Rape of Bangladesh

> Bengal was a state of 75 millions people, officially East Pakistan,

> when the Bangladesh Government declared its independence in March of 1971 with the support of India. Troops from West Pakistan were flown to the East to put down the rebellion. During the nine-month terror, terminated by the two week armed intervention of India, a possible three million people lost their lives, ten millions fled across the border to India and 200,000, 300,000 or possible 400,000 women (three sets of statistics have been variously quoted) were raped. Eighty percent of the raped women were Moslems, reflecting the population of Bangladesh, but Hindu and Christian women were not

> exempt. [1]

* "For month after month in all the regions of East Pakistan the massacres went on," writes Robert Payne. "They were not the small casual killings of young officers who wanted to demonstrate their efficiency, but organized massacres conducted by sophisticated staff officers, who knew exactly what they were doing. Muslim soldiers, sent out to kill Muslim peasants, went about their work mechanically and efficiently, until killing defenseless people became a habit like smoking cigarettes or drinking wine. ... Not since Hitler invaded Russia had there been so vast a massacre." (Payne, Massacre, p. 29.) [2]

## See also[edit]

* Rape of Nanking
* Mass rape of German women by the Soviet army