Rape during the Bangladesh Liberation War

Common card · No. 206572

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...

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