Editing 1971 Bangladesh Genocide

{{Act of Villainy
|location=Bangladesh 
|crimes=[[Genocide]]<br>[[Ethnic cleansing]]<br>Mass [[murder]]<br>[[War crimes]]<br>[[Rape]]<br>[[Torture]]
|perpetrator=[[Yahya Khan]]<br>Pakistan Army<br>[[East Pakistan Central Peace Committee]]<br>[[Razakars]]<br>Pro-Pakistani militias
|name=Evil Acts 
|Image=1971 Bangladesh Genocide.jpg
|date=March 26, 1971 - December 16, 1971
|motive = To suppress the Bengali and Hindu minorities of East Pakistan (failed)}}
{{Quote|In 1971, the self-appointed president of Pakistan and commander-in-chief of the army General Agha Mohammed Yahya Khan and his top generals prepared a careful and systematic military, economic, and political operation against East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). They planned to murder that country's Bengali intellectual, cultural, and political elite. They planned to indiscriminately murder hundreds of thousands of its Hindus and drive the rest into India. And they planned to destroy its economic base to insure that it would be subordinate to West Pakistan for at least a generation to come. This despicable and cutthroat plan was outright genocide.|[[wikipedia:Rudolph Rummel|Rudolph Rummel]]}}
The '''[[genocide]] in Bangladesh''' began on 26 March 1971 with the launch of [[Operation Searchlight]], as West Pakistan (now Pakistan) began a military crackdown on the East Pakistan wing (now Bangladesh) of the nation to suppress Bengali calls for self-determination. 

During the nine-month-long Bangladesh Liberation War, members of the Pakistan Armed Forces and supporting pro-Pakistani Islamist militias from [[Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami]] killed between 200,000 and 3,000,000 people and raped between 200,000 and 400,000 Bengali women, according to Bangladeshi and Indian sources, in a systematic campaign of [[genocidal rape]].

The actions against women were supported by Pakistan's religious leaders, who declared that Bengali women were ''gonimoter maal'' (Bengali for "public property"). As a result of the conflict, a further eight to ten million people, mostly Hindus, fled the country to seek refuge in neighbouring India. It is estimated that up to 30 million civilians were internally displaced out of 70 million. 

During the war, there was also ethnic violence between Bengalis and Urdu-speaking Biharis. Biharis faced reprisals from Bengali mobs and militias, and from 1,000 to 150,000 were killed.

There is an academic consensus that the events which took place during the Bangladesh Liberation War constituted a genocide; however, there are some scholars and authors who deny that the killing was a genocide.
==Background==
Bangladesh, as a nation, did not exist prior to 1971 because it was part of an area called “East Pakistan”. The pursuit of independence for Pakistan came following India’s independence from Britain. At the time, religion and culture separated the East and West sections: West Pakistan was populated by mostly Muslim Punjabis, while East Pakistan was more diverse with a considerable population of Hindu Bengalis. 

West Pakistan looked down upon their eastern neighbors, calling the area “a low-lying land of low-lying people” who “polluted” the area with non-Muslim values. Lacking empathy for their disregarded neighbors, the people of West Pakistan abused their eastward neighbors economically and through lack of aid. West Pakistani elites, living and working in the political center of the country, siphoned most of the country’s revenue, initially generated by East Pakistan. 

Additionally, West Pakistan neglected to send adequate aid following the Bhola Cyclone that ravaged East Pakistan, and left close to 500,000 dead in 1970. The amalgamation of denied human rights contributed to the commencement of the Bengali independence movement. In response to the Bengali’s call to secede, West Pakistan developed Operation Searchlight.

Operation Searchlight is seen by many as the first step in the Bengali genocide. Per the Bangladesh Genocide Archives, the operation, initiated on March 25, 1971, resulted in the death of between 5,000 and 100,000 Bengalis in a single night. Forces of the Pakistani Army targeted academics and Hindus, specifically murdering many Hindu university students and professors. The goal of the operation was to crush the Bengali nationalist movement through fear; however, the opposite occurred. Enraged at the actions of the Pakistan Army, Bangladesh declared its independence the following day. 

Over several months, the Pakistani Army conducted mass killings of young, able-bodied Hindu men. According to R.J. Rummel, “the Pakistan army [sought] out those especially likely to join the resistance — young boys. Sweeps were conducted of young men who were never seen again. Bodies of youths would be found in fields, floating down rivers, or near army camps” 

Men became primary targets (almost 80 percent male, as reported by the Bangladesh Genocide Archives). The abduction and subsequent rape of women by soldiers took place in camps for months. Many more were subject to “hit and run” rapes. Hit and run rape explains the brutality of forcing male family member–before their own death–view the rape of their female family member by soldiers. The use of rape, as a weapon of war by Pakistani forces, violated 200,000-400,000 Bengali women during March and December 1971. The high number represents the complicity of religious leaders who openly supported the rape of Bengali women, referring to victims as “war booty”.

Archer Blood, American ambassador to India, communicated the horrors to US officials. Unfortunately, the United States refused to respond because of Pakistan’s status as a [[Cold War]] ally. President [[Richard Nixon]], taking on a flippant and discriminatory attitude, regarded the genocide as a trivial matter, assuming a disinterested American public due to the race and religion of the victims. His belief that no one would care because the atrocities were happening to people of the Muslim faith, created an uninformed and disconnected America concerning the Bengali genocide of 1971.

The American government has never acknowledged the actions of the Pakistan Army as a genocide. [[Henry Kissinger]] characterized it as unwise and immoral, but never termed it to be genocidal. The horrible acts that occurred to the Bengali people was clearly a genocide under the terms of the UN Convention on the Convention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of 1948 (CPPCG). The CPPCG defines genocide as “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group."

To this day, Pakistan has continued to explicitly deny the occurrence of a genocide.  Despite this, the atrocities that mark the journey to Bangladesh’s independence have not swayed the Bengali people; their rich culture and flourishing country provide clear evidence. Today, Bangladesh is a prosperous country, ranking 46th of 211 countries in terms of GDP. They are one of the largest contributors to UN Peacekeeping forces, and the Global Peace Index ranks them as the third most peaceful country in South Asia (behind Bhutan and Nepal).

[[Category:Modern Villains]]
[[Category:Villainous Event]]
[[Category:Cold war villains]]
[[Category:Asian Villains]]
[[Category:Bangladesh]]
[[Category:Genocidal]]
[[Category:Mass Murderers]]
[[Category:Destroyer of Innocence]]
[[Category:Rapists]]
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