| Bangladesh genocide | |
|---|---|
| Part of the Bangladesh Liberation War | |
 Corpses of Bengali nationalist intellectuals killed in Dhaka in December 1971, photographed by Rashid Talukdar | |
| Native name | একাত্তরের গণহত্যা বাঙালি গণহত্যা |
| Location | East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) |
| Date | 25 March 1971 – 16 December 1971 (8 months, 2 weeks and 6 days) |
| Target | Bengalis, especially Bengali Hindus[1] |
Attack type | Ethnic cleansing through mass murder and genocidal rape |
| Deaths | 300,000–3,000,000 |
| Victims |
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| Perpetrator | Pakistan |
| Assailants | |
| Motive | anti-Bengali racism and Hinduphobia |
| History of Bangladesh |
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 Bangladesh portal |
The Bangladesh genocide (Bengali: একাত্তরের গণহত্যা, romanized: Ēkātturēr Gôṇôhôtyā, lit. '71's genocide', Bengali: বাঙালি গণহত্যা, romanized: Bāṅāli Gôṇôhôtyā, lit. 'Bengali genocide') was the ethnic cleansing of Bengalis, especially Bengali Hindus, residing in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) during the Bangladesh Liberation War, perpetrated by the Pakistan Armed Forces and the Razakars.[2] It began on 25 March 1971, as Operation Searchlight was launched by West Pakistan (now Pakistan) to militarily subdue the Bengali population of East Pakistan; the Bengalis comprised the demographic majority and had been calling for independence from the Pakistani state. Seeking to curtail the Bengali self-determination movement, erstwhile Pakistani president Yahya Khan approved a large-scale military deployment, and in the nine-month-long conflict that ensued, Pakistani soldiers and local pro-Pakistan militias killed between 300,000 and 3,000,000 Bengalis and raped between 200,000 and 400,000 Bengali women in a systematic campaign of mass murder and genocidal sexual violence.[3][4][5][6] In their investigation of the genocide, the Geneva-based International Commission of Jurists concluded that Pakistan's campaign involved the attempt to exterminate or forcibly remove a significant portion of the country's Hindu populace.[7]
The West Pakistani government, which had implemented discriminatory legislation in East Pakistan,[8] asserted that Hindus were behind the Mukti Bahini (Bengali resistance fighters) revolt and that resolving the local "Hindu problem" would end the conflict—Khan's government and the Pakistani elite thus regarded the crackdown as a strategic policy.[9] Genocidal rhetoric accompanied the campaign: Pakistani men believed that the sacrifice of Hindus was needed to fix the national malaise.[10] In the countryside, Pakistan Army moved through villages and specifically asked for places where Hindus lived before burning them down.[11] Hindus were identified by checking circumcision or by demanding the recitation of Muslim prayers.[12] This also resulted in the migration of around eight million East Pakistani refugees into India, 80–90% of whom were Hindus.[13]
Pakistani imams issued fatwas declaring that the freedom fighters were Hindu, irrespective of their actual religion, and thus their women were to be treated as "war booty".[14][15][15][16] Women who were targeted often died in Pakistani captivity or committed suicide, while others fled to India.[17]
Pakistan's activities during the Bangladesh Liberation War served as a catalyst for India's military intervention in support of the Mukti Bahini, triggering the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971. The conflict and the genocide formally ended on 16 December 1971, when the joint forces of Bangladesh and India received the Pakistani Instrument of Surrender. As a result of the conflict, approximately 10 million East Bengali refugees fled to Indian territory while up to 30 million people were internally displaced out of the 70 million total population of East Pakistan. There was also ethnic violence between the Bengali majority and the Bihari minority during the conflict; between 1,000 and 150,000 Biharis were killed in reprisal attacks by Bengali militias and mobs, as Bihari collaboration with the West Pakistani campaign had led to further anti-Bihari sentiment. Since Pakistan's defeat and Bangladesh's independence, the title "Stranded Pakistanis in Bangladesh" has commonly been used to refer to the Bihari community, which was denied the right to hold Bangladeshi citizenship until 2008.
Allegations of a genocide in Bangladesh were rejected by most UN member states at the time and rarely appear in textbooks and academic sources on genocide studies.[18]
- ^ Pai, Nitin. "The 1971 East Pakistan Genocide – A Realist Perspective" (PDF). Bangladesh Genocide Archive. International Crimes Strategy Forum. Archived (PDF) from the original on 7 November 2022. Retrieved 21 September 2023.
- ^ Bass 2013a, p. 198:"The Nixon administration had ample evidence not just of the scale of the massacres, but also of their ethnic targeting of the Hindu minority—what Blood had condemned as genocide. This was common knowledge throughout the Nixon administration."
- ^ Dummett, Mark (15 December 2011). "Bangladesh war: The article that changed history". BBC News. Retrieved 25 October 2024.
- ^ Magazine, Smithsonian; Boissoneault, Lorraine (16 December 2016). "The Genocide the U.S. Can't Remember, But Bangladesh Can't Forget". Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved 25 October 2024.
