Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) chief Khaleda Zia has picked up a new controversy doubting the number of casualties in the country’s Liberation War against Pakistan.
“There is a debate about how many hundreds of thousands were martyred in the Liberation War. Different books and documents give different accounts,” she said.
The officially recognised figure of deaths, confirmed by independent research, is three million. Last November, the Pakistani government had denied its Army’s war-time atrocities in Bangladesh while slamming Bangladesh’s war crimes trials. The BNP chief’s remarks came on Monday when she was addressing members of the Bangladesh Jatiyatabadi Muktijudda Dal, a front organisation of the party.
Ms. Zia also demanded a ‘transparent’ war crimes trial of ‘international standards’.
