A resolution tabled in the House of Representatives on Friday said that the Pakistani armed forces committed genocide against ethnic Bengalis and Hindus in Bangladesh in 1971.
Indian-American Congressman Ro Khanna and Congressman Seve Chabot introduced a resolution urging US President Joe Biden to recognize the violence committed in Bangladesh by the Pakistani armed forces in 1971 as genocide.
The resolution called on the Pakistan government to apologise to the people of Bangladesh for its role in such a genocide.
A Republican Party member, Seve Chabot, said in a tweet, “We must not let the years erase the memory of the millions who were massacred. Recognising genocide strengthens the historical record, educates our fellow Americans, and lets would-be perpetrators know such crimes will not be tolerated or forgotten.”
“The Bangladesh Genocide of 1971 must not be forgotten. With help from my Hindu constituents in Ohio’s First District, Ro Khanna and I introduced legislation to recognise that the mass atrocities committed against Bengalis and Hindus, in particular, were indeed a genocide,” Chabot further added.
Khanna, along with Chabot, introduced the first resolution commemorating the 1971 Bengali Genocide in which millions of ethnic Bengalis and Hindus were killed or displaced, tweeted the US Representative from California’s 17th congressional district, Ro Khanna.
“There was a genocide. Millions of people were killed (in 1971) in what is now Bangladesh, and what was then East Pakistan. About 80 per cent of those millions that were killed were Hindus,” Chabot said.
“And it was, in my opinion, a genocide just like other genocides – like the Holocaust – happened. And there were others that have occurred, and this was one that, thus far, hasn’t really been declared by definition. And we are working on this now,” he said.
With inputs from PTI