- ^ Bergman, David (5 April 2016). "The Politics of Bangladesh's Genocide Debate". The New York Times. Retrieved 25 October 2024.
- ^ Mookherjee, Nayanika (2012). "Mass rape and the inscription of gendered and racial domination during the Bangladesh War of 1971". In Raphaelle Branche; Fabrice Virgili (eds.). Rape in Wartime. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-230-36399-1.
- ^ MacDermot, Niall (June 1972). "The Review" (PDF). International Commission of Jurists. p. 34. Archived (PDF) from the original on 27 March 2022. Retrieved 29 November 2023.
As far as the other three groups are concerned, namely members of the Awami League, students and Hindus, only Hindus would seem to fall within the definition of ' a national, ethnical, racial or religious group '. There is overwhelming evidence that Hindus were slaughtered and their houses and villages destroyed simply because they were Hindus. The oft repeated phrase ' Hindus are enemies of the state ' as a justification for the killing does not gainsay the intent to commit genocide; rather does it confirm the intention. The Nazis regarded the Jews as enemies of the state and killed them as such. In our view there is a strong prima facie case that the crime of genocide was committed against the group comprising the Hindu population of East Bengal.
- ^ "The Past has yet to Leave the Present: Genocide in Bangladesh". Harvard International Review. 1 February 2023. Archived from the original on 30 June 2023. Retrieved 16 October 2023.
- ^ D'Costa 2011, p. 101.
- ^ Saikia 2011, p. 52.
- ^ Bass 2013a, p. 119:"Despite ongoing reports of unprovoked killing by soldiers, Blood saw the army launching a military campaign to take control of the countryside. Still, he thought, genocide was the right description for what was happening to the Hindus. So the consulate "began to focus our 'genocidal' reporting on the Hindus." The military crackdown, he cabled, "fully meets criteria of term 'genocide.'"49 Over and over, Blood tried to alarm his superiors in Washington. "'Genocide' applies fully to naked, calculated and widespread selection of Hindus for special treatment," he wrote. "From outset various members of American community have witnessed either burning down of Hindu villages, Hindu enclaves in Dacca and shooting of Hindus attempting [to] escape carnage, or have witnessed after-effects which [are] visible throughout Dacca today. Gunning down of Professor Dev of Dacca University philosophy department is one graphic example."50 He explained that the Pakistani military evidently did not "make distinctions between Indians and Pakistan Hindus, treating both as enemies." Such anti-Hindu sentiments were lingering and widespread, Blood wrote. He and his staff tenaciously kept up their reporting of anti-Hindu atrocities, telling how the Pakistan army would move into a village, ask where the Hindus lived, and then kill the Hindu men."
- ^ Bass 2013a, p. 120:"Desaix Myers remembers, “We were aware the Hindu markets had been attacked. The villages that we visited were Hindu. We were aware that Hindus specically were being attacked.” In a letter at the time, he wrote, “The Army continues to check, lifting lungis [a kind of sarong worn by Bengalis], checking circumcision, demanding recitation of Muslim prayers. Hindus flee or are shot." He recalls that on one trip out of Dacca, "I was convinced I saw people wearing pieces of cloth identifying themselves as Hindus." Butcher says, “You heard stories of men having to pull down their lungis. If they were circumcised, they were let go. If they were not, they were killed. It was singling out the Hindus for especially bad treatment, burning Hindu villages, it was like a pogrom. It was ridding the province of these people.""
- ^ Bass 2013a, p. 302:"The CIA had a blunt explanation for this "incredible" migration: "many if not most of the Hindus fled for fear of their lives." Lieutenant General Tikka Khan, Yahya’s military governor, evidently thought he could quickly frighten the Bengalis into submission. The Pakistan army, the CIA noted, seemed to have singled out Hindus as targets. Although the CIA refrained from crying genocide, it did insist this was an ethnic campaign, with 80 percent—or possibly even 90 percent— of the refugees being Hindus. So far, out of eight million refugees, over six million were Hindus, and many more might follow—ending perhaps only when East Pakistan had no more Hindus left.... This was confirmed by Sydney Schanberg of the New York Times, who, interviewing refugees in India, found that almost all of them were Hindus, who said that they were still specially hounded by the Pakistan army."
- ^ Siddiqi 1998, p. 208.
- ^ a b D'Costa 2011, p. 108.
- ^ Siddiqi 1998, pp. 208–209: "Sometime during the war, a fatwa originating in West Pakistan labeled Bengali freedom fighters 'Hindus' and declared that 'the wealth and women' to be secured by warfare with them could be treated as the booty of war. [Footnote, on p. 225:] S. A. Hossain, "Fatwa in Islam: Bangladesh Perspective," Daily Star (Dhaka), 28 December 1994, 7."
- ^ Islam 2019, p. 175: "The Pakistani occupation army and its local collaborators targeted mostly the Hindu women and girls for rape and sexual violence. Many rape victims were killed in captivity while others migrated to India or committed suicide"
- ^ Moses, A. Dirk (2021). The Problems of Genocide: Permanent Security and the Language of Transgression. Cambridge University Press. pp. 8, 395. ISBN 978-1-009-02832-5.