Monday, July 17, 2017

Mascarenhas' 1971 "GENOCIDE" Story Biased All Media Coverage of East Pakistan

Pakistani journalist Anthony Mascarenhas' sensational story headlined "GENOCIDE", published by London's Sunday Times on June 13 1971,  had a profound effect on all subsequent media coverage of East Pakistan, according to veteran BBC South Asia correspondent Mark Tully.

Mascarenhas (1928-1986) worked for "Morning News", a Karachi-based English language daily, when he was sent to report on East Pakistan in 1971. It's not clear how he ended up reporting for Sunday Times (now owned by Rupert Murdoch) but it's known that he and his family moved to take up residence in England before the publication of his "GENOCIDE" story. Here's how the BBC reported it: "Pretending he was visiting his sick sister, Mascarenhas then travelled to London, where he headed straight to the Sunday Times and the editor's office".

In a radio interview, Tully said in Urdu: "There are still significant questions in my mind as to whether the media coverage of Pakistani military crackdown in 1971 was balanced.....it (balanced coverage) became especially difficult after the Mascarenhas' exclusive dispatch (headlined "Genocide") published in The Sunday Times".




Mascarenhas'  "Genocide" story was accepted on face value and widely disseminated by major western and Indian media outlets without any verification or fact-checks. Decades later, Sarmila Bose, an Indian journalist and scholar, finally scrutinized the story and found it to be "entirely inaccurate".

 Bose's investigation of the 1971 Bangladeshi narrative began when she saw a picture of the Jessore massacre of April 2, 1971. It showed "bodies lie strewn on the ground. All are adult men, in civilian clothes....The caption of the photo is just as grim as its content: "April 2, 1971: Genocide by the Pakistan Occupation Force at Jessore."  Upon closer examination, Bose found that "some of the Jessore bodies were dressed in shalwar kameez ' an indication that they were either West Pakistanis or ‘Biharis’, the non-Bengali East Pakistanis who had migrated from northern India". In Bose's book "Dead Reckoning" she has done case-by-case body count estimates that lead her in the end to estimate that between 50,000 and 100,000 people were killed on all sides, including Bengalis, Biharis, West Pakistanis and others, in 1971 war.

Here are the relevant excepts on the Mascarenhas story in Sarmila Bose's Dead Reckoning:

On Page 10: "An interesting example is Anthony Mascarenhas' famous report in Sunday Times published on 13 June 1971. His eyewitness description from Comilla of how a Bengali, especially a Hindu, could have his life snuffed out at the whim of a single army officer serves as a powerful indictment of the military action, but his description of the army's attack on the Hindu area of Shankharipara in old Dhaka on 25-26 March--where he was not present--given without citing any source and turns out to be entirely inaccurate according to the information obtained from my interviews with survivors of Shakharipara".

On Page 73: "In his (Mascarenhas') book that followed his report in the Sunday Times condemning the military crackdown in East Pakistan, Anthony Mascarenhas wrote ," In Shankaripatti an estimated 8000 men, women and children were killed when the army, having blocked both ends of the winding street, hunted down house by house:". This is not an eyewitness account, as Mascarenhas was not there, and he does not cite any sources for his information---which in this case s totally wrong in all aspects. Mascarenhas' reports, like many foreign press reports in 1971, are a mixture of reliable and unreliable information, depending on where the reporter is faithfully reporting what he has actually seen or is merely writing an uncorroborated version of what someone else has told him.......According to survivors of Shankharipara, the army did not go house to house. They entered only one house, Number 52".

Aided and abetted by the Indian and western media with stories like Mascarenhas', the Bangladeshi Nationalists led by the Awami League have concocted and promoted elaborate myths about the events surrounding Pakistan's defeat in December 1971.

Sheikh Mujib's daughter and current Bangladesh Prime Minister Shaikh Hasina alleges "colonial exploitation" of Bengalis by Pakistan and "Bengali genocide" by the Pakistan Army. They claim economic disparities between East and West Pakistan as the main cause of their "war of independence" in which "Pakistan Army killed 3 million Bangladeshis".

Let's examine the Bangladeshi claims on the basis of real facts and data known today as follows:

1. The per capita income in West Pakistan was 60% higher than in East Pakistan in 1971. But they never tell you that the per capita income in East Pakistan was higher than in West Bengal and India. They also don't tell you that the ratio of per capita incomes between Bangladesh and Pakistan has changed little in the last four decades since "independence'.

Per Capita Incomes Source: World Bank


2.  Bangladeshi nationalists claims that "three million people were killed, nearly quarter million women were raped". These claims have failed the scrutiny of the only serious scholarly researcher Sarmila Bose ever done into the subject.  Bose's investigation of the 1971 Bangladeshi narrative began when she saw a picture of the Jessore massacre of April 2, 1971. It showed "bodies lie strewn on the ground. All are adult men, in civilian clothes....The caption of the photo is just as grim as its content: "April 2, 1971: Genocide by the Pakistan Occupation Force at Jessore."  Upon closer examination, Bose found that "some of the Jessore bodies were dressed in shalwar kameez ' an indication that they were either West Pakistanis or ‘Biharis’, the non-Bengali East Pakistanis who had migrated from northern India". In Bose's book "Dead Reckoning" she has done case-by-case body count estimates that lead her in the end to estimate that between 50,000 and 100,000 people were killed on all sides, including Bengalis, Biharis, West Pakistanis and others, in 1971 war.

