A Correspondent:
Khulna: “Chuknagar Genocide Day”, commemorating the country’s largest and worst killings of human beings at Chuknagar here during the Liberation War in 1971, today.
To mark the day, local administration, ‘Chuknagar Ganahattya Smrity Rakkha Parisad’ has chalked out different programs, including placing of wreath at the Chuknagar Srityshoudha, a memorial built in memory of Chuknagar massacres victims, and discussion today.
The eventual victory of December 16, 1971 was the outcome of nine months of sustained successful armed resistance of the nation but the period was marked by a series of genocides and the Chuknagar Massacre is believed to be the worst one as it witnessed the slaying of at least 10,000 people in hours.
S M Babar Ali, a veteran freedom fighter and a senior BNP leader in Khulna wrote his book ‘Swadhina-tar Durjoy Abhijan, “Around 10am two trucks carrying Pakistan Army troops arrived at Kautala (then known as Patkhola).
The Pakistan Army was not many in number, most possibly a platoon or so. As soon as their trucks stopped, the convoy alighted from the truck carrying light-machine guns (LMGs) and semi-automatic rifles and opened fire on the public.
Within a few hours a lively town turned into a city of death, “according to the “Swadhinatar Durjoy Ab-hijan.’
The book also wrote, the invading Pakistani troops had taken position on two sides of the local bazaar and started spraying bullets indiscriminately.
“Many of those who evaded the bullets, lost their lives in stampedes of fleeing thousands.”
While talking to , Md Monirul Islam, an Assistant Professor of Chuknagar Degree College, who is also a boy at that time, said bodies were lying everywhere as “I along with my brother was looking for my father at Dibya Rural Secondary School beside the river Bhadra just after the massacre”.
“The tide of blood was falling into the river … We briefly halted at one place when we saw a female baby’s lip in her deceased mother’s breast. We were shouting and crying. We would not forget this seen in our lives,” he said with tearful eyes.
There was no official statistics about how many people were killed in Chuknagar but most witnesses said the figure would be over 10,000 as 1971 veteran and local commander of the freedom fighters S M Ba-bar Ali gave an account of the incident in his “Swadhinatar Durjoy Abhijan.”
