shahbag square bangladesh

During the war there were widespread killings and other atrocities – including the displacement of civilians in Bangladesh (East Pakistan at the time) and widespread violations of human rights – carried out by the Pakistan Army with support from political and religious militias, beginning with the start of Operation Searchlight on 25 March 1971. Bangladeshi authorities claimed that three million people were killed,[41] while the Hamoodur Rahman Commission, an official Pakistan Government investigation, put the figure at 26,000 civilian casualties.[87] The international media and reference books in English by authors and genocide scholars such as Samuel Totten have also published figures of up to 3,000,000 for Bangladesh as a whole,[88] although independent researchers put the toll at 300,0