3. Dr. M. Abdul Mu’min Chowdhury, a Bengali nationalist who actively participated in the separatist cause, in his publication "Behind the Myth of 3 Million", challenges the falsehood. Citing an extensive range of sources to show that what the Pakistani army was carrying out in East Pakistan was a limited counter-insurgency, not genocide, the scholar discloses that after the creation of Bangladesh, the new de facto government offered to pay Taka 2,000 to every family that suffered loss of life but only 3,000 families claimed such compensation. Had there been three million Bengalis dead, a lot more of such families would have come forward. The actual fighting force of Pakistan was 40,000 not 93,000. They were given the responsibility to maintain law and order and protect civilians from the India-backed insurgents of Mukti Bahini. India's Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw praised the professionalism and gallantry of Pakistani soldiers facing the Indian Army's 50:1 advantage in the 1971 war.

4. Now declassified US State Department transcript of an April 6, 1971 conversation between then Secretary of State William Rogers and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger reveals that the US diplomats in Dhaka were also misled by false media reports of mass graves. Kissinger told Rogers that a reported mass grave of 1,000 dead Bengali victims of "genocide" turned out to be baseless.

Recent books and speeches by Indian officials, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and ex top RAW officials, confirm what Pakistanis have known all along: India orchestrated the East Pakistan insurgency and then invaded East Pakistan to break up Pakistan in December 1971.  Unfair and inaccurate media coverage payed a large role in helping India succeed.

Here's Sarmila Bose, the author of "Dead Reckoning" on the events of 1971:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OihBdcLvETA




Here's a video of Indian Army Chief Field Marshal Manekshaw talking about Pakistan Army in 1971 War:

https://vimeo.com/55461334



Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw on Pakistan Army's gallantry in 1971 War from cherie22579 on Vimeo.


What Happened in East Pakistan (Yuri Bezmenov Former KGB Psychological Warfare Expert). Yuri Bezmenov ex KGB Psychological Warfare Expert Explains What Happened in East Pakistan (Now Bangladesh) in This Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bb_fXONk2Y



Related Links:

Haq's Musings

India's Water Plans Alarm Bangladeshis

Ex Indian Spy Documents RAW's Successes in Pakistan

Shaikh Hasina's Witch Hunt

Bangladesh and Pakistan Compared

Economic Disparity Between East and West Pakistan

Is this a 1971 Moment in Pakistan's History? 

India's Hostility Toward Pakistan

25 comments:

Ras S. said...

Even if we take the 300,000 figure it is too sad to reflect on. Unfortunately it was a very dirty civil war and brutality ruled on all sides.

Khawar S. said...

Wars are a dirty business no matter but what matters is setting the record straight. Huge difference between genocide and "usual" wartime atrocities and behavior. Our biggest shame in this episode is laying down the arms.

Seeme K. said...

My cousin was in the Military, was able to run out and save his life. Brig.Sharaf's brother became a prisoner. He came home and told his Mother none of that happened. Plus there was not enough Military to do all that.Local hatreds erupted in people Killing each other. Plus the Mukti Bhani dressed like Pakistani Soldiers. I will never agree to the story.

Ras S. said...

The question also arises as to why this had to begin at all. If E. Pak wanted to leave then we should have let them. Why the violence?

Riaz Haq said...

Ras S.: " The question also arises as to why this had to begin at all. If E. Pak wanted to leave then we should have let them. Why the violence?"

The violence in East Pakistan began before military action....it was perpetrated by Indian-backed Mukti Bahini and Awami Leaguers. Here's a report by a Guardian correspondent Ian Jack: "At Khulna, for example, there was a kind of genocide, but it was perpetrated by Bengalis against the non-Bengalis they worked beside in the town's jute mills. The non-Bengalis were mainly Urdu-speaking migrants from Bihar, Muslims who had fled India at partition. On 28 March 1971, their fellow workers slaughtered large numbers of them, sometimes methodically in what Bose calls slaughter houses that had been set up inside the mills. Exact numbers will never be known; a reasonable estimate is several thousand men, women and children. According to testimony collected by Bose, their bloated corpses clogged the rivers for days. This happened before the Pakistan army embarked on its countrywide repression. After its defeat, with Bangladesh's independence established, Khulna's Bengali mill workers repeated their original atrocity of the previous year and sent thousands more non-Bengalis into the rivers. They were seen as traitors who supported the wrong side" https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/may/21/ian-jack-bangladesh-war-genocide

Riaz Haq said...

The courageous Pakistan army stand on the eastern front —Sarmila Bose
"Clearly, the Pakistani army regained East Pakistan for their masters in Islamabad by April-May, creating an opportunity for a political settlement, and held off both Bengali guerrillas and their Indian supporters till November, buying more time — time and opportunity that Pakistan’s rulers and politicians failed to utilise."
https://pakteahouse.wordpress.com/2010/11/17/sarmila-bose-on-pak-army-in-east-pak-during-1971%C2%A0war/

Authoritative scholarly analyses of 1971 are rare. The best work is Richard Sisson and Leo Rose’s War and Secession. Robert Jackson, fellow of All Soul’s College, Oxford, wrote an account shortly after the events. Most of the principal participants did not write about it, a notable exception being Gen. Niazi’s recent memoirs (1998). Some Indian officers have written books of uneven quality — they make for an embarrassing read for what the Indians have to say about one another.

