Thread by @mhaiderimtiaz

50 years ago (on June 13, 1971), Anthony Mascarenhas' famous newspaper report titled 'Genocide' was published in the UK's Sunday Times. It exposed the brutal nature of the military operation in E. Pakistan, which had been cut off from the world since March
bbc.com/news/world-asi…

Foreign journalists had been expelled from E. Pakistan when Op Searchlight was launched on the night of March 25, 1971 (Further info on Op Searchlight:

https://twitter.com/mhaiderimtiaz/status/1375155299833774087

) Independent journalism was impossible as local Pakistani newspapers were subjected to strict censorship

In these circumstances, the military regime selected 8 West Pakistani journalists including Mascarenhas (who was based in Karachi) for a 10-day tour of E. Pakistan. The aim was to highlight the atrocities committed by Bengali separatists (necessitating continued military action).

7 of these journalists eventually wrote what they were told to, but Mascarenhas did not. As per his wife, 'he was absolutely shocked, stressed, upset & terribly emotional.. He told me that if he couldn't write the story of what he'd seen, he'd never be able to write another word'

But doing so wouldn't have been possible in Pakistan due to the strict censorship & Mascarenhas was 'certain he would be shot if he tried.' So he travelled to London pretending he was visiting his sick sister, where he met the editor of Sunday Times who promised to run his story.

But before the report could be published, Mascarenhas had to take his family out of Pakistan. So he returned to Pakistan & sneaked out with his family into Afghanistan by land. Once they reached London, the Sunday Times published Mascarenhas' story under the headline 'Genocide'.

Mascarenhas' complete 16 column, 2-page story: thedailystar.net/supplements/vi…

He concluded: 'The army can of course hold the country together by force. But the meaning of what it has done in East Bengal is that the dream of the men who hoped in 1947 that they were founding a Muslim...

...nation in two equal parts has now faded. There is now little chance... that Punjabis in the West and Bengalis in the East will feel themselves equal fellow-citizens of one nation. For the Bengalis, the future is now bleak: the unhappy submission of a colony to its conquerors.'

Following the publication of his story, Mascarenhas gave several TV interviews where he discussed what he had seen in E. Pakistan. In one of these interviews he explained the effects of the military operation in these words: 'We've been told that it's intended to preserve the...

...unity and integrity of Pakistan but in effect what has happened is that it has confirmed the break, emotionally at least. You can't find a Bengali today who considers himself to be a part of Pakistan.'

Mascarenhas' full interview can be watched here:

In this interview, as well as in his story, Mascarenhas identified 4 different groups which were the main target of the military operation in E. Pakistan:

1. Bengali Hindus
2. The secessionist group in the Awami League
3. Pro-independence Bengali students
4. Armed Bengali rebels

Mascarenhas described the attitude of the West Pakistani army officers and men who were carrying out orders for killing Bengalis as 'extremely casual... because they seemed to be working with the idea that they're saving Pakistan, and the people didn't seem to matter...'

He further described the attitude of the higher command as follows: 'but the policy makers of course have a different idea. (For them) it's a question of 'purifying' East Pakistan, so that they don't have to go through this whole process again, perhaps for the next thirty years.'

According to Mascarenhas, the military leadership had decided to force a military solution to the 'East Pakistan problem', instead of finding a political solution to what was essentially a political problem: Bengalis had won the 1970 election & wanted to rule as per their wishes.

He further pointed out that no meaningful or viable political solution to the crisis in E. Pakistan was possible without ending the ongoing brutalities, but the Yahya regime had no intention of ending the military operation any time soon in order to reach a political settlement.

He states that he was repeatedly told by senior military & civil officers in Dacca & Comilla that they 'are determined to cleanse E. Pakistan once & for all of the threat of secession, even if it means killing of two million people & ruling the province as a colony for 30 years'.

According to Mascarenhas, Maj. Gen. Shaukat Raza, GOC of the Comilla-based 9 Division had told him: 'You must be absolutely sure that we have not undertaken such a drastic and expensive operation - expensive both in men and money - for nothing. We've undertaken a job. We are...

...going to finish it, not hand it over half done to the politicians so that they can mess it up again. The army can't keep coming back like this every three or four years... when we have got through with what we are doing, there will never be need again for such an operation.'

Mascarenhas’ revelations had a huge international impact. Mark Tully, who was covering South Asia and particularly East Pakistan for the BBC during 1971, termed Mascarenhas' story as 'a bombshell [that] hit the Pakistan army’s public relations effort...'
m.thewire.in/article/histor…

The army denied the contents of Mascarenhas' report and decided to invite foreign journalists for a visit to E. Pakistan, to 'travel freely in the province, and report without any censorship.' This change in media policy was the brainchild of army's PR officer Major Siddiq Salik.

When BBC was invited to send a reporter to E. Pakistan, it nominated Tully. He spent about two weeks in the province & was regularly briefed by Maj. Gen. Rao Farman Ali & Maj. Salik. In Dhaka, he observed that 'all Hindu areas were deserted & there was evidence of random firing.'

When he travelled outside Dhaka he 'got an impression of the extent of the crackdown. For mile after mile, I passed deserted villages with huts burnt... Small towns were deserted too.' Tully left with the impression that 'the army [had] declared war on the civilian population.'

Similar observations were made by other foreign journalists, including Clare Hollingsworth of the Daily Telegraph, who had been flown to the north of the province in a low-flying helicopter. According to her, she had 'tried to count the burnt out villages, but just lost count.’