During the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971, Pakistan’s Army and its allies in what was then known as East Pakistan, raped as many as 4,00,000 women in an orchestrated campaign…write Arul Louis
While Pakistan pretends to be a champion of human rights, its “shameful record” of “heinous crimes of sexual violence against women” set in during the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War continues today with impunity, India has charged at the Security Council.
India’s Permanent Mission’s Charge d’Affaires Eldos Mathew Punnoose said on Tuesday (local time), “The utter impunity with which the Pakistan army perpetrated heinous crimes of gross sexual violence against women in erstwhile East Pakistan in 1971 is a matter of shameful record.”
“This deplorable pattern continues unabated and with impunity to this day”, he said in a riposte to Pakistan’s allegations against India.
During the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971, Pakistan’s Army and its allies in what was then known as East Pakistan, raped as many as 4,00,000 women in an orchestrated campaign
“It is ironic that those who perpetrate these crimes are now masquerading as champions of justice,” he said. “The duplicity and hypocrisy are self-evident,” he added.
Charge d’Affaires Punnoose was replying to allegations made by Pakistan’s Permanent Representative Asim Iftikar Ahmad against India.
While the subject of the Council debate was ‘Identifying Innovative Strategies to Ensure Access to Life-Saving Services and Protection for Survivors of Sexual Violence in Conflict Zones’, Pakistan, as it always does, regardless of the topic, brought in Kashmir to attack India.
Punnoose outlined the range of rampant crimes weaponised against women by Pakistan
He said UN agencies have recorded those crimes.
“Rampant abduction, trafficking, child early and forced marriages and domestic servitude, sexual violence and forced religious conversions of thousands of vulnerable women and girls as weapons of persecution towards religious and ethnic minority communities are reported and chronicled, including in the recent Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) reports,” he said.
Pramila Patten, the secretary-general’s special representative for issues of sexual violence in conflict, faced criticism coordinated between Pakistan’s UN mission and a Palestinian journalist.
After communicating with the mission, the journalist asked the secretary-general’s spokesperson at his daily briefing why the allegations made by Pakistan’s ambassador were not included in her remarks to the Council.
The spokesperson, Stephane Dujarric, brushed it off, saying, “I think Ms Patten’s office drafted a report with all the information that was available to them. That’s all I can say.”
Patten warned that victims of sexual violence were facing a crisis as resources to help them were being cut.
“We are told there is no money for lifesaving aid, even as military expenditure soars, and the world spends more in 24 hours on arms than it does in a year on addressing gender-based violence in conflict,” she said.
Punnoose mentioned the reports by the OHCHR, and the most recent one said that in Pakistan, “Women, particularly in detention on blasphemy charges, face significant gendered harms”.
The experts’ report released last month said, “We are shocked at reports of increasing violence against vulnerable communities on grounds of their religion or belief.
“These communities have witnessed relentless attacks, killings and unending harassment for months in the context of hostility and advocacy of hatred against them,” they said.
A comprehensive review of the situation in Pakistan by the OHCHR’s Human Rights Committee in December said it “remains concerned about the high level of violence against women and girls, including murder, rape, kidnapping and domestic violence”.
The Committee also highlighted the human rights situation in Balochistan, where there were reports that participants in the Aurat (Women’s) March faced “enforced disappearances, torture, excessive use of force and mass and arbitrary arrests”.
