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. Some of these women died in captivity or committed suicide, while others moved from East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) to India.
Both Bengali Muslim and Bengali Hindu women were targeted for rape. West Pakistani men wanted to cleanse a nation corrupted by the presence of Hindus and believed that the sacrifice of Hindu women was needed. Given that Bengali culture itself was seen as inherently oversaturated with Hindu influence, Bengali women, Hindu and Muslim, were viewed as being either outright Hindus or Muslims in name yet Hindus in essence, respectively. These rapes caused thousands of pregnancies, births of war babies, abortions, infanticide, suicide, and ostracism of the victims, in what has been often asserted to be one of the most severe occurrences of wartime sexual violence in modern history. The atrocities ended after the December 1971 surrender of the Pakistani military and supporting Razakar militias.
During the war, Bengali nationalists also raped ethnic Bihari Muslim women, since the Bihari Muslim community was accused of being supportive of Pakistan. Bengali Muslim men were targets of rape by West Pakistani soldiers as well.
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. Since 1972, victims of rape during the war have been recognised as Birangona, or "war heroines", by the government of Bangladesh.
Background
Following the partition of India and the creation of Pakistan, the East and West wings were separated not only geographically but also culturally. The authorities of the west viewed the Bengali Muslims in the East as "too Bengali" and their application of Islam as "inferior and impure", and this made them unreliable. To this extent, the West began a strategy to forcibly assimilate the Bengalis culturally. The Bengalis of East Pakistan were chiefly Muslim, but their numbers were interspersed with a significant Hindu minority. Very few spoke Urdu, which in 1948 had been declared the national language of Pakistan. To express their opposition, activists in East Pakistan founded the Bengali language movement. Earlier in 1949, other activists had founded the Awami League as an alternative to the ruling Muslim League in West Pakistan. In the next decade and a half, Bengalis became gradually disenchanted with the balance of power in Pakistan, which was under military rule during much of this time; eventually some began to call for secession. By the late 1960s, a perception had emerged that the people of East Pakistan were second-class citizens. It did not help that General A. A. K. Niazi, head of Pakistani Forces in East Pakistan, called East Pakistan a "low-lying land of low, lying people".
There had been opposition to military rule in West Pakistan as well. Eventually the military relented, and in December 1970 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. In Dacca, following the election, a general said, "Don't worry, we will not allow these black bastards to rule over us". Soon President Yahya Khan banned the Awami League and declared martial law in East Pakistan.
With the goal of putting down Bengali nationalism, the Pakistan Army launched Operation Searchlight on 25 March 1971. The Pakistani forces targeted both Bengali Muslims and Hindus. In the ensuing 1971 Bangladesh genocide, the army caused the deaths of up to 3 million people, created up to 10 million refugees who fled to India, and displaced a further 30 million within East Pakistan.
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. This notion of the Pakistan army found its origin in the martial race classifications of British colonial rule, wherein ethnicities such as Punjabis and Pashtuns were categorized during the Raj as "martial races" and Bengalis as non-martial. 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". This racism was then expressed in that the Bengalis, being inferior, must have their gene pool "fixed" through forcible impregnation. Belén Martín Lucas has described the rapes as "ethnically motivated".
Pakistani Army actions The attacks were led by General Tikka Khan, who was the architect of Operation Searchlight and was given the name the "butcher of Bengal" by the Bengalis for his actions. Khan said—when reminded on 27 March 1971 that he was in charge of a majority province—"I will reduce this majority to a minority". Bina D'Costa believes an anecdote used by Khan is significant, in that it provides proof of the mass rapes being a deliberate strategy. In Jessore, while speaking with a group of journalists, Khan was reported to have said, "Pehle inko Mussalman karo" (). D'Costa argues that this shows that in the highest echelons of the armed forces, the Bengalis were perceived as being disloyal Muslims and unpatriotic Pakistanis.
