User:MrMkG/sandbox

Reminder

Bangladesh genocide
Part of the Bangladesh Liberation War and the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971
Native name	গণহত্যা
Location	East Pakistan (now Bangladesh)
Date	26 March 1971 – 16 December 1971 (8 months, 2 weeks and 6 days)
Target	Bengali Hindus
Attack type	Ethnic cleansing through mass murder and genocidal rape
Deaths	300,000–3,000,000
Victims	200,000–400,000 Bengali women raped 30,000,000 displaced
Perpetrator	Pakistan
Assailants	Pakistan Armed Forces Razakar Al-Badr Al-Shams Nagorik Shanti Committee Jamaat-e-Islami
Motive	Hinduphobia and anti-Bengali racism

The Bangladesh genocide, also known as the Gonohotta (Bengali: গণহত্যা Gaṇahatyā), was the ethnic cleansing of Bengalis residing in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) during the Bangladesh Liberation War, perpetrated by the Pakistan Armed Forces and the Razakars. It began on 25 March 1971, as Operation Searchlight was launched by West Pakistan (now Pakistan) to militarily subdue the Bengali population of East Pakistan; the Bengalis comprised the demographic majority and had been calling for independence from the Pakistani state. Seeking to curtail the Bengali self-determination movement, erstwhile Pakistani president Yahya Khan approved a large-scale military deployment, and in the nine-month-long conflict that ensued, Pakistani soldiers and local pro-Pakistan militias killed between 300,000 and 3,000,000 Bengalis and raped between 200,000 and 400,000 Bengali women in a systematic campaign of mass murder and genocidal sexual violence. In their investigation of the genocide, the Geneva-based International Commission of Jurists concluded that Pakistan's campaign involved the attempt to exterminate or forcibly remove a significant portion of the country's Hindu populace.

The West Pakistani government, which had implemented discriminatory legislation in East Pakistan, asserted that Hindus were controlling the Mukti Bahini (Bengali resistance fighters) and that resolving the local "Hindu problem" would end the conflict—Khan's government and the Pakistani elite thus regarded the crackdown as a strategic policy. Genocidal rhetoric accompanied the campaign: Pakistani men believed that the sacrifice of Hindus was needed to fix the national malaise; Pakistan's imams declared Bengali Hindu women to be "war booty”; and Pakistani fatawa were issued legitimizing Bengali Hindu women as spoils of war. Women who were targeted often died in Pakistani captivity or committed suicide, while others fled to India.

Pakistan's activities during the Bangladesh Liberation War served as a catalyst for India's military intervention in support of the Mukti Bahini, triggering the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971. The conflict and the genocide formally ended on 16 December 1971, when the joint forces of Bangladesh and India received the Pakistani Instrument of Surrender. As a result of the conflict, approximately 10 million East Bengali refugees fled to Indian territory while up to 30 million people were internally displaced out of the 70 million total population of East Pakistan. There was also ethnic violence between the Bengali majority and the Bihari minority during the conflict; between 1,000 and 150,000 Biharis were killed in reprisal attacks by Bengali militias and mobs, as Bihari collaboration with the West Pakistani campaign had led to further anti-Bihari sentiment. Since Pakistan's defeat and Bangladesh's independence, the title "Stranded Pakistanis in Bangladesh" has commonly been used to refer to the Bihari community, which was denied the right to hold Bangladeshi citizenship until 2008.

With an upper death toll of nearly 3,000,000, Pakistan's campaign in the Bangladesh Liberation War constitutes one of the largest genocides in modern history; it was the largest genocide to occur since the Holocaust of World War II. There is an academic consensus asserting that the events which took place during the Bangladesh Liberation War constituted an ethnic and religious genocide, though the Pakistani government has not recognized it as such.