International Women's Day: US should impose sanctions on Pakistan for Bangladeshi genocide
Categories: DAILY NEWS FOREIGN COUNTRIES
On the occasion of International Women's Day, an article in the Global Strat view argued that the US should recognize the Bangladeshi genocide and organised rape committed by the Pakistani Army in 1971, and impose sanctions on Pakistan for gross human rights violations.The stories of Bengali women being tied to trees and gang-raped, organs hacked off, dumped in mass graves, and held in Pakistani rape camps are all testimony to the atrocities committed by the Pakistan Army, said Priya Saha, Executive Director of Human Rights Congress for Bangladesh Minorities (HRCBM) writing in Global Strat View. The then military regime of Yahya Khan annulled the election results, fearing the prospect of handing over the reins to what they perceived as inferior Bengalis, the article said.In March 1971, the Pakistani Army launched 'Operation Searchlight', which kickstarted a series of targeted killings, massacres, and organised rape of women in the then East Pakistan (now Bangladesh).Archer Blood, the then US Counsel General in Dhaka, sent a telegram on April 6, 1971, to his superiors in Washington, which came to be known as "The Blood Telegram". The telegram denounced the inaction of the then US administration on the brutal genocide taking place in then East Pakistan. "The Pakistan Army is an Islamic institution, its soldiers are warriors of God and ...they rape in God's name. Therefore the raping of girls and women, the forced bodily transgressions, and the mutilations are considered to be a triumph for good," the article said quoting a 2012 Case Study by Jessica Lee Rehman of California University.The editorial went on to describe several more gory details of the Bangladeshi genocide and rape citing scholarly works of journalists who were present in Bangladesh in 1971. It further referred to the estimations of the number of women raped based on the number of abortions and suicides in the immediate aftermath of the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971.The official figure that the Bangladesh government recognizes states that around 200,000 women were raped, while the estimates of Bangladeshis killed during the time stand up to 3 million.