However, a consistent picture emerges from the more objective accounts of the war. Sisson and Rose describe how India started assisting Bengali rebels since April, but “the Muktib Bahini had not been able to prevent the Pakistani army from regaining control over all the major urban centers on the East Pakistani-Indian border and even establishing a tenuous authority in most of the rural areas.” From July to October there was direct involvement of Indian military personnel. “…mid-October to 20 November… Indian artillery was used much more extensively in support …and Indian military forces, including tanks and air power on a few occasions, were also used…Indian units were withdrawn to Indian territory once their objectives had been brought under the control of the Mukti Bahini — though at times this was only for short periods, as, to the irritation of the Indians, the Mukti Bahini forces rarely held their ground when the Pakistani army launched a counterattack.”

Clearly, the Pakistani army regained East Pakistan for their masters in Islamabad by April-May, creating an opportunity for a political settlement, and held off both Bengali guerrillas and their Indian supporters till November, buying more time — time and opportunity that Pakistan’s rulers and politicians failed to utilise.

Contrary to Indian reports, full-scale war between India and Pakistan started in East Bengal on 21 November, making it a four-week war rather than a ‘lightning campaign’. Sisson and Rose state bluntly: “After the night of 21 November…Indian forces did not withdraw. From 21 to 25 November several Indian army divisions…launched simultaneous military actions on all of the key border regions of East Pakistan, and from all directions, with both armored and air support.” Indian officers like Sukhwant Singh and Lachhman Singh write quite openly in their books about India invading East Pakistani territory in November, which they knew was ‘an act of war’.

None of the outside scholars expected the Eastern garrison to withstand a full Indian invasion. On the contrary, Pakistan’s longstanding strategy was “the defense of the east is in the west”. Jackson writes, “Pakistani forces had largely withdrawn from scattered border-protection duties into cleverly fortified defensive positions at the major centres inside the frontiers, where they held all the major ‘place names’ against Mukti Bahini attacks, and blocked the routes of entry from India…”

Sisson and Rose point out the incongruity of Islamabad tolerating India’s invasion of East Pakistani territory in November. On 30 November Niazi received a message from General Hamid stating, “The whole nation is proud of you and you have their full support.” The same day Islamabad decided to launch an attack in the West on 2 December, later postponed to 3 December, after a two-week wait, but did not inform the Eastern command about it. According to Jackson, the Western offensive was frustrated by 10 December.

Rizwan K. said...


My family personally witnessed the atrocities carried out by Mukhti Bahini militia against the Pakistanis.


The killing of non-Bengalis is not mentioned. That number is never counted. I guess Sarmila Bose talks about that in her book. That killing started after Mujib's famous speech at Dacca Tejgao Airport when he arrived from Pakistan and said, "Mujib ur Rehman khoma kute janey na." (Mujib does not know how to forget) and all hell broke loose against non-Bengalis. There has been atrocities committed pre and post Bangladesh independence against all communities. I guess the numbers are been vastly exaggerated!


Ras S. said...

Actually if I remember correctly Sarmila's figure of casualties was around 289,000.

Riaz Haq said...

Ras S.: "Actually if I remember correctly Sarmila's figure of casualties was around 289,000."

On page 181 in "Dead Reckoning", Sarmila Bose says "it appears possible to estimate with reasonable confidence that at least 50,000-100,000 people perished in East Pakistan/Bangladesh in 1971, including combatants and non-combatants, Bengalis and non-Bengalis, Hindus and Muslims, Indans and Pakistanis".

Solomon said...

..On March 28 Consul General Blood reported from Dacca as follows: “Here in Dacca we are mute and horrified witnesses to a reign of terror by the Pak military. Evidence continues to mount that the MLA authorities have a list of Awami League supporters whom they are systematically eliminating by seeking them out in their homes and shooting them down.” He recommended that the United States express shock to the Pakistani authorities “at this wave of terror directed against their own countrymen by Pak military.” (Telegram 959 from Dacca) On March 29 the Consulate General reported that the army was setting houses on fire and shooting people as they emerged from the burning houses. (Telegram 978 from Dacca) On March 30 the Consulate General reported that the army had killed a large number of apparently unarmed students at Dacca University. (Telegram 986 from Dacca) The Embassy in Islamabad concurred in expressing its sense of horror and indignation at the “brutal, ruthless and excessive use of force by the Pak military,” -

Riaz Haq said...

Solomon: "..On March 28 Consul General Blood reported from Dacca as follows: “Here in Dacca we are mute and horrified witnesses to a reign of terror by the Pak military. Evidence continues to mount that the MLA authorities have a list of Awami League supporters whom they are systematically eliminating by seeking them out in their homes and shooting them down.” He recommended that the United States express shock to the Pakistani authorities “at this wave of terror directed against their own countrymen by Pak military.”


Now declassified US State Department transcript of an April 6, 1971 conversation between then Secretary of State William Rogers and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger reveals that the US diplomats in Dhaka were also misled by false media reports of mass graves. Kissinger told Rogers that a reported mass grave of 1,000 dead Bengali victims of "genocide" turned out to be baseless.

https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v11/d20

Solomon said...

Kind of like saying, "Six million Jews and German soldiers died in Nazi death camps", isn't it?

Riaz Haq said...

Solomon: "Kind of like saying, "Six million Jews and German soldiers died in Nazi death camps", isn't it?"

Evidence as presented shows there's no comparison between the two situations. What happened in East Pakistan was a civil war incited by India and its proxies followed an invasion by India. There was no civil war in Europe.

