Changes

[[File:east bengali trying to rescue woman.jpg|thumbnail|300px|East Bengali man trying to save a woman who had just been raped.]]Women and girls aged 14-30 were the primary targets of the rapists; however, all age groups were sexually abused as a form of terror and a tool of genocide. In both Hindu and Muslim societies, a “woman symbolizes ethnic purity,” and “family honor is…linked with female chastity.”<ref>Lisa Sharlach, “Rape as Genocide: Bangladesh, the Former Yugoslavia, and Rwanda,”'' New Political Science'' 22, no. 1 (2000): 95.</ref>Following this cultural norm, a woman was tortured and serial raped for months at a time and survived, not to be seen as a victim, rather she was a source of shame upon her family. In Bangladesh society, women were seen as “private property,” thus the rape of a man’s wife was viewed as an insult to ''him'' as “his property has been usurped by another.”<ref>Nayanika Mookherjee, “‘Remembering to Forget’: Public Secrecy and Memory of Sexual Violence in the Bangladesh War of 1971,” ''Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute'' 12 (2006): 439, http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9655.2006.00299.x</ref>Therefore, by employing rape as a tool of degradation in a society where the chastity of a woman is a reflection on the family, the destruction of an entire community ensues; this is genocide.