Rape during the Bangladesh Liberation War

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During the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971, members of the Pakistani military and Razakar paramilitary force raped between 200,000 and 400,000 Bengali women and girls in a systematic campaign of genocidal rape.[1][2][3][4] Bengali Hindu women were especially targeted for rape by the Pakistani Army and its allies, though Bengali Muslim women were raped by Pakistani soldiers as well.[5][6][7] Some of these women died in captivity or committed suicide, while others moved from Bangladesh to India.[8] Imams and Muslim religious leaders declared the women "war booty".[9][10] The activists and leaders of Islamic parties are also accused to be involved in the rapes and abduction of women.[10]

The Pakistani elite believed that Hindus were behind the revolt and that as soon as there was a solution to the "Hindu problem", the conflict would resolve. Bengali Muslims were targeted in this pogrom due to supposedly retaining Hindu traditions.[5] For the Pakistani Establishment, the violence against Hindus was a strategic policy.[11] Muslim Pakistani men believed the sacrifice of Hindu women was needed to fix the national malaise.[12] Anecdotal evidence suggests that some Imams and Mullahs supported the rapes by the Pakistani Army and issued fatwas declaring the women war booty.[10][13] Those rapes apparently caused thousands of pregnancies, births of war babies, abortions, infanticide, suicide, and ostracism of the victims. This is often asserted to be one of the severest occurrences of wartime sexual violence.[14] The atrocities ended after the December 1971 surrender of the Pakistani military and supporting Razakar militias.[15][16]

Bengali Muslim men were targets of rape by West Pakistani soldiers as well.[17]

During the war, Bengali Muslim nationalists also committed mass rape of ethnic Bihari Muslim women, since the Bihari Muslim community supported Pakistan.[18][failed verification] Yasmin Saikia, a scholar, was informed repeatedly in Bangladesh that Pakistani, Bengali, and Bihari men raped Hindu women during the war.[19]

In 2009, almost 40 years after the events of 1971, a report published by the War Crimes Fact Finding Committee of Bangladesh accused 1,597 people of war crimes, including rape. Since 2010, the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) has indicted, tried, and sentenced several people to life imprisonment or death for their actions during the conflict. The stories of the rape victims have been told in movies and literature, and depicted in art.

The term Birangana was first introduced in 1971 by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman to refer to victims of rape during the Bangladesh Liberation War, in an attempt to prevent them from being outcast by the society.[20] Since 1972, victims of rape during the war have been recognized as Birangona, or "war heroines", by the government of Bangladesh.[20][21]

  1. ^ Sharlach 2000, pp. 92–93.
  2. ^ Sajjad 2012, p. 225.
  3. ^ Ghadbian 2002, p. 111.
  4. ^ Mookherjee 2012, p. 68.
  5. ^ a b Shirazi, Faegheh (27 September 2009). Velvet Jihad: Muslim Women's Quiet Resistance to Islamic Fundamentalism. University Press of Florida. ISBN 978-0-8130-5910-5. Muslim Bengali women have been raped by Pakistani soldiers to "cleanse" them of their alleged tendencies to uphold their Hindu traditions.
  6. ^ Misra, Amalendu (13 May 2013). Politics of Civil Wars: Conflict, Intervention & Resolution. Routledge. p. 56. ISBN 978-1-134-14130-2. During the civil war in East Pakistan (Bangladesh, 1971), for instance, an estimated 200,000 Bengali Muslim women were raped by the West Pakistani Urdu-speaking Muslim soldiers. In addition, around 25,000 women were forcibly impregnated in order to crush the demand for a separate homeland for Bengalis.
  7. ^ Bartrop, Paul R.; Jacobs, Steven Leonard, eds. (2014). Modern Genocide: The Definitive Resource and Document Collection. ABC-CLIO. p. 1866. ISBN 978-1-61069-364-6.
  8. ^ 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"
  9. ^ Siddiqi 1998, p. 208.
  10. ^ a b c D'Costa 2011, p. 108.
  11. ^ D'Costa 2011, p. 101.
  12. ^ Yasmin Saikia, Women, War, and the Making of Bangladesh : Remembering 1971, pg. 52
  13. ^ 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."
  14. ^ Shafqat 2007, p. 593: "The Bangladesh liberation war is often asserted to be one of the most grievous examples of wartime rape".
  15. ^ Kabia 2008, p. 13.
  16. ^ Wheeler 2000, p. 13.
  17. ^ Branche, R.; Virgili, F. (26 October 2012). Rape in Wartime. Springer. ISBN 978-1-137-28339-9.
  18. ^ D'Costa 2011, p. 104.
  19. ^ Saikia, Yasmin (2017). "Nations, Neighbours, and Humanity: Destroyed and Recovered in War and Violence". Melbourne Historical Journal. 44 (1): 23–40.
  20. ^ a b Mookherjee, Nayanika (June 2006). "'Remembering to forget': public secrecy and memory of sexual violence in the Bangladesh war of 1971". Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. 12 (2): 433–450. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9655.2006.00299.x. ISSN 1359-0987.
  21. ^ Mookherjee, Nayanika (2 November 2021). "Historicising the Birangona : Interrogating the Politics of Commemorating the Wartime Rape of 1971 in the Context of the 50 th Anniversary of Bangladesh". Strategic Analysis. 45 (6): 588–597. doi:10.1080/09700161.2021.2009663. ISSN 0970-0161. S2CID 246760529.