Bangladeshi nationalists claims that "three million people were killed, nearly quarter million women were...". These claims have failed the scrutiny of the only serious scholarly researcher Sarmila Bose ever done into the subject. Bose's investigation of the 1971 Bangladeshi narrative began when she saw a picture of the Jessore massacre of April 2, 1971. It showed "bodies lie strewn on the ground. All are adult men, in civilian clothes....The caption of the photo is just as grim as its content: "April 2, 1971: Genocide by the Pakistan Occupation Force at Jessore." Upon closer examination, Bose found that "some of the Jessore bodies were dressed in shalwar kameez ' an indication that they were either West Pakistanis or ‘Biharis’, the non-Bengali East Pakistanis who had migrated from northern India". In Bose's book "Dead Reckoning" she has done case-by-case body count estimates that lead her in the end to estimate that between 50,000 and 100,000 people were killed on all sides, including Bengalis, Biharis, West Pakistanis and others, in 1971 war.

Dr. M. Abdul Mu’min Chowdhury, a Bengali nationalist who actively participated in the separatist cause, in his publication "Behind the Myth of 3 Million", challenges the falsehood. Citing an extensive range of sources to show that what the Pakistani army was carrying out in East Pakistan was a limited counter-insurgency, not genocide, the scholar discloses that after the creation of Bangladesh, the new de facto government offered to pay Taka 2,000 to every family that suffered loss of life but only 3,000 families claimed such compensation. Had there been three million Bengalis dead, a lot more of such families would have come forward. The actual fighting force of Pakistan was 40,000 not 93,000. They were given the responsibility to maintain law and order and protect civilians from the India-backed insurgents of Mukti Bahini. India's Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw praised the professionalism and gallantry of Pakistani soldiers facing the Indian Army's 50:1 advantage in the 1971 war.

Now declassified US State Department transcript of an April 6, 1971 conversation between then Secretary of State William Rogers and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger reveals that the US diplomats in Dhaka were also misled by false media reports of mass graves. Kissinger told Rogers that a reported mass grave of 1,000 dead Bengali victims of "genocide" turned out to be baseless.

http://www.pakalumni.com/profiles/blogs/mascarenhas-1971-genocide-story-biased-all-media-coverage-of-east

Riaz Haq said...

On page 171 of Dead Reckoning, author Sarmila Bose demolishes the national consensus behind ‘liberation’ as expressed in the 1970 elections: “the voter turnout in East Pakistan is given as only 56 per cent, lower than in the provinces of Punjab; (66 per cent) and Sindh; (58 per cent) in West Pakistan. It would appear that 44 per cent of the East Pakistani electorate was too disinterested in the issues of the election to vote, or else had some disincentive to go out to vote. Of those who voted in East Pakistan, three quarters voted for the Awami League, showing that the party had been highly successful in bringing out its vote on election day. As only 56 percent of the electorate voted, it meant that 42 percent of the total electorate voted for the Awami League..... However, even the 42 percent in favour of Awami League can not be interpreted as a vote for secession. The relatively low turnout suggests that the electorate did not consider the election to be a referendum on such a major issue and Sheikh Mujib did not present it as such during the campaign. Those who vote for him may have been expressing their alienation from the existing regime, in favor of change, redress of perceived discrimination and greater autonomy. Only an unknown fraction of them may have sought outright secession at that point" .

Solomon said...

You have the right to your own opinion but not your own facts.

Why didn't you research the criticisms of Bose's book?

Riaz Haq said...

Solomon: "Why didn't you research the criticisms of Bose's book?"

I have looked at several critiques of Bose's books but none of them have done the serious detailed field research, interviewed the alleged perpetrators and the victims and presented these facts in a cogent, rational way. Her arguments are compelling.

Riaz Haq said...

Dead Reckoning: Memories of Bangladesh War

SAURABH KUMAR SHAHI | New Delhi, August 20, 2011 17:12
Tags : Dead Reckoning: Memories of the 1971 Bangladesh War | Sarmila Bose | india | pakistan | 1971 |

http://www.thesundayindian.com/en/story/dead-reckoning-memories-of-bangladesh-war/14/20769/

SB: As you know, it is said that history is written by the victors. And it has stood true for every conflict. In that respect, it is not unusual for this conflict too. What is unusual is the length of time that it has taken to take a dispassionate and realistic look to be brought upon this conflict. 40 years is a long time. In fact, it has been decades since I started to do things on this issue. Normally, after a decade or two after the conflict, all the parties try to take a fresh look of the conflict departing form inevitable war propaganda. That is why it is much harder in this case to take a dispassionate look at the case. Another problem in this particular case is that many of the eyewitnesses have died. But better late than never; mine is one contribution in this discussion. I am sure many more books will come that will take a dispassionate and unbiased look at the series of events.

SB: Numbers are not important in a humanitarian point of view. Of course in a war, people will get killed. But the number of people on both the sides who were killed unlawfully, I mean, non-combatants; people without arms etc, these things are crime against humanity. And even one such crime is too much. Numbers are important from a different point of view. If the numbers that has been initially reported differs from what really was, it affects the nature of the event. So the Bangladeshi claim of more than 3 millions Bengali non-combatants killed comes into question. If we talk about millions killed over a year or less than a year, that is a different kind of event from tens of thousands killed. Even this is a big number, but it affects as to what we are looking for. What sorts of event took place? Because the range is so vast and there is extremely huge difference in numbers reported by both sides, there is a need to arrive at some rough idea as to where we are. I found that there is some unnecessary exaggeration by some section of Bangladeshis in number of people killed by the Pakistani Army. Why I say unnecessary is because if the point was to show that army committed atrocities, that can be easily shown by the real number too. You don't need the figure of 3 million to show or prove that. And I have proved that with real figures. Some of the acts they were done are so ghastly that you don't need any exaggeration to prove them. In fact, those who have exaggerated, especially to an absurd level, have actually harmed Bangladesh by undermining even the truth. Thus it is important to keep all these in mind while handling the numbers. The general trend that prevailed was the exaggeration of numbers killed by the other side and minimizing of numbers killed by one's own side. But even that also does not work that ways all the time. Some people gave exaggerated numbers of people they killed as they thought it was something heroic. But I have tried to arrive to a reasonable estimate. The figure of 3 million I found was not arrived at by some systematic accounting. It is based on hearsay. There is exaggeration in every event I have talked about. With a great deal of confidence I can say that close to 100,000 were killed on both sides.

