Rape during the Bangladesh Liberation War
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During the 1971
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. For Pakistanis, the violence against Hindus was a strategic policy.
During the war, Bengali nationalists also committed mass rape of ethnic Bihari Muslim women, since the Bihari Muslim community supported Pakistan.[15] Yasmin Saikia, a scholar, was informed repeatedly in Bangladesh that Pakistani, Bengali, and Bihari men raped Hindu women during the war.[16]
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.[17] Since 1972, victims of rape during the war have been recognized as Birangona, or "war heroines", by the government of Bangladesh.[17][18]
Background
Following the partition of India and the creation of Pakistan the
There had been opposition to military rule in West Pakistan as well. Eventually the military relented, and in December 1970 the first ever elections were held. To the surprise of many, East Pakistan's Awami League, headed by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, won a clear majority. The West Pakistani establishment was displeased with the results.[25] In Dacca following the election a general said "Don't worry, we will not allow these black bastards to rule over us".[26][27] Soon President Yahya Khan banned the Awami League and declared martial law in East Pakistan.[28][29]
With the goal of putting down
Rounaq Jahan alleges elements of racism in the Pakistan army, who he says considered the Bengalis "racially inferior—a non-martial and physically weak race", and has accused the army of using organised rape as a weapon of war.[33][34] According to the political scientist R. J. Rummel, the Pakistani army looked upon the Bengalis as "subhuman" and viewed the Hindus "as Jews to the Nazis: scum and vermin that best be exterminated".[35] This racism was then expressed in that the Bengalis, being inferior, must have their gene pool "fixed" through forcible impregnation.[36] Belén Martín Lucas has described the rapes as "ethnically motivated".[37]
Pakistani Army actions
The attacks were led by General
Jessica Lee Rehman calls rape in 1971 an instance of religious terrorism. She said "The Pakistan Army is an Islamic institution, its soldiers are warriors of God and ...they rape in God's name. Therefore the raping of girls and women, the forced bodily transgressions, and the mutilations are considered to be a triumph for good."[41] Bengalis were dehumanised and Bengali women were perceived as prostitutes inviting sex. They were thought to have Hindu features which deleted any thought for their "Muslim" status that might prevent a perpetrator's savage activities. Faisal, a Pakistani officer who had been in East Pakistan, portrays Bengali culture in terms of the differences between East and West Pakistani ladies, pushing the open discrimination against Bengali women: "The women bathe openly so that men walking by can see them, and they wear saris that with one pull fall off their body, like Indians. They are very attached to music, like Hindus, and they have their daughters dance for guests, they take pride in this dancing and music, like prostitutes. My daughter does not dance, neither does my wife. This music and dancing isn't Islamic. Our ladies are not prostitutes like Bengalis."[41] A Bengali Muslim lady Ferdousi Priyabhashini says the soldiers raping her said to her, "You are a Hindu! You are a spy," because she wore a sari and bindi.[42]
The perpetrators conducted nighttime raids, assaulting women in their villages,
In what has been described by Jenneke Arens as a deliberate attempt to destroy an ethnic group, many of those assaulted were raped, murdered and then bayoneted in the genitalia.[53] Adam Jones, a political scientist, has said that one of the reasons for the mass rapes was to undermine Bengali society through the "dishonoring" of Bengali women and that some women were raped until they died or were killed following repeated attacks.[54] [55] The International Commission of Jurists concluded that the atrocities carried out by the Pakistan armed forces "were part of a deliberate policy by a disciplined force".[56] The writer Mulk Raj Anand said the rapes were too widespread and systematic to be anything but conscious military policy, "planned by the West Pakistanis in a deliberate effort to create a new race" or to undermine Bengali separatism.[57] Amita Malik, reporting from Bangladesh following the Pakistan armed forces surrender, wrote that one West Pakistani soldier said: "We are going. But we are leaving our seed behind".[58]
Not all Pakistani military personnel supported the violence: General
Militias
According to
Members of the
International reaction
There is an academic consensus that the events of the nine-month conflict were a
Owing to the scale of the atrocities, US embassy staff had sent telegrams indicating that a genocide was occurring. One, which became known as the
Before the end of the war the international community had begun to provide aid in large quantities to the refugees living in India. Although humanitarian aid was given, there was little support for the war crimes trials which Bangladesh proposed at the end of the war.[79] Critics of the United Nations have used the atrocities of 1971 to argue that military intervention was the only thing to stop the mass murder.[80] Writing to The New York Times, a group of women said in response to women being shunned by family and husbands, "It is unthinkable that innocent wives whose lives were virtually destroyed by war are now being totally destroyed by their own husbands". International aid was also forthcoming owing to the issue of war rape.[81]
