Hearing the stories of Bangladesh's 'birangona' women

Bangladesh marked Victory Day over the weekend. It commemorates the end of the civil war with Pakistan in 1971 which resulted in what was then East Pakistan breaking away to form an independent country. One aspect of the conflict was particularly brutal, the Pakistani military's sexual assault and murder of hundreds of thousands of women. 'Rising Silence' is a new documentary which tells the difficult story of these women who were labelled heroines or 'birangona' by the newly independent Bangladesh. But those women who survived continued to endure great personal loss even after the end of the war as Newsday's Shaimaa Khalil heard from the director of the film, Leesa Gazi.

(Photo: Still image from the documentary 'Rising Silence' Credit: Shihab Khan)