Riaz Haq said...

Here's the link to #BBC's Hardtalk's Stephen Sackur challenging #Pakistan's Dawn Group CEO Hameed Haroon for evidence of his allegations against "Deep State": https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-asia-44873938/dawn-boss-deep-state-influence-on-pakistan-election #PakistanElection2018 #media #PTI #PMLN

How BBC’s HARDtalk exposed Dawn’s anti-establishment narrative
In the latest interview with BBC hard talk, Hameed Haroon- Chief Executive Officer of Dawn Group of Publication, said, “Pakistani media was facing the worst kind of intimidation at the hands of ‘deep state’ which would not be good for the future of democratic institutions in the country.” Rather than providing concrete evidence, he put forward a rather lame reply that there exists a strong perception that military was behind all this.

Despite the allegations of ‘rigging’ in sumo wrestling in Japan, “the mere utterance of the words “sumo” and “rigged” in the same sentence can cause a national furor,” argues ‎Steven D. Levitt‎ and ‎Stephen J. Dubner in their book Freakonomics. It’s a rarity that such allegations find their way into Japanese media and any occasional reporting may stir a media storm to measure the possible corruption in sumo.

“Media scrutiny, after all, creates a powerful incentive…..” say the writers. In Pakistan, few media houses take credit and liberty to discredit and loathe political parties, and military establishment for rigging credentials in favor of holy cow of their liking.

The dubious reality of the world media is up for debate. Media stories may at times alter your conclusion of the real events. The presentation of the story and carefully chosen words can make a lot of difference. Dawn leaks II is a prime example of this. It meddles with the mind of the audience. It hides the reality behind the scenes. What one sees may not be the factual position of a person, an institution, and/or a country.

The questions regarding the control of international media are not something new. It’s a known fact how powerful cronies, capitalists, and neoliberals control media to safeguard their own national, regional and global interests.

Relying on any particular media house in the domestic circuit or in the international domain challenges your intelligence and rationality. The wisdom to join the dots to reach a conclusion which makes sense requires extensive reading of newspapers from Europe to the Atlantic. One of Pakistan’s oldest and credible media houses-Dawn decided to take its case to international media over hurdles in distributions, blocking of television broadcast, and threats it received from allegedly rogue elements/deep state in the country.

Pakistan’s media group dawn is making waves across the world. It is making efforts to gather international sympathy. From Washington post to BBC studio, Dawn is busy ridiculing Pakistan’s Military establishment. But in the process, it has exposed itself. Dawn has shown its real intent. The intent is to malign Pakistan’s security establishment and to gather support in favor of Nawaz.

Ever since the Panama revelations, which troubled Nawaz, Dawn has been busy defending him profoundly through its different forums—news analysis, op-eds, and videos podcasts.

Riaz Haq said...

Here’s the Conversation We Really Need to Have About Bias at Google

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/30/technology/bias-google-trump.html

Let’s get this out of the way first: There is no basis for the charge that President Trump leveled against Google this week — that the search engine, for political reasons, favored anti-Trump news outlets in its results. None.

Mr. Trump also claimed that Google advertised President Barack Obama’s State of the Union addresses on its home page but did not highlight his own. That, too, was false, as screenshots show that Google did link to Mr. Trump’s address this year.

But that concludes the “defense of Google” portion of this column. Because whether he knew it or not, Mr. Trump’s false charges crashed into a longstanding set of worries about Google, its biases and its power. When you get beyond the president’s claims, you come upon a set of uncomfortable facts — uncomfortable for Google and for society, because they highlight how in thrall we are to this single company, and how few checks we have against the many unseen ways it is influencing global discourse.

In particular, a raft of research suggests there is another kind of bias to worry about at Google. The naked partisan bias that Mr. Trump alleges is unlikely to occur, but there is a potential problem for hidden, pervasive and often unintended bias — the sort that led Google to once return links to many pornographic pages for searches for “black girls,” that offered “angry” and “loud” as autocomplete suggestions for the phrase “why are black women so,” or that returned pictures of black people for searches of “gorilla.”


I culled these examples — which Google has apologized for and fixed, but variants of which keep popping up — from “Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism,” a book by Safiya U. Noble, a professor at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School of Communication.

Dr. Noble argues that many people have the wrong idea about Google. We think of the search engine as a neutral oracle, as if the company somehow marshals computers and math to objectively sift truth from trash.

But Google is made by humans who have preferences, opinions and blind spots and who work within a corporate structure that has clear financial and political goals. What’s more, because Google’s systems are increasingly created by artificial intelligence tools that learn from real-world data, there’s a growing possibility that it will amplify the many biases found in society, even unbeknown to its creators.

