ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the impact of the Pakistani campaign on the lives of Bangladeshi females, not only during the violence itself but in the form of subsequent violence, inflicted upon women by their own state, community leaders, and peers in the aftermath of the conflict. Whether as indirect participants, victims of extreme systematic violence, or as refugees, Bangladeshi girls and women endured untold agonies during the 1971 genocide. Only a small number of women appear to have directly participated in the conflict as insurgents, and fewer still were engaged in direct warfare. The sexual violence also resulted in an acute pregnancy crisis during which scores of poorer victims underwent dangerous abortions, often inducing serious medical complications. The national "marry them off" campaign was ostensibly another ploy to silence women by confining them to the private sphere. The plight of women in Bangladesh also tells us something of the nature of genocide and of the role of rape within it.
