Justice for 1971 War Rapes: Trial and Beyond

Abstract

The history of the Bangladesh War of Liberation records the mass rape of Bangladeshi women by the Pakistan Army and their local collaborators. There is evidence that along with rape of Bangladeshi women, other forms of sexual violence such as sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, and forced pregnancy were also committed by the perpetrators. After about 40 years of our Liberation War, the matter of rape of the Bangladeshi women was brought under litigation, to a certain extent, in the International Crimes Tribunal of Bangladesh (ICT-BD). The Constitution of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh is the supreme law of Bangladesh. It explicitly declares in its preamble that Bangladesh should establish a society where ‘… the rule of law, fundamental human rights and freedom, equality and justice, political, economic and social, will be secured for all citizens’. The aspect of “equality and justice” is lucidly presented along with the social issue. Thus, our constitution emphasizes the kind of justice which is “complete justice” and provides assurance of both legal and social justice. In this context, one notes that the issue of justice for rape victims of the 1971 Bangladesh War of Liberation still lacks comprehensive social and legal attention. By now a number of war criminals of the Liberation War of Bangladesh are being punished by the ICT-BD. Through this process, it may assume that even though justice had been delayed, it was ultimately not denied. However, a question remained unexplored as to whether ‘legal justice’ essentially ensures ‘social justice’ for the war rape victims in our country. It has been observed that war rape victims are still not socially recognized and/or respected; rather, they are considered as outcasts in our society. Unfortunately, nobody knows as to how justice is being perceived by them. Thus, it remains an unspoken narrative in our country in respect of how war rape victims actually perceive ‘justice’. Another question that arises in this regard is whether ‘complete justice’ is being done in the course of ensuring legal justice to war rape victims. Hence, it can be questioned as to how far ‘justice’ is being done to the war rape victims of Bangladesh only by conductory trial of war criminals? This research would endeavor to get an account from the war rape victims and their families about the socio-legal aspects of the long-awaited justice. It may be mentioned that no systematic and/or comprehensive research has been conducted so far on this subject. This research is of significance because even after a remarkable number of convictions of perpetrators by the ICT-BD and the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of Bangladesh, it is still not clear how much justice is being done to victims in Bangladesh from socio-legal perspectives. We should not forget, ‘[n]ot only must Justice be done; it must also be seen to be done.’ Hence, this research has covered surveying total 385 rape victims of total 53 Districts of the eight Divisions of Bangladesh. To conclude, it can be stated that sexual violence and rape, committed whether during war or peacetime, was widespread and that the women were often victimized by Pakistani men and their collaborators. The experience of the 1971 Liberation War of Bangladesh, when perpetrators used the rape of women as a war tactic, is hardly discussed in the international arena. However, a growing number of cases recognizing war rape as an illegal act have been taken up partly as a result of the heinous use of rape as a tactic of genocide in both Rwanda and Yugoslavia during 1990s. This study has described various legal mechanisms to hold perpetrators of sexual violence liable under the IHL, the ICHL, decisions in recent war crimes tribunals such as the ICTY, the ICTR, the ICC and so on, the Geneva Convention IV, the Genocide Convention, the Hague Conventions on the Laws of War and so forth. Besides, this study shows that the intensive observations of the ICT-BD demonstrated again and again that rape of women was used as a weapon by perpetrators of rape. From the perspectives of Bangladesh, ensuring legal justice is indeed the first step to be taken to redress the wrong done to the victims. The demand of rape victims to get social justice is widespread. This study would like to conclude that while legal justice has been examples, social justice is still demanded by victims of the 1971 Liberation War in Bangladesh. This study claims that there is ample scope to provide social justice to rape victims in various ways so that they can enjoy complete justice to some extent in their lifetime.