Hindu victims
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. For Pakistanis, the violence against Hindus was a strategic policy.[9] Muslim Pakistani men believed the sacrifice of Hindu women was needed to fix the national malaise.[10] Anecdotal evidence suggests that Imams and Mullahs supported the rapes by the Pakistani Army and issued fatwas declaring the women war booty. A fatwa from West Pakistan during the war asserted that women taken from Bengali Hindus could be considered war booty.[8][11]
The mostly Punjabi soldiers hated anything to do with Hinduism.[82] The extreme hatred Pakistanis felt towards Hindus could be seen in their especially brutal violence against Hindus as the Pakistani Army and its local allies raped and murdered Hindu women. The implication for Bengali women of being connected in any way to a "Hindu" identity was rape by the Army. Women were captured and taken to camps established throughout the country.[83] In these military camps and cantonments the Pakistani soldiers kept the captives as their sex-slaves.[84][85]
Female Hindu captives were raped in Pakistani Army camps.[86] The Pakistani Army committed mass rape of Hindu women because they were Hindus and the Army intended to destroy their faith, social position and self-esteem.[87] The policy of raping Hindu captives intended to change the community's bloodline.[86] The total effect of mass sexual violence against Hindu women demonstrated the existence of the genocidal actus reas.[88] In the Akayesu case the Bangladeshi Tribunal emphasised that the violence against Hindu women was committed not just against them individually but because of their membership of their community.[88]
Bina D'Costa spoke with many respondents who especially mentioned the brutality of Pakistan's army in its "handling" of Hindus. The members from the Hindu community with whom she interacted with firmly believed in the persecution of Hindus by the Pakistan army and Razakaar during the war. Hindu women who were kidnapped by Pakistan army were never seen again; mostly they were killed after being raped. Bina D'Costa interacted with families of two Hindu women who were taken by "Punjabi" army men, neither of them returned to their respective homes after the war.[89] Aubrey Menen who was a war correspondent wrote about a 17 year old Hindu bride who was gang raped by six Pakistani soldiers according to her father.
Two went into the room that had been built for the bridal couple. The others stayed behind with the family, one of them covering them with his gun. They heard a barked order, and the bridegroom's voice protesting. Then there was silence until the bride screamed...In a few minutes one of the soldiers came out, his uniform in disarray. He grinned to his companions. Another soldier took his place in the extra room. And so on, until all six had raped the belle of the village. Then all six left, hurriedly. The father found his daughter lying on the string unconscious and bleeding. Her husband was crouched on the floor, kneeling over his vomit.[90]
Aftermath
In the immediate aftermath of the war, one pressing problem was the very high number of unwanted pregnancies of rape victims. Estimates of the number of pregnancies resulting in births range from 25,000[71] to the Bangladeshi government's figure of 70,000,[91] while one publication by the Centre for Reproductive Law and Policy gave a total of 250,000.[92] A government-mandated victim relief programme was set up with the support of the World Health Organization and International Planned Parenthood Federation, among whose goals it was to organise abortion facilities to help rape victims terminate unwanted pregnancies. A doctor at a rehabilitation centre in Dhaka reported 170,000 abortions of pregnancies caused by the rapes, and the births of 30,000 war babies during the first three months of 1972.[93] Dr. Geoffrey Davis, an Australian doctor and abortion specialist who worked for the programme, estimated that there had been about 5,000 cases of self-induced abortions.[94] He also said that during his work he heard of numerous infanticides and suicides by victims. His estimate of the total number of rape victims was 400,000, twice as high as the official estimate of 200,000 cited by the Bangladeshi government.[95] Most of the victims also contracted sexual infections.[96] Many suffered from feelings of intense shame and humiliation, and a number were ostracised by their families and communities or committed suicide.[73]
The feminist writer Cynthia Enloe has written that some pregnancies were intended by the soldiers and perhaps their officers as well.[92] A report from the International Commission of Jurists said, "Whatever the precise numbers, the teams of American and British surgeons carrying out abortions and the widespread government efforts to persuade people to accept these girls into the community, testify to the scale on which raping occurred".[97] The commission also said that Pakistani officers not only allowed their men to rape, but enslaved women themselves.[98]
Following the conflict the rape victims were seen as a symbol of "social pollution" and shame. Few were able to return to families or old homes because of this.
