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During the 1971 Bangladesh war for independence, members of the Pakistani military and supporting Bihari and Razaker militias raped between two and four hundred thousand Bangladeshi women in a systematic campaign of genocidal rape. Scholars have suggested that rape was used to terrorize both the Bengali-speaking Muslim majority and the Hindu minority of Bangladesh. The rapes caused thousands of pregnancies, births of war babies, abortions, incidents of infanticide and suicide, and, in addition, led to ostracisation of the victims. Recognised as one of the major occurrences of war crimes anywhere, the atrocities ended after surrender of the Pakistani military and supporting Bihari and Razaker militias . Initially India claimed its support for the Mukti Bahini and later intervention was on humanitarian grounds, but after the UN rejected this argument, India claimed intervention was needed to protect its own security, and it is now widely seen as a humanitarian move. Despite the Pakistani government's attempts to censor news during the conflict, reports of atrocities filtered out, attracting international media and public attention, and drawing widespread outrage and criticism. 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. ==Background== Following the partition of India and the creation of Pakistan the East and West 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. To this extent the West began a strategy to forcibly assimilate the Bengalis culturally. The Bengali-speaking people 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 in February 1952. 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 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 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. 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. According to Eric Heinze the Pakistani forces targeted both Hindus and Bengali-speaking Muslims. 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. According to the political scientist R J Rummel, the Pakistani army looked upon the Bengalis as "subhuman" and that the Hindus were "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". 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「Rape during the Bangladesh Liberation War」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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