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The genocide in Bangladesh began on 26 March 1971 with the launch of Operation Searchlight, as West Pakistan began a military crackdown on the Eastern wing of the nation to suppress Bengali calls for self-determination. During the nine-month-long Bangladesh war for independence, members of the Pakistani military and supporting militias killed an estimated 300,000〔 to 3,000,000〔 people and raped between 200,000 to 400,000 Bangladeshi women in a systematic campaign of genocidal rape. The war also witnessed ethnic violence between Bengalis and Urdu-speaking Biharis. There is an academic consensus that the events which took place during the Bangladesh Liberation War were a genocide. == Background == Following the partition of India, Pakistan was a geographical anomaly, with both wings separated by 1000 miles of Indian territory. The wings were not only separated 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 "co-religionists". To this extent the West began a strategy to forcibly assimilate the Bengalis culturally. The Bengali people were the demographic majority in Pakistan, making up an estimated 75 million in East Pakistan compared with 55 million in the predominantly Punjabi-speaking West Pakistan. The majority in the East were Muslims, with large Hindu, Buddhist and Christian minorities. The people of the East were looked upon as second-class citizens by the West, and Amir Abdullah Khan Niazi, who served as head of the Pakistani Forces in East Pakistan in 1971, referred to the region as a "low-lying land of low, lying people". In 1948, a few months after the creation of Pakistan, Governor-General Mohammad Ali Jinnah declared Urdu as the national language of the newly formed state, although only four per cent of Pakistan's population spoke Urdu at that time. He branded those who supported the use of Bengali as communists, traitors and enemies of the state. The refusal by successive governments to recognise Bengali as the second national language led to the formation of the Bengali language movement and strengthened support for the newly formed Awami League which was founded in the East as an alternative to the ruling Muslim League. A 1952 protest in Dhaka, the capital of East Pakistan, was forcibly broken up, resulting in the deaths of several protesters. Bengali nationalists viewed those who had died as martyrs for their cause, and the violence led to calls for secession. The Indo-Pakistani War of 1965 caused further grievances, as the military had assigned no extra units to the defence of the East. This was a matter of concern to the Bengalis who saw their nation undefended in case of Indian attack during the conflict of 1965, and that Ayub Khan, the dictator ruler of Pakistan, was willing to lose the East if it meant gaining Kashmir. The slow response to the Bhola cyclone which struck on 12 November 1970 is seen as a contributing factor in the December 1970 general election, the East Pakistan-based Awami League, headed by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, won a national majority in the first democratic election since the creation of Pakistan. The West Pakistani establishment prevented them from forming a government. President Yahya Khan banned the Awami League and declared martial law. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「1971 Bangladesh genocide」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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