From: sahmed@occs.cs.oberlin.edu (Saif Ahmed)
Subject: Mass grave unearthed in Bangladesh
Organization: Oberlin College Computer Science
Date: Sat, 19 Dec 1992 03:05:11 GMT
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                              Agence France Presse

                               December  15, 1992

HEADLINE: 'Death house' uncovered 21 years after  Bangladesh
independence

DATELINE: DHAKA

 BODY:
    Lal Banu spent 21 years worrying about the foul smell in her house
in the suburbs of the Bangladeshi capital but was too poor and too
busy looking after her sick husband to move out.  Then a bulldozer
working on a neighbouring building site uncovered the grisly source --
a mass grave of victims of the Pakistan military's brutal repression
of Bangladesh's independence movement in 1971.  "When I came to stay
in this house it was filled with human excreta and layers of blood on
the floor, blood hand prints on the walls, but I never realised I have
been living over a mass grave," said Banu, who moved into the

house she found abandoned after the independence war in the city's
Mirpur area.  She has since moved to a nearby slum.  Last week, the
bulldozer accidently damaged part of the two-room house, exposing a
20-foot deep dungeon whose entrance had been hidden by a steel cover
in one of the rooms.  From the knee-deep water, a jaw bone with
several teeth and some ribs were recovered while at least seven other
skulls have been found.  The "death house," as neighbours called it,
was discovered 10 days ahead of the independence victory day
celebrations on Wednesday.  Around 120 skulls were recovered soon
after independence in and around the house, according to residents,
who said they were not aware of the dungeon.  Some 1,000 mass graves
have been found across
 Bangladesh, formerly East Pakistan, folowing its nine-month
independence war, according to an academic study published here.
Pro-independence sympathisers as well as freedom fighters were
tortured to death and thousands of women raped during the war,
according to historians.  Some three million Bengalis were killed or
remain missing.  Many families of the dead or missing have given up
hope of seeing their loved ones again with no official efforts to
trace new graves undertaken for more than a decade.

    Shahabuddin Ahmed, a government agent on the nearby construction
site, said the house would normally have been demolished to make way
for a low-income housing scheme.


    But Bangladesh Works Minister Rafiqul Islam Mia said he would
visit the "death house" soon to consider what action to should be
taken in memory of the dead.

    "It is a tragedy that it was not found earlier," he told AFP.

    A neighbour, Mohammad Saleem, said bodies were found in and around
the house soon after the war ended on December 16, 1971. Local police
were called in at one stage when children were found playing with
skeletons. Thousands of people rushed there last week after a local
daily broke the news of the dungeon's discovery.

    Residents said everyone knew that the house had been used as a
torture chamber by the army or their local supporters. Cries for help
could be heard sometimes, Saleem said.

    The house is in a district inhabited by Urdu-speaking Biharis,
many of whom supported Pakistan during the war. The Biharis moved to
East Pakistan when India was partitioned in 1947. Some 280,000 Biharis
now live in camps in Bangladesh and want to go to Pakistan, having
refused Bangladesh nationality following the war.

    Some Biharis still living in the area are reported to be scared
following the discovery of the basement which has revived old hatreds.

    The independence anniversary also coincides with a campaign to
bring to trial alleged collaborators of the Pakistan army, many of
whom are said to be members of Moslem fundamentalist groups or even in
ruling party. Among the alleged collaborators is the fundamentalist
Jamaat-e-Islami leader Golam Azam.


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| | Saifuddin Ahmed                                                        |
| | sahmed@occs.cs.oberlin.edu                                             |
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