User:S66fh/Rape during the Bangladesh Liberation War

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The Biragongas, were the victims to a systematic campaign of genocidal rape organized by the the Pakistani Military and their supporting Rajakars during the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War. The term Biragonga refers to war heroines, and was first introduced by Sheikh Mujib in 1971, in an attempt to prevent them from being outcast by the society. The number of victims is said to be greater than the estimated 200,000 to 400,000 with difficulty recognizing the real count of victims due to deaths attributed to suicide, military torture and migration to India .The genocide was motivated by the Pakistani perception of Bengalis being racially inferior, with Bengali Hindus being the primary target although majority of the casualties consisted of Bengali females of all castes and religions. Motivated by the ideology of "Islam in danger" the West Pakistan leaders began their military campaign by terming all Bengali freedom fighters as Hindus through the release of a fatwa which would require the "wealth and women" to be secured as war booty. There exist numerous documents which highlighted the participation of Bengali Islamic Political Party leaders in the direct abduction and rape of these women, going as far as calling them public property, to justify the acts of the Pakistani military.

These rapes which caused thousands of unwanted pregnancies resulted in war babies, abortions, infanticide suicide and societal ostracization of the victims. The military of West Pakistan raped Bengali women to strengthen the ideology of Pakistanis being the dominant and powerful population, by taking away their honor and dignity as a way to emasculate the Bengali men who could not protect their own people. These women were forbidden from performing abortions, as a way to “purify” the Bengali race and leave a long-lasting mark on Bengali communities. Besides the West Pakistan military, identified perpetrators include Indian soldiers as well as Bengali militiamen, with certain recounts of Bihari men targeting Hindu women at the time. However due to the political divide, non-Bengali Muslims such as the migrated Bihari population, as well as other Bengalis were allegedly subject to sexual violence and physical tortures on a large scale in districts such as Jessore, Khulna, Mymensingh and Chittagong. The rapes committed by the “nationalist” Bengalis against non Bengalis are deliberately not mentioned in common liberation literature. The psychological and physical trauma that the war had left behind resulted in disruptions of cultural frameworks, that essentially left these women helpless in society. Following the independence of Bangladesh, the rehabilitation of the Biragongas focused on marrying them off or introducing them to the labor market, although the efforts remained unsuccessful as they were subjugated to loss of sociability and public shaming in their villages if revealed that they were victims. Consequently there is minimal recognition for the struggle of the Biragonga particularly, due to the Islamic revivalism in Bengali national identity politics, which resulted in censoring their stories and destroying official documents relating to this war atrocity, to avoid further disruption of the societal and cultural standards of dignified women.