Socio-Cultural Aspects of Sexual Violence in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh

The proposed paper concerns the sexual violence against the indigenous women living in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) in Bangladesh, committed largely by the security forces and Bengali settlers. Sexual violence against the women plays a central part in the construction of nationalist movement. Like elsewhere, this is veritable in the context of CHT. The women, as child-bearers, are considered important for the biological continuation of a nation; sexual violence such as rape therefore is used systematically as a deliberate tactic to destroy or damage the ‘enemy’. Because, membership in an ethnic group is determined by bloodlines, control of ethnicity requires control of women's sexual violence and childbearing. So, in the case of ethnic conflict, enemies use sexual violence as a tactical weapon. By raping a woman the oppressor does not just aim at hurting her personally, attacker takes what is particularly a woman's private possession, and at the same time tramples and humiliates the identity of the community as a whole. Since the late 1970s, indigenous women in CHT had to undergo immense sufferings, both due to their ethnicity and gender. Owing to the socio-cultural reality, most victims never complaint against the oppressors nor were they accepted in the society. Under the situations, this paper intends to offer an insight into the socio-cultural dynamics of ethnic conflict in CHT with special focus on sexual violence—the root causes sexual violence; its consequences in society; and role of local political organizations and the state whatsoever.