Bangladesh Chief Advisor’s Press Secretary Shafiqul Alam has offered in his verified facebook page a personal account of how the Liberation War of 1971 shaped his life and identity, while urging the nation to confront the historical truth of the conflict with honesty.

“I was born in 1969, and though I was too young to remember the war itself, it is etched into my psyche, just as it is into the identity of every Bangladeshi,” Shafiqul said. 

His family lived only 200 metres from Dhaka’s Rajarbagh police lines, where hundreds of policemen were massacred by Pakistani troops on March 25, 1971.

Later, on December 16, the day of Pakistan’s surrender, his parents and elder brother witnessed retaliatory killings of Biharis in Motijheel’s AGB Colony and Railway Colony.

Growing up, Shafiqul said, the figure of three million dead was repeated endlessly, declared by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and adopted as part of the national narrative. 

“For decades, we carried that number with pride, with anger, with sorrow. There was no way to question it,” he said. “Under Sheikh Hasina’s 16-year rule, even raising doubt could mean 14 years in prison.”

But fifty-four years later, he acknowledged, debate is inevitable. 

“Some historians and journalists say the numbers don’t add up. If three million had died in nine months, that would mean over 11,000 deaths every day. Brutal as the Pakistan Army was, could they really have killed on that industrial scale?” 

“Some suggest the figure was closer to 200,000–others, even as low as 2,000. The gulf between those numbers is almost absurd. But somewhere in between lies the truth,” wrote Shafiqul.

The Press Secretary stressed that while the precise number may be debated, the trauma of 1971 was real and profound. 

Millions of Bengalis fled into Indian refugee camps, where many died of cholera and starvation. Villages were burned, women were violated, and countless freedom fighters and civilians were killed. 

At the same time, Biharis–accused of siding with Pakistan–were themselves massacred in retribution. “The suffering was undeniable, the devastation complete. War is brutal, and the truth is never simple,” he said.

He warned against allowing unverified figures to replace historical truth.

“If we cling to numbers that are not rooted in fact, we risk turning history into mythology. And myths, once exposed, erode credibility. The dead deserve truth, not propaganda.”

Calling this the “last generation with living witnesses to 1971,” Shafiqul urged that the record be set straight while survivors are still alive.

“Maybe it was not three million. But it was certainly not 2,000. If we fail to confront this honestly, then ‘three million’ risks becoming the original fake news of our nation. And that would be a betrayal, not just of history, but of every life lost in 1971.”

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