THE NEW YORK TIMES, MA Y 10,1971
SICKENING SLAUGHTER
By Malcolm W. Browne
Rajshahi, Pakistan, May 10
One of the six foreign newsmen allowed into East Pakistan by the Pakistani government for a tour with official escorts
The crushing force of West Pakistan’s military operation against the Bengali separatists has apparently destroyed all serious armed opposition in East Pakistan.
This city, which used to have a population of 100,000, stands on the east bank of the muddy, sluggish Ganges River, with India on the opposite shore 3,000 yards away. Border towns like this were political strongholds of the now-banned separatist Awami League, which won a sweeping victory in the national legislative election Dec. 7.
The national army, made up mostly of Punjabis from West Pakistan; struck against the separatists throughout East Pakistan on March 25, and by mid-April, apparently, the army’s campaign was virtually completed:
Last-ditch opposition in border regions was swiftly squelched, and although army patrols still draw occasional sniper fire, the eastern wing of this divided nation seems firmly under control.
The cost to all concerned has been agony. Newsmen have seen tens of thousands of leveled or gutted buildings. In the towns, concrete walls are pocked by hundreds of bullets where firing squads did their work. Bodies were dumped in community wells, and general desolation testifies to the ferocity of events.
Precisely how it all happened is not apparent, since testimony is totally conflicting depending on the point of view of the witness.
The army and the civilian “Peace Committees” it has established throughout the cast region say that the bulk of the destruction and the slaughter was perpetrated by the rebels, or Indian troops infiltrated across the border.
But newsmen often are approached in the streets by Bengalis who slip up and whisper a few words before darting out of sight of the ever present Peace Committee members.
Most of the Peace Committee members, to whom the army has delegated a certain measure of civil administration, are Moslem Biharis, who moved to Pakistan from India when the two nations were carved out of British India in 1947.
Business and trade in East Pakistan is largely in the hands of Biharis, who are a small minority among the local Bengalis. The latter are mostly Moslems, but there is a substantial Hindu minority.
Resentment, on the part of many impoverished Bengalis toward the somewhat more prosperous Biharis was a factor in the Bengali separatist movement in the recent conflict. The impression, based on hundreds of interviews, is that when it seemed that the Awami League was about to come to power, Bengalis in some communities slaughtered the Biharis and looted and burned their homes. The Bengalis in. the national army revolted to join the separatists. When the predominantly Punjabi army of West Pakistan smashed its way into the eastern wing, it had ready allies among the Biharis, most of who were spoiling for revenge:
The magnitude of the slaughter that followed has sickened most observers. As a result’ of the violence, most of the Bengalis and nearly all of the large Hindu minority in towns such as this one, have fled. Here the block of buildings making up the main market, area of the city lies smashed, apparently by mortar fire from army units that took the town April 14.
Some five-story buildings with ornately decorated wooden balconