thousands of collaborators and canceled Azam’s citizenship for siding with Pakistan and committing atrocities. Rahman was assassinated in August 1975 in a military coup before his government could hold war crime trials. A pro-Islamist military junta took over and freed around 11,000 collaborators.
• In 2010 Hasina set up the International Crimes Tribunal, which is a domestic court with no international oversight, to try suspected war criminals to fulfill a key election pledge.
Key facts of Bangladesh’s 1971 war of independence
