INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
It was the summer of 1971, and the distant murmurs of a war that began months earlier had made their way to Rajshahi in Bangladesh, across
farmhouse.Armed soldiers threw the two girls into the back of the truck, where they discovered several women sitting back to back with their
The truck continued through the small town, making several stops; each time loading more women and girls into the back as if they were
commander, Gen Tikka Khan, notorious for overseeing Operation Searchlight, a murderous crackdown on Bengali separatists in what was then
East Pakistan, which led to a genocidal crusade during the liberation war that followed.But Jahan was about to become a victim of another
brutal tactic of the Pakistani army
Alongside the killings, soldiers carried out a violent campaign of mass rape against Bengali women and girls, in what many historians
finally came to a stop, the girls found themselves in military barracks
The next few months were a blur for Jahan, who regularly passed out during her confinement
Jahan was held were set up across the country
Official estimates put the number of Bengali women raped at between 200,000 and 400,000, though even those numbers are considered
conservative by some.Though ethnic rape was feature of Partition years earlier, what Bengali women experienced was one of the first recorded
But despite its shocking scale, little remains known about it outside the region.OstracisedWithin Bangladesh, widespread stigma led to the
women being ostracised by their communities, and their horrifying accounts were often suppressed by shame
every corner of Bangladesh, there are survivors with terrifying testimonies.In August 1971, Razia Begum had gone looking for her husband,
Abu Sarkar, who had been missing for several days
She wandered anxiously through the abandoned streets of Tejturi Bazar in Dhaka, where Sarkar was a fruit seller, but he was nowhere to be
Begum turned a corner, when she found herself face to face with a group of soldiers
She tried to run but was struck on the head with a rifle; a scar she still bears.Begum was dragged to a nearby forest where she was raped
repeatedly over a period of weeks
The soldiers were stationed close by and returned at different times of the day
took her to a shelter, which Begum describes as a lost-and-found for women who were abducted during the war
Such makeshift shelters had been set up in districts across the region for the many women who had been abducted and abandoned miles from
Although independence had been won, thousands of Bengali women, such as Jahan and Begum, would be rescued from shelters and rape camps
across the country.Rescue missionMaleka Khan, then secretary of the Bangladesh Girl Guides Association, was tasked with mobilising female
volunteers to help with war recovery efforts
But after learning about the discovery of women who had been raped and held captive in underground bunkers near Jahangir Gate in Dhaka, Khan
decided to lead the rescue mission herself.When Khan arrived, she was shocked by what she saw
There was an air of disbelief about the whole thing
In an effort to integrate rape survivors back into society, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the founding father of the nation, granted them the
honorific of Birangona (war heroine) and established a rehabilitation programme for the women, of which Khan became executive
Two things then happened: temporary legislation to allow later abortions and an international adoption campaign for babies that had been
abandoned.Geoffrey Davis, an Australian doctor who specialised in late-term abortions, was brought in by the World Health Organization to
oversee the high-risk procedures
artillery ahead and they would shell the hospitals and schools
And that caused absolute chaos in the town
When they got sick, they received no treatment
Rising Silence, an award-winning documentary by the British-Bangladeshi playwright Leesa Gazi, preserves the testimony of some of those
violence? If we need to shame a family, we go after their daughters
If we need to shame a country, we go after their daughters
Photograph: HandoutRape continues to be deployed in war as a tool of fear, a military strategy to terrorise communities and destroy their
A recent report by the UN special representative on sexual violence in conflict listed 18 countries where women were being raped in war, and
Naripokkho was instrumental in supporting Rohingya rape victims in 2017, when Bangladesh once again found itself on the frontline of a rape
epidemic, as more than 700,000 Rohingya Muslims crossed its borders to escape genocide in neighbouring Myanmar.Among them were thousands of
women and children who had suffered horrifying sexual violence at the hands of Burmese soldiers
Harrowing details emerged of women being tied to trees and subjected to rape for days, tortured by bamboo sticks and set on fire
Once again, in an echo of past events, many of the women would also find themselves battling with the stigma of unwanted pregnancies.The
in getting genocide recognition from the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention and Genocide Watch, and US Congress recently introduced a
historic resolution recognising that a genocide occurred in 1971
The government is now lobbying for the UN and international community to recognise that a genocide was committed during the liberation
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This article first appeared/also appeared in theguardian.com
