The Trojan Women,” produced in 415 BC, by ancient Greek playwright Euripides, was the third tragedy of a trilogy of dealing with the Trojan War. Considered as first anti-war drama in human history which deals on issue of rape as a war mission, Euripides’s play shows how much the Trojan women have suffered as their grief is compounded when the Greeks dole out additional deaths and divide their shares of the defeated Trojan women.

During the 1971 Bangladesh war for independence, members of the Pakistani military and supporting militias raped between two and four hundred thousand Bangladeshi women in a systematic campaign of genocidal rape. Scholars have suggested that rape was used to terrorize both the Bengali-speaking Muslim majority and the Hindu minority of Bangladesh. The rapes caused thousands of pregnancies, births of war babies, abortions, incidents of infanticide and suicide, and, in addition, led to ostracisation of the victims.

Following the partition of India and the creation of Pakistan the East and West wings were not only separated geographically, but also culturally. According to the political scientist R J Rummel, the Pakistani army looked down upon the Bengalis as “subhuman” and that the Hindus were “as Jews to the Nazis, scum and vermin that best be exterminated.” Belén Martín Lucas has described the rapes as “ethnically motivated.”

Pakistan’s role in terrorizing the population of then East Pakistan in 1971 has once again come to haunt them and sent shockwaves across the world following the release of the movie ‘Children of War” written and directed by Mrityunjay Devvrat on last Friday. It revolves around civilians caught in the nine-month conflict which pitted Bangladeshi independence fighters against Pakistani Army. It is a shocking reminder of the brutalities of the 1971 Bangladesh-Pakistan war. The lead actors and actresses of the movie are Raima Sen (Fida, wife of journalist Amir), Indranil Sengupta (Amir), Tillotama Shome (Bhitika, a rape victim), Pavan Malhotra (Malik, an army officer of Pakistan), Victor Banerjee, Farooq Sheikh and others.

The movie is having not only a major impact on the cinemagoers but also on the human rights bodies in India and Bangladesh who are now planning to write to the US Congress, UK House of Commons and UN Human Rights Council urging them to watch the movie. The human rights bodies would urge the policy makers in the US and UK to demand that the fundamentalist groups and members of Jamaat-e-Islami, which collaborated with the Pakistan Army in orchestrating the genocide in 1971 be brought to justice at the earliest for 400,000 Bangladeshi women who were raped, three million people killed and the 10 million refugees sought refuge in India.

The movie made in Hindi has been dubbed in Bangla and released across nearly 16 cinema halls across Bangladesh at Dhaka, Rajshahi, Sylhet, Joydebpur and Tangail also on May 16. The Bangla title of the movie is ‘Juddho Sishu’. It has evoked strong reactions and left audiences spell bound and numb struck.

25,000 cases of war babies

As mentioned by celebrated researcher Bina D’ Costa that the official documents suggest there were at least 25,000 cases of forced pregnancy in the aftermath of the war. Bangladeshi leaders entrusted social workers and medical practitioners with the primary responsibility of dealing with the raped women; as a result, International Planned Parenthood, the Red Cross and the Catholic Church became involved in rehabilitation programmes. These organisations also became responsible for carrying out the daunting task of dealing with the pregnancies.

Soon after the Independence it is through state-sponsored programmes that International Planned Parenthood and the International Abortion Research and Training Centre, local clinics helped women to carry out abortions. Clinics were set up with the support of the Bangladesh Central Organisation for Women’s Rehabilitation in Dhaka and 17 outlying areas, in order to cope with unwanted pregnancies. Geoffrey Davis, a medical graduate from Australia who worked in Bangladesh for a half-year in 1972 with International Planned Parenthood and other organisations, was one of the key individuals involved in administering the government-sponsored abortion programme.

According to Davis, women considered pretty were kept for the officers, while the rest were distributed among the ranks. The women did not get enough to eat, and when they fell ill, many died in the camps. By the time he arrived in Bangladesh, shortly after the Liberation War, nearly 5000 women had already managed to abort their babies through medically unsafe methods.

An appeal was issued by Mother Teresa urging women not to have abortions, and instead to contact the Missionaries of Charity, which offered to take care of the war babies. In December 1971, Mother Teresa visited some of the camps for rape victims in Bangladesh. Mother Teresa did not find girls at the camps, but only their hair, petticoats and a few other items. Their hair had been cut off because the Pakistan Army soldiers feared that the girls would attempt to commit suicide by tying their hair to ceiling fans, as some had already done.

In 1972, the Bangladesh government established the Women’s Rehabilitation Organisation to institutionalise women’s-rehabilitation projects, with the National Central Women’s Rehabilitation Board coordinating the government’s post-war policies. Under the Bangladesh Abandoned Children (Special Provision) Order of that year, the government encouraged foreign adoption agencies to take war babies from Bangladesh. The US branch of the Geneva-based International Social Service was the first international adoption agency to work in post-war Bangladesh.

Today, there is very little information about these children. The movie “Children of War” however, revisits the Bangladesh War of Liberation in 1971and recreates the horrors of those times when suddenly a whole civilization was threatened with extinction. The movie begins in March 1971 and covers a period of nine months showcasing the atrocities and the crude inhumane methods adopted by the military of West Pakistan.

The movie is about the resilience of the Bengalis and their fight for a free and just nation. intercepting between the emotion flowing on Bangladesh’s streets today and the events that took place in 1971 the characters of the film tell a gut wrenching emotional story of the birth of a nation, emphasizing that the struggle was never between two religions but between extremists and liberals in every religion.

While writing the film’s script, Devvrat researched the topic thoroughly, which included interviews with various journalists, war veterans, and refugees. Of her role in the film, lead actress Raima Sen felt that it was “one of the toughest roles she has portrayed on screen in the recent past.” Actor Indranil Sengupta said he had no idea that there had been numerous “rape camps” to ravish Bengali women in the horrendous days of 1971.

The writer is a journalist - See more at: http://www.daily-sun.com/details_Children-of-War:-A-movie-depicting-Bengali-women%E2%80%99s-plights-in-1971_860_2_5_1_1.html#sthash.DTA1ce3n.dpuf