On 18 February 1972 the state formed the Bangladesh Women's Rehabilitation Board, which was tasked with helping the victims of rape and to help with the adoption programme.[103] Several international agencies took part in the adoption programme, such as Mother Teresa's Sisters of Charity. The majority of the war babies were adopted in the Netherlands and Canada as the state wished to remove the reminders of Pakistan from the newly formed nation.[104] However, not all women wanted their child taken, and some were forcibly removed and sent for adoption, a practice which was encouraged by Rahman, who said, "I do not want those polluted blood [sic] in this country".[105] While many women were glad for the abortion programme, as they did not have to bear a child conceived of rape, others had to go full term, filled with hatred towards the child they carried. Others, who had their children adopted out so as to return to "mainstream life", would not look at their newborn as it was taken from them.[106] In the 1990s many of these children returned to Bangladesh to search for their birth mothers.[107] In 2008, D'Costa attempted to find those who had been adopted, however very few responded, one who did said "I hated being a kid, and I am angry at Bangladesh for not taking care of me when I needed it most. I don’t have any roots and that makes me cry. So that is why I am trying to learn more about where I was born."[40]
Forty years after the war, two sisters who had been raped were interviewed by Deutsche Welle. Aleya stated she had been taken by the Pakistani army when she was thirteen, and was gang raped repeatedly for seven months. She states she was tortured and was five months pregnant when she returned to her home. Her sister, Laily, says she was pregnant when she was taken by the armed forces, and lost the child. Later she fought alongside the Mukti Bahini. Both say that the state has failed the birangona, and that all they received was "humiliation, insults, hatred, and ostracism."[108]
Pakistani government reaction
After the conflict, the Pakistani government decided on a policy of silence regarding the rapes.[50] They set up the Hamoodur Rahman Commission, a judicial commission to prepare an account of the circumstances surrounding the atrocities of the 1971 war and Pakistan's surrender. The commission was highly critical of the army.[109] The chiefs of staff of the army and the Pakistan Air Force were removed from their positions for attempting to interfere with the commission.[110] The Commission based its reports on interviews with politicians, officers and senior commanders. The final reports were submitted in July 1972, but all were subsequently destroyed except for one held by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the Pakistani president. The findings were never made public.[111]
In 1974 the commission was reopened and issued a supplementary report, which remained classified for 25 years until published by the magazine India Today.[112] The report said that 26,000 people were killed, rapes numbered in the hundreds, and that the Mukti Bahini rebels engaged in widespread rape and other human rights abuses.[49] Sumit Ganguly, a political scientist, believes that the Pakistani establishment has yet to come to terms with the atrocities carried out, saying that, in a visit to Bangladesh in 2002, Pervez Musharraf expressed regret for the atrocities rather than accepting responsibility.[113]
War Crimes prosecutions
In 2008, after a 17-year investigation, the War Crimes Fact Finding Committee released documentation identifying 1,597 people who had taken part in the atrocities. The list included members of the
A conservative Muslim society has preferred to throw a veil of negligence and denial on the issue, allowed those who committed or colluded with gender violence to thrive, and left the women victims to struggle in anonymity and shame and without much state or community support.[117]
The deputy leader of Jamaat-e-Islami,
In literature and media
Orunodoyer Ognishakhi (Pledge to a New Dawn), the first film about the war, was screened in 1972 on the first
In 1995 Gita Sahgal produced the documentary War Crimes File, which was screened on Channel 4.[134] In 2011 the film Meherjaan was shown at the Guwahati International Film Festival. It explores the war from two perspectives: that of a woman who loved a Pakistani soldier and that of a person born from rape.[135]
In 1994, the book
Published in 2012, the book Rising from the Ashes: Women's Narratives of 1971 includes oral testimonies of women affected by the Liberation War. As well as an account from Taramon Bibi, who fought and was awarded the Bir Protik (Symbol of Valour) for her actions, there are nine interviews with women who were raped. The book's publication in English at the time of the fortieth anniversary of the war was noted in The New York Times as an "important oral history".[117]
The 2014 film Children of War portrays sexual violence during the war. The film by Mrityunjay Devvrat, starring Farooq Sheikh, Victor Banerjee, Raima Sen, among others, is meant to "send shivers down the viewers' spine. We want to make it so repulsive that no one even entertains the thought of pardoning rapists, let alone commit the crime. The shoot took its toll on all of us."[138]
Footnotes
- ^ "Rape can be especially effective as a tactic of genocide when used against females of communities that cast shame upon the rape victim rather than the rapist. In such communities, the rape forever damages the social standing of the survivor. Bengali girls and women who endured the genocidal rape had to cope not only with their physical injuries and trauma, but with a society hostile to violated women. The blame for loss of honour falls not upon the rapist, but upon the raped.".[58]
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