Genocide in Bangladesh

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Skulls of genocide victims in the Bangladesh Liberation War Museum
First page of the Blood Telegram in which Archer Blood , the ruthless actions of the Pakistani military against the Bangladeshi independence movement as genocide referred

The genocide in Bangladesh was committed by the Pakistani military and militias of the Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami to suppress Bangladesh's aspirations for independence during the Bangladesh war . Religious minorities living in East Pakistan (today: Bangladesh), especially Hindus , and people who were actually or supposedly close to the Awami League were murdered . The systematic massacres that began on March 25, 1971 and lasted until mid-January 1972 cost the lives of 3 million people, according to the Bangladeshi authorities. 250,000 women were raped. 10 million people fled to India and 30 million people were evicted from their homes.

prehistory

Location of West (today: Pakistan) and East Pakistan (today: Bangladesh) within Asia (1971)

After the partition of British India into a Hindu majority, secular state ( India ) and a Muslim state ( Pakistan ) the division was in the course of Bengal in 1947 which is also predominantly Muslim East Bengal Pakistan slammed shut. Despite the common Islamic religion, West Pakistan and East Pakistan separated linguistic and cultural differences. The eastern Bengali part (East Pakistan) had to adopt Urdu, the language commonly used in the west, as the state language, although it had a larger population than the other part. East Pakistan was treated like a colony by West Pakistan. The fertile East achieved surpluses with its jute and rice exports, which benefited almost exclusively from the western part, where they were primarily used to supply the military. The Bengali were severely under-represented in both the military and the state administration. After the resignation of President Muhammed Ayub Khan in 1968, his successor General Agha Muhammad Yahya Khan saw no alternative to calling for the first free elections in all of Pakistan since the state was founded.

In view of the landslide victory of the Awami League in the east, which was influenced by the dissatisfaction with the central government after the devastating cyclone in November 1970 , and the population conditions in both parts of the country, this should have led to an Awami government for the entire state. This encountered resistance in West Pakistan, especially from the election winner there, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, and the Pakistani army . They decided to bloody suppression of separatist aspirations. Under the pretext of negotiations, they secretly planned a war of extermination against the Awami League, the Bengali elite and the Hindu minority in order to secure their supremacy once and for all.

In March 1971, foreign journalists were expelled from the country and Bengali military units were transferred to West Pakistan. On March 25, 1971, Mujibur Rahman , co-founder of the Awami League, was arrested at night in his home and flown to West Pakistan where he was interned in Faisalabad (then Lyallpur). Other League leaders therefore fled to India. General Yahya Khan ordered his commanders to begin cleanups in East Pakistan that same day. The aim was to eliminate the Awami League, to drive the 10 million Hindus out of Bangladesh and to subdue the rest of the population through terror.

genocide

During the 9 month war, the Pakistani army and its local collaborators - the Razakars and Al Badr - killed three million people. There have been reports of rape against Bengali women and also of forced prostitution . The number of women raped is estimated at up to 200,000. In addition, ten million people - mostly Hindus - were displaced across the border into India.

The first victims of the purges were politicians and supporters of the Awami League, as well as Bengali security and police forces. Some escaped with their weapons and started a guerrilla war against the initially oppressively superior West Pakistani army. The overwhelming majority of the victims of imprisonment, torture, rape and killings were defenseless ordinary citizens who were caught unexpectedly and unprepared by the violence.

Murder of intellectuals

Sculptural representation of the murder of intellectuals

The Pakistani army and its Islamist collaborators systematically rounded up East Pakistan's intellectuals, including doctors, engineers, lawyers, writers, academics, journalists and high-ranking bureaucrats, to murder them. In almost 10 months they killed 991 teachers, 13 journalists, 49 doctors, 42 lawyers and 16 writers, artists and engineers. At the beginning of December, on orders from the army, leaders of the Bengali community in the east Pakistani capital Dhaka were arrested and taken to camps near Sabhar . On December 14, 1971, they were all killed. In memory of the victims, December 14th is celebrated in Bangladesh as "Shahid Buddhijibi Dibosh" ('Day of the Martyrs-Intellectuals'). Even after the end of the war on December 16, there were reports of killings by Pakistani soldiers or Islamists. The entire Bengali intellectual elite should be destroyed.

Massacre of religious minorities

The battle cry of the West Pakistani side was: “Killing the Kafirs” - “The murder of the infidels”. The Pakistani army and its allied Islamist militias, incited by Muslim hate preachers, used mass violence against religious minorities. They massacred minorities such as Christians, Buddhists and animists, and in particular killed every Hindu they found. The Hindu population of East Pakistan should be exterminated completely, and in the most cruel way possible. 10 million Hindus fled to India before the massacres.

Violence against women

Numerous women and girls were tortured, raped and killed during the war. The total number of rape crimes is estimated at 200,000 to 400,000 , according to Gendercide Watch . Many girls and women were raped publicly in front of their families. Many then committed suicide. Many were rejected by their families in order to protect family honor after the rape.