Google says it is aware of the potential for certain kinds of bias in its search results, and that it has instituted efforts to prevent them. “What you have from us is an absolute commitment that we want to continually improve results and continually address these problems in an effective, scalable way,” said Pandu Nayak, who heads Google’s search ranking team. “We have not sat around ignoring these problems.”

For years, Dr. Noble and others who have researched hidden biases — as well as the many corporate critics of Google’s power, like the frequent antagonist Yelp — have tried to start a public discussion about how the search company influences speech and commerce online.

There’s a worry now that Mr. Trump’s incorrect charges could undermine such work. “I think Trump’s complaint undid a lot of good and sophisticated thought that was starting to work its way into public consciousness about these issues,” said Siva Vaidhyanathan, a professor of media studies at the University of Virginia who has studied Google and Facebook’s influence on society.

Dr. Noble suggested a more constructive conversation was the one “about one monopolistic platform controlling the information landscape.”


In the United States, about eight out of 10 web searches are conducted through Google; across Europe, South America and India, Google’s share is even higher. Google also owns other major communications platforms, among them YouTube and Gmail, and it makes the Android operating system and its app store.

Riaz Haq said...

New Study Finds 50-Year History of Anti-#Palestine Bias in Mainstream #News Reporting. The study, conducted by 416Labs, a Toronto-based consulting and research firm, is the largest of its kind. #media #MiddleEast #Israel #MediaBias https://www.mintpressnews.com/new-study-finds-50-year-history-of-pro-israel-bias-in-us-media/254049/#.XEYPJeLL8wg.twitter

by Kathryn Shihadah

https://www.mintpressnews.com/new-study-finds-50-year-history-of-pro-israel-bias-in-us-media/254049/?fbclid=IwAR2MgQAcd1LDDwvutdouYyJEmJm8O95btIZlKhycxH-drdxz90nmEaAJsn0

recent media study based on an analysis of 50 years of data found that major U.S. newspapers have provided consistently skewed, pro-Israel reporting on Israel-Palestine.

The study, conducted by 416Labs, a Toronto-based consulting and research firm, is the largest of its kind.

Using computer analysis, researchers evaluated the headlines of five influential U.S. newspapers: the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal from 1967 to 2017.

The study period begins in June 1967, the date when Israel began its military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip – now officially termed the Occupied Palestinian Territories – following its Six Day War against Jordan, Egypt and Syria.

The methodology involved the use of Natural Language Processing (NLP), a type of computer analysis that sifts through large amounts of natural language data and investigates the vocabulary. NLP tabulated the most commonly used words and word pairs, as well as the positive or negative sentiment associated with the headlines.

Using NLP to analyze 100,000 headlines, the study revealed that the coverage favored Israel in the “sheer quantity of stories covered,” by presenting Palestinian-centric stories from a more negative point of view, as well as by grossly under-representing the Palestinian narrative, and by omitting or downplaying “key topics that help to identify the conflict in all its significance.”

The Fifty Years of Occupation study reveals a clear media bias first in the quantity of headlines: over the half-century period in question, headlines mentioned Israel 4 times more frequently than Palestine.

The study revealed other discrepancies in coverage of Israel and Palestine/Palestinians as well.



Sentiment
For all 5 newspapers studied, Israel-centric headlines were on average more positive than the Palestinian-centric headlines.

Sentiment analysis measures “the degree to which ideological loyalty colors analysis.”

In order to measure sentiment, the study employed a “dictionary” of words classified as either positive or negative; each headline was scored based on its use of these words.

The report explains that journalistic standards require news stories to be “neutral, objective, and derived from facts,” but the reports on Israel-Palestine “exhibit some form of institutionalized ideological posturing and reflect a slant.”



Underrepresented Palestinian Voices
The study also found Palestinians marginalized as sources of news and information.

A simple case in point: The fact-checking organization Pundit Fact examined CNN guests during a segment of the 2014 Israeli incursion into Gaza, Operation Protective Edge. Pundit Fact reported that during this time, 20 Israeli officials were interviewed, compared to only 4 Palestinians, although Palestinians were overwhelmingly victims of the incursion with 2,251 deaths vs. 73 Israeli deaths.

The study’s data reveal what it calls “the privileging of Israeli voices and, invariably, Israeli narratives”: the phrases “Israel Says” and “Says Israel” occurred at a higher frequency than any other bigram (2-word phrase) throughout the 50 years of headlines – in fact, at a rate 250% higher than “Palestinian Says” and similar phrases. This indicates that not only are Israeli perspectives covered more often, but Palestinians rarely have an opportunity to defend or explain their actions.

Riaz Haq said...

The Terrible Cost of Presidential Racism
Recently declassified White House tapes reveal how President Nixon’s racism and misogyny led him to ignore the genocidal violence of the Pakistani military in what is today Bangladesh.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/03/opinion/nixon-racism-india.html

On June 3, 1971, Mr. Kissinger was indignant at the Indians, while the country was sheltering millions of traumatized Bengali refugees who had fled the Pakistan army. He blamed the Indians for causing the refugee flow, apparently by their covert sponsorship of the Bengali insurgency. He then condemned Indians as a whole, his voice oozing with contempt, “They are a scavenging people.”

-----------
On June 17, 1971 — in the same conversation as Mr. Nixon’s outburst at “sexless” Indian women — the president was furious at Kenneth B. Keating, his ambassador to India, who two days earlier had confronted Mr. Nixon and Mr. Kissinger in the Oval Office, calling Pakistan’s crackdown “almost entirely a matter of genocide.”


