Bangladesh Genocide Research Paper

(Jahan) How the Bangladesh Genocide was Committed
The Pakistani government started their military attack on Bangladesh on March 25th, 1971. Some of the targets for the attack were the university campus, the police headquarters, and other areas with high Hindu populations (Jahan 254). Those who were in power in Pakistan at the time believed that the intellectuals and the students were the leaders of the Bengali nationalist movement, the main supporters were the Hindus and the urban lumpenproletariat, and that the leaders in any armed struggle could be the Bengali police and army officials (Jahan 54). Hundreds of unarmed civilians were killed by the army operations in the Dhaka, the capital of Bengal, on the university campus, the slums, and the old city where Hindus primarily lived. The news of these killings quickly spread throughout the country.
On March 26th, 1971, the independence of Bangladesh was announced over the radio from the city of Chittagong on the account of the Awami League and their leader, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. Soon, a resistance was organized in all the cities and towns of the country by the Awami League politicians, Bengali

civilian administration, police, army, students, and intellectuals (Jahan 255). The liberation war consisted of three phases; the first phase did not go according to plan and resulted in only lasting 6 weeks. However, by the middle of May the Pakistani army was successful in bringing the cities and towns under their control. The Pakistani army aggressively began to terrorize civilians with killings and burnings, targeting those who were young able-bodied males. Many Hindus as well as Muslims began to take refuge in India (Jahan 255).
The first and second phases of the liberation war were very different.

The first phase targeted young males, while in the second phase women and girls became targeted as the main target of the Pakistani aggression (Jahan 255). The second phase of the war, which lasted from mid-May to September contained more stable planning from both the Bengali nationalists and the Pakistani government. The Bengali nationalists took in over 100,000 young men as freedom fighters and put them through training and eventually launched a guerilla operation inside Bangladesh (Jahan 255). This time, the Pakistani government focused on targeting girls and women terrorizing them by raping them in front of family. The army also ran camps that abducted the women and girls to repeatedly rape and gang-rape them near the army

barracks.
The third phase of the war, lasting from October until mid-December, involved increasingly aggressive guerilla action and a conventional war between Pakistan and the joined forces of the Indian and Bangladeshi resulting in the surrendering of the Pakistani army on December 16th, 1971 (Jahan 256). The Pakistani government engaged in its most brutal and genocidal campaign the last week of the war. In hopes of destroying the new nation of its most talented, the Pakistani government chose to kill the most respected and influential intellectuals and professionals in every city and town (Jahan 256). The chosen individuals were abducted from their homes and were murdered between December 12th to December 14th. The victims of the genocide of 1971 were the Bengalis, the Hindus, although the majority of the victims were Bengali Muslims who got caught in the fire during the Pakistani army’s rampage of killing, rape, destruction (Jahan 256). The Bengali Muslim cultural norms to shelter and protect the lives of women was destroyed in 1971. Suddenly thousands of rape victims and widowed women were forced to fend for themselves (Jahan 256). Many families even shamed and avoided the victims of the war as a way to dispose of them.