1971 Killing of the ‘Bengali’ Intellectuals: An Analysis from the Perspective of the 1948 Genocide Convention

Abstract

The lessons of the history of past genocidal incidents expose that the educated and the leaders, collectively called ‘intellectuals’, have often been a distinct target by the perpetrators. Bengali intellectuals were also targeted and killed by the Pakistani military and its local collaborators during the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War. As the Bangladesh genocide, committed by the Pakistani military and its local collaborators, is still internationally overlooked, the issue of killing the Bengali intellectuals during such genocide has not obtained much attention. This study identifies the killing of the intellectuals as one of the genocidal policies employed by the Pakistani military and its local collaborators during the war. The massacre of the Bengali intellectuals in the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War is examined in this article from the perspective of the 1948 Genocide Convention. The authors have critically analyzed the killing of the Bengali intellectuals in light of the definition of ‘genocide’ and the travaux preparatoires of the Convention to explore whether it forms a genocidal policy.