Mr. Nixon now asked what “do the Indians have that takes even a Keating, for Christ, a 70-year-old” — here there is cross-talk, but the word seems to be “bachelor” or “bastard.” In reply, Mr. Kissinger sweepingly explained: “They are superb flatterers, Mr. President. They are masters at flattery. They are masters at subtle flattery. That’s how they survived 600 years. They suck up — their great skill is to suck up to people in key positions.”


Mr. Kissinger voiced prejudices about Pakistanis, too. On Aug. 10, 1971, while discussing with Mr. Nixon whether the Pakistani junta would execute the imprisoned leader of the Bengali nationalists, Mr. Kissinger told the president, “I tell you, the Pakistanis are fine people, but they are primitive in their mental structure.” He added, “They just don’t have the subtlety of the Indians.”


Riaz Haq said...

FOREIGN RELATIONS OF THE UNITED STATES, 1969–1976
VOLUME XI, SOUTH ASIA CRISIS, 1971, DOCUMENT 20
20. Transcript of Telephone Conversation Between Secretary of State Rogers and the President's Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger)1
Washington, April 6, 1971, 9:35 a.m.

R: I wanted to talk about that goddam message from our people in Dacca.2 Did you see it?

K: No.

R: It's miserable. They bitched about our policy and have given it lots of distribution so it will probably leak. It's inexcusable.

K: And it will probably get to Ted Kennedy.

3

R: If you can keep it from him I will appreciate it. In the first place I think we have made a good choice.

K: The Chinese haven't said anything.

R: They talk about condemning atrocities. There are pictures of the East Pakistanis murdering people.

K: Yes. There was one of an East Pakistani holding a head. Do you remember when they said there were 1000 bodies and they had the graves and then we couldn't find 20?

R: To me it is outrageous they would send this.

K: Unless it hits the wires I will hold it. I will not forward it.

R: We should get our answers out at the same time the stories come out.

K: I will not pass it on.4

[Omitted here is discussion unrelated to South Asia.]

1Source: Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Kissinger Papers, Box 367, Telephone Conversations, Chronological File. No classification marking.
2See Document 19.
3Reference is to the speech Nixon delivered to the nation on April 7 on the situation in Southeast Asia. For text, see Public Papers: Nixon, 1971, pp. 522–527.
4In his memoirs Kissinger writes that the dissent cable from Dacca pointed up a dilemma for the administration. “The United States could not condone a brutal military repression,” and there was “no doubt about the strong-arm tactics of the Pakistani military.” He explains the administration's decision not to react publicly to the military repression in East Pakistan as necessary to protect “our sole channel to China.” As a result of the cable, President Nixon ordered Consul General Archer Blood transferred from Dacca. Kissinger conceded that “there was some merit to the charge of moral insensitivity.” (White House Years, p. 854)


The excerpts above, that reference physical evidence and attempts to validate exaggerated claims by the East Pakistani terrorists & rebels, support the points made in Riaz Haq's post. The declassified parts of the Hamood-ur-Rehman commission investigation and report and the newly formed Bangladesh government's own attempts to register and aid families who were victims of violence also validate the more recent investigations and research by individual's such as Bose, who failed to find credible evidence supporting the exaggerated claims of 'millions killed and hundreds of thousands raped'.

Riaz Haq said...

Malcolm Turnbull says News Corp the most powerful Australian political actor

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/utterly-unaccountable-turnbull-labels-news-corp-the-most-powerful-political-actor-in-australia-20210412-p57idq.html


Giving evidence by video link, Mr Turnbull said the Murdoch media business had evolved into a powerful political force that, unlike political parties, was unaccountable to the Australian public.

“This is the fundamental problem that we’re facing: the most powerful political actor in Australia is not the Liberal Party or the National Party or the Labor Party. It is News Corp. And it’s utterly unaccountable,” Mr Turnbull said. “It’s controlled by an American family and their interests are no longer, if they ever were, coextensive with our own.”

Mr Turnbull, a Liberal, has joined former Labor prime minister Kevin Rudd as a strident critic of News Corp and has backed his push for a royal commission into the influence of the Murdoch empire on the Australian media and political landscape. The media diversity inquiry, which is examining issues of media concentration in Australia, was established by the Senate after more than 500,000 people signed a petition by Mr Rudd voicing those concerns.

In his evidence to the inquiry in February, Mr Rudd said News Corp used systematic character assassinations to cultivate a culture of fear among politicians and engaged in campaign journalism against issues such as action on climate change.

At the same public hearing, News Corp Australia executive chairman Michael Miller dismissed Mr Rudd and Mr Turnbull’s criticisms as “a convenient diversion from their own failings” during his evidence. News Corp executive Campbell Reid gave evidence the company was “professional, accountable media” that operated in the Australian landscape “with an extraordinary degree of both government, and indeed regulatory, oversight and legal oversight if we get things wrong”.

“Our editing process – for all professional media – is high stakes because we can be charged with contempt of court, our journalists can be threatened with jail, we can be taken to the Press Council, and we can be held up to scrutiny by other organisations, which is completely different to the misinformation industry that is perpetuated by and is a driver of, frankly, profit online,” Mr Campbell told the inquiry in February.

Mr Turnbull echoed many of Mr Rudd’s concerns, saying he had experienced “bullying and standover tactics” from News Corp when he served in the Parliament.

Riaz Haq said...