Both Muslim and Hindu women were targeted for rape. West Pakistani men wanted to cleanse a nation corrupted by the presence of Hindus and believed that the sacrifice of Hindu women was needed; Bengali women were thus viewed as Hindu or Hindu-like. Imams, mullahs, and a fatwa from West Pakistan declared that Bengali women could be handled as ("war booty" or "public property"). Susan Brownmiller wrote that 80 percent of raped women were Muslims, matching the demographics of Bangladesh, although Christian Gerlach stated that this "has no clear basis". According to D'Costa, Bengali women were indiscriminately raped by the army, though Muslim women were forcibly impregnated while Hindu women were often killed after being raped. Salil Tripathi wrote that almost all of the rape victims he interviewed were Muslim, contrary to claims that Hindu women were especially targeted. Lisa Sharlach wrote that rape victims were primarily Bengali women "of all castes and religions", but that girls may have been spared if they could recite Muslim prayers. M. Rafiqul Islam described Hindu women and girls as the main targets for rape and sexual violence.
The perpetrators conducted nighttime raids, assaulting women in their villages, often in front of their families, as part of the terror campaign. Victims were also kidnapped and held in special camps where they were repeatedly assaulted. Many of those held in the camps were murdered or committed suicide, with some taking their own lives by using their hair to hang themselves; the soldiers responded to these suicides by cutting the women's hair off. Time magazine reported on 563 girls who had been kidnapped and held by the military; all of them were between three and five months pregnant when the military began to release them. Some women were forcibly used as prostitutes. While the Pakistani government estimated the number of rapes in the hundreds, other estimates range between 200,000 and 400,000.
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. 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. The International Commission of Jurists concluded that the atrocities carried out by the Pakistani armed forces "were part of a deliberate policy by a disciplined force". 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. 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".
Not all Pakistani military personnel supported the violence: General Sahabzada Yaqub Khan and Mitty Masud, who advised the president against military action, and Major Ikram Sehgal, had all resigned in protest. Former Air Marshal Asghar Khan, a Pashtun politician and leader of the Tehreek-e-Istiqlal; Ghaus Bakhsh Bizenjo, a Balochi politician; and Khan Abdul Wali Khan, leader of the National Awami Party, protested over the actions of the armed forces. Those imprisoned for their dissenting views on the violence included Sabihuddin Ghausi and I. A. Rahman, who were both journalists; the Sindhi leader G. M. Syed; the poet Ahmad Salim; Anwar Pirzado, who was a member of the air force; Professor M. R. Hassan; Tahera Mazhar; and Imtiaz Ahmed. Malik Ghulam Jilani, who was also arrested, had openly opposed the armed action in the East; a letter he had written to Yahya Khan was widely publicised. Altaf Hussain Gauhar, the editor of the Dawn newspaper, was also imprisoned. In 2013 Jilani and Faiz Ahmad Faiz, a poet, were honoured by the Bangladeshi government for their actions.
Militias According to Peter Tomsen, a political scientist, Pakistan's secret service, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, in conjunction with the political party Jamaat-e-Islami, formed militias such as Al-Badr ("the moon") and the Al-Shams ("the sun") to conduct operations against the nationalist movement. These militias targeted non-combatants and committed rapes as well as other crimes. Local collaborators known as Razakars also took part in the atrocities. The term has since become a pejorative akin to the Western term "Judas".
Members of the Muslim League, such as Nizam-e-Islam, Jamaat-e-Islami, and Jamiat Ulema Pakistan, who had lost the election, collaborated with the military and acted as an intelligence organisation for them. Members of Jamaat-e-Islami and some of its leaders collaborated with the Pakistani forces in rapes and targeted killings. The atrocities by Al-Badr and the Al-Shams garnered worldwide attention from news agencies; accounts of massacres and rapes were widely reported.
International reaction
There is an academic consensus that the events of the nine-month conflict were a genocide. The atrocities in East Pakistan were the first instances of war rape to attract international media attention, and Sally J. Scholz has written that this was the first genocide to capture the interest of the mass media. The women's human rights organisation Bangladesh Mahila Parishat took part in the war by publicising the atrocities being carried out by the Pakistani army.