The connection may not be apposite. Yet 51 years after the liberation struggle in what was once Pakistan’s eastern segment, Sunday’s horrendous discovery of corpses in Ukraine is faintly reminiscent of the massacres in Bangladesh that started in March 1971.
Ukrainian forces have buried hundreds of people in a mass grave in a town outside Ukraine’s capital, Kiev, after retaking control of the area from Russian troops, according to an official. “In Bucha, we have already buried 280 people in mass graves,” Mayor Anatoly Fedoruk said, reaffirming the horrific disaster. The deserted streets of the town, he said, are littered with corpses. “All these people were shot, killed, in the back of the head,” Fedoruk said.
The victims were men and women and included a 14-year-old boy. The mayor also confirmed that he had seen at least 22 bodies on Bucha’s streets. He said it had not been possible to collect the bodies yet, amid fears that Russian forces had booby-trapped the corpses. Fedoruk has claimed that this was a deliberate targeting by retreating Russian soldiers ~ basically a massacre of civilians in his town. Bucha had witnessed fierce fighting during the past few weeks and had been under Russian occupation for about a month until it was retaken this week.
According to the mayor, the victims were trying to escape to Ukrainian-held territory when they were simply gunned down. He said the defence ministry has accused Russia of killing civilians in other towns as well. “The ministry is saying that as they push forward, and the Russians are withdrawing, they are taking back territory, and it does appear as they do so that in places like Bucha and maybe in other towns there could well be more grisly discoveries waiting to be uncovered.”
According to David DesRoches, a professor at the National Defense University in Washington, the deliberate killing of civilians is a war crime. “Placement of booby-traps and placement of mines are clear violations of the law of warfare, as well as deliberate targeting of civilians.” Ukrainian forces have also recaptured the city of Brovary, 20 km east of the capital, Mayor Ihor Sapozhko said in a televised address on Friday night. Shops were reopening and residents were returning but “still stand ready to defend” their city, he added.
Pressure on Vladimir Putin is bound to be ratcheted up by the horrendous incidents in Bucha and other regions. Further Western sanctions are considered likely, as indeed demands to investigate the deaths as war crimes. “We are still gathering and looking for bodies, but the number has already gone into the hundreds,” said Ukrainian foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba. “Bodies lie on the streets.”
He has urged G7 nations to impose what he called “devastating” new sanctions on Moscow and called upon the International Criminal Court to collect evidence of war crimes. Russia has vehemently denied the charge, but the spread of criminality can be no less hideous than the war itself.