The Pakistani army held thousands of Bengali women as prisoners of war in brothels and army bases. Most of the girls were kidnapped from Dhaka University grounds and from private homes and were only released after the war. The martyrdom of affected women did not end with independence. They often suffered from social ostracism because society and their families no longer accepted them. The founder of the state, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman , declared them “Birangona”, in German “War heroines”, in order to protect them from the exclusion mechanisms of the patriarchal society. Many women who have been raped have become mothers as a result of the sexual violence - it is estimated that around 25,000 cases. The government, together with the International Planned Parenthood Federation, set up rehabilitation centers in Dhaka and other parts of the country to provide medical care and abortions to women.

Post-history

Then in 1973 Sheikh Mujib passed the "International Crimes (Tribunal) Act", according to which genocide and crimes against humanity must be prosecuted. But Bangladesh could not lead this process because Sheikh Mujib was murdered along with his family in 1975, and as a result those who had collaborated with Pakistan came to power. These forces were able to ensure that the genocide was not dealt with for 39 years.

That changed when Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina , daughter of Sheikh Mujib, won the parliamentary elections in December 2008 with an absolute majority with the promise to convene a war crimes tribunal. A war crimes tribunal was also set up by the government in March 2010 to deal with the genocide. This tribunal initially sentenced Abdul Quader Molla as a war criminal to life imprisonment. After days of protests, the trial was resumed, Molla was sentenced to death and hanged on December 12, 2013. Salahuddin Quader Chowdhury was also executed on November 22, 2015.

Genocide Remembrance Day

On March 11, 2017, the Parliament of Bangladesh passed a resolution declaring March 25 the National Genocide Remembrance Day.

See also

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Samuel Totten, William Spencer Parsons: Centuries of Genocide. Routledge, 2013, ISBN 978-0-415-87191-4 , p. 249.
  2. ↑ a b Log in om een ​​reactie te plaatsen .: Bangladesh Genocide 1971 - Rape Victims - Interview . YouTube. December 15, 2009. Retrieved June 2, 2013.
  3. ↑ a b The drama of a forgotten war (archive). In: deutschlandradiokultur.de. June 17, 2010, accessed January 19, 2015 .
  4. ↑ a b Md. Asadullah Khan: The loss continues to haunt us. In: archive.thedailystar.ne/. Retrieved June 2, 2015 .
  5. ↑ a b c d Israel W. Charny, Simon Wiesenthal, Desmond Tutu: Encyclopedia of Genocide. Volume I: A-H. Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide, 1999, ISBN 0-87436-928-2 , p. 115.
  6. ↑ Torture in Bangladesh 1971-2004: Making International Commitments a Reality and Providing Justice and Reparations to Victims. In: The Redress Trust. August 2004, accessed June 2, 2015 .
  7. ^ Samuel Totten, William Spencer Parsons: Centuries of Genocide. Routledge, 2013, ISBN 978-0-415-87191-4 , p. 256.
  8. ↑ Bangladesh Genocide Archive - Martyred Intellectuals. In: genocidebangladesh.org. Retrieved January 19, 2015 .
  9. ↑ Shahid Buddhijibi Dibosh 2014. In: youtube.com. Retrieved January 19, 2015 .
  10. ↑ a b Journal-Diario: Pakistani genocide in the name of Islam in the struggle of Bangladesh for its freedom. In: journal-diario.blogspot.de. Retrieved January 19, 2015 .
  11. ↑ Trials at the age of forty. Celebrating genocides in jail. In: sauvra.wordpress.com. January 19, 2014, accessed January 19, 2015 .
  12. ↑ Gendercide Watch: Genocide in Bangladesh, 1971. In: gendercide.org. February 22, 1971. Retrieved January 19, 2015 .
  13. ^ Gerhard Klas: The bloody birth of Bangladesh. from March 25, 2011, SWR2.
  14. ^ Samuel Totten, William Spencer Parsons: Centuries of Genocide. Routledge, 2013, ISBN 978-0-415-87191-4 , p. 257.
  15. ↑ Memory and the present: 40 years of Bangladesh's independence (PDF) In: Netz - Bangladesch Zeitschrift Nr. 1, 33rd volume, from February 28, 2011.
  16. ↑ A forgotten genocide is being dealt with. In: Deutschlandfunk . September 25, 2010.
  17. ↑ Bangladesh: Abdul Kader Mullah gets death penalty for war crimes. BBC News, September 17, 2013, accessed February 13, 2016 .
  18. ↑ Parliament passes motion to mark March 25 as Genocide Day (English) . In: The Daily Star , March 11, 2017. Retrieved March 22, 2017. 
  19. ↑ Parliament declares March 25 Genocide Day (English) . In: Dhaka Tribune , March 11, 2017. Retrieved March 22, 2017. 
  20. ↑ Bangladesh wants UN to declare March 25 as Genocide Day in remembrance of 1971. In: Hindustan Times . 23rd March 2017.
  21. ↑ Bangladesh declares March 25 as 'Genocide Day'. In: The Hindu . 23rd March 2017.