#Bangladesh Minister Thanks #India For 1971. "Without her (Indira Gandhi) help, without her government's help, without the help of the people of India, it would never have been possible for us to liberate our country in 9 months' time" #Pakistan https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/bangladesh-minister-hails-indias-support-in-1971-liberation-war-2533312

Without the help of Indira Gandhi, her government and the support of the people of India, Bangladesh would not have attained its independence in nine months in 1971, Bangladesh minister Hasan Mahmud said today, asserting that his country would remain forever grateful for India's support in its Liberation War.
The Information and Broadcasting minister of Bangladesh also hit out at Pakistani sceptics who in 1971 had scoffed at Bangladesh's freedom, predicting a bleak future for the nation, and pointed out that his country was well ahead of Pakistan on all counts of development.

He made the remarks at the launch of the book ''A Bangladesh War Commentary - 1971 Radio Dispatches'' by the late U L Baruah, the then director of external services, All India Radio, and later DG of AIR.

Hailing India's role in his country's independence, Mr Mahmud said it would never have been possible "for us to liberate our country in nine months' time without the help of India".

"So, I want to register at ICWA (Indian Council of World Affairs), my gratitude to the people who fought for Bangladesh, for its liberation," he said.

The people of India gave refuge to 10 million people from Bangladesh, not just in neighbouring states but in other states also, Mr Mahmud said.

Bangladesh would forever remain grateful to the people of India and the then government of India, he asserted.

"Indira Gandhi went from one part to another part of the world to build an opinion in favour of our freedom fight, our independence war and also to liberate Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman from the custody of Pakistan," Mr Mahmud said.

"Without her (Indira Gandhi) help, without her government's help, without the help of the people of India, it would never have been possible for us to liberate our country in nine months' time. It would never have been possible to free Sheikh Mujibur Rehman," the minister reiterated.

Slamming Pakistani sceptics of Bangladesh's future, Mr Mahmud said under the leadership of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, his country was well ahead of Pakistan on all indices -- social, economic and human.

"Our per capita income is 2,227, while that of Pakistan is over 1,500. Our foreign currency reserves are more than two times that of Pakistan, our poverty rate is well below Pakistan's and our life expectancy is 73 years," he pointed out.

"When Imran Khan formed the government, he said he would transform Pakistan into Sweden and then there was a debate in the Pakistani media, saying don't give us false dreams, try to make Pakistan like Bangladesh in 10 years," he said, underlining the rapid strides of development Bangladesh had made after its independence.

Amit Baruah, senior journalist and son of U L Baruah, introduced his father's book that has been published by ICWA and Macmillan Education from an original manuscript of his father's commentaries of the tumultuous times in 1971-72.

"My father wrote these commentaries in his capacity as the Director External Services, All India Radio, in 1971-72. These were translated from English and aired on Urdu, Pashto, Sindhi, Punjabi, Bengali and West Asian language services of the All India Radio," he said.

"All the original titles of the commentaries have been retained. They provide rich context for the events of the 1971 war and the liberation of Bangladesh," Mr Baruah said.

Riaz Haq said...

Fifty Shades Of Khaki - Open The Magazine

Christine Fair on Hamood ur Rehman report on 1971 war in East Pakistan


https://openthemagazine.com/essay/fifty-shades-of-khaki/


Bhutto ordered an investigation into a war that his own behaviour had precipitated by refusing to acknowledge the results of the 1970 general election in which the Awami League had secured an outright majority (162) of the 300 seats contested. Given that this election was for a constitutive assembly, the Awami League had a mandate to prosecute many of its election promises, such as greater decentralisation of power and separate currencies in the two wings. Bhutto’s Pakistan Peoples’ Party (PPP) won a meagre 80 seats, which was not enough to even veto what the Awami League may have proposed. It was widely known that Bhutto had collaborated in denying Sheikh Mujibur Rahman his victory with General Yahya Khan, the military leader who had followed General Ayub Khan in contravention of Pakistan’s tattered constitution. Bhutto’s constituting this commission seems a bit like a dacoit ordering a compliant police inquiry into his own crimes to exonerate himself of wrongdoing.

Most people—especially those who never read the Hamoodur Rehman Commission Report—believe that successive Pakistani civilian and military regimes alike had kept the Hamoodur Rehman Commission Report classified because it exposed the extent of the Pakistan army’s atrocities in East Pakistan. Indeed, the report does concede that senior Pakistani officers looted banks and engaged in other property theft. It even recommends public trials and even court martial for some senior officials, which were never carried out. Those seeking a blow-by-blow account of the Pakistan army’s rapacious and genocidal brutality during the war will be disappointed and are better off perusing scholarly accounts of the war, such as those authored by Gary Bass and Srinath Raghavan.

In fact, the Hamoodur Rehman Commission Report exculpates the army of the most serious offences and outright rejects Mujibur Rahman’s claim that troops raped 200,000 Bengali women. What is the dispositive evidence for rubbishing this claim? The report notes that “[T]he abortion team [Mujibur] had commissioned from Britain in early 1971 found that its workload involved the termination of only a hundred or more pregnancies” (page 513). It also cast aside the claims of the Bangladesh government that the army killed three million Bengalis as “altogether fantastic and fanciful” (page 513). Instead, the Hamoodur Rehman Commission Report proffered the figure, supplied by the Pakistan army, to be approximately 26,000 deaths (page 513). In contrast, it alleged that “Awami League Militants” were far more barbarous and accused them of slaughtering between 100,000 and 500,000 of “helpless Biharis, West Pakistanis and patriotic Bengalis living in East Pakistan” during the war (page 508).