The Human Rights Congress for Bangladesh Minorities (HRCBM) along with various organizations have planned to carry out a car rally to hold anti-Pakistani protest for 1971 genocide in Washington. The organization will be carrying out the car rally on March 25, on the 50th anniversary of the 1971 liberation war.
“We invite you to join the 50th Remembrance Day of Pakistan’s brutal genocide in Bangladesh. We demand that Magnitsky Act be applied to Pakistani war criminal as we honor the 3 million Bengalis who were murdered in 1971,” issued the Human Rights Congress for Bangladesh Minorities (HRCBM).
The genocide in Bangladesh began on 26 March 1971 with the launch of Operation Searchlight, as West Pakistan (now Pakistan) began a military crackdown on the Eastern wing (now Bangladesh) of the nation to suppress Bengali calls for self-determination. During the nine-month-long Bangladesh War for Liberation, members of the Pakistani military and supporting Islamist militias from Jamaat-e-Islami killed between 200,000 and 3,000,000 people and raped between 200,000 and 400,000 Bengali women, according to Bangladeshi and Indian sources, in a systematic campaign of genocidal rape.
The actions against women were supported by Jamaat-e-Islami religious leaders, who declared that Bengali women were gonimoter maal (Bengali for “public property”). As a result of the conflict, a further eight to ten million people, mostly Hindus, fled the country to seek refuge in neighbouring India. It is estimated that up to 30 million civilians were internally displaced out of 70 million.
