Younger
men and adolescent boys, of whatever social class, were equally targets.
According to Rounaq Jahan, “All through the liberation war, able-bodied young
men were suspected of being actual or potential freedom fighters. Thousands
were arrested, tortured, and killed. Eventually cities and towns became bereft
of young males who either took refuge in India or joined the liberation war.”
Especially “during the first phase” of the genocide, he writes, “young
able-bodied males were the victims of indiscriminate killings.” (“Genocide in
Bangladesh,” in Totten et al., Century of Genocide, p. 298.) R.J. Rummel
likewise writes that “the Pakistan army [sought] out those especially likely to
join the resistance — young boys. Sweeps were conducted of young men who were
never seen again. Bodies of youths would be found in fields, floating down
rivers, or near army camps. As can be imagined, this terrorized all young men
and their families within reach of the army. Most between the ages of fifteen
and twenty-five began to flee from one village to another and toward India.
Many of those reluctant to leave their homes were forced to flee by mothers and
sisters concerned for their safety.” (Death By
Government, p. 329.) Rummel describes (p. 323) a chilling gendercidal
ritual, reminiscent of Nazi procedure towards Jewish
males: “In what became province-wide acts of genocide, Hindus were
sought out and killed on the spot. As a matter of course, soldiers would check
males for the obligated circumcision among Moslems. If circumcised, they might
live; if not, sure death.”
Robert Payne describes
scenes of systematic mass slaughter around Dacca (Dhaka) that, while not
explicitly “gendered” in his account, bear every hallmark of classic
gender-selective roundups and gendercidal slaughters of non-combatant men:
In the
dead region surrounding Dacca, the military authorities conducted experiments
in mass extermination in places unlikely to be seen by journalists. At
Hariharpara, a once thriving village on the banks of the Buriganga River near
Dacca, they found the three elements necessary for killing people in large
numbers: a prison in which to hold the victims, a place for executing the
prisoners, and a method for disposing of the bodies. The prison was a large
riverside warehouse, or godown, belonging to the Pakistan National Oil Company,
the place of execution was the river edge, or the shallows near the shore, and
the bodies were disposed of by the simple means of permitting them to float
downstream. The killing took place night after night. Usually the prisoners
were roped together and made to wade out into the river. They were in batches
of six or eight, and in the light of a powerful electric arc lamp, they were
easy targets, black against the silvery water. The executioners stood on the
pier, shooting down at the compact bunches of prisoners wading in the water.
There were screams in the hot night air, and then silence. The prisoners fell
on their sides and their bodies lapped against the shore. Then a new bunch of
prisoners was brought out, and the process was repeated. In the morning the
village boatmen hauled the bodies into midstream and the ropes binding the
bodies were cut so that each body drifted separately downstream. (Payne, Massacre [Macmillan, 1973], p. 55.)
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