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The formation of Bangladesh in 1971 coincided with the rape of 200,000 Bengali women perpetrated by the West Pakistani army and its local East Pakistani collaborators. In an unprecedented move, the newly formed state eulogised them as "war-heroines" and set up rehabilitation programs where they were encouraged to go through abortions, give up their children for international adoption, marry, or take up jobs. The chapter explores how, in independent Bangladesh, the construction of the survivors of sexual violence as sex workers is akin to being traitors and collaborators with the enemy forces. It shows that debates on sexuality of war are foundational to collapsing the survivors of wartime rape into "prostitutes" and in the process to their re-imaging as traitors. The chapter seeks to examine the semantic and narrative discourses related to the constitution of the "war-heroines" as "traitors" – the enemy within – in the post-conflict period in 1972 and in the 1990s in independent Bangladesh and the implications this has for comprehending victims and perpetrators. It argues that through a constitutive performativity of the "traitor" – a naturalization through stylized and exclusive repetition – is how the idea of war heroine has been "made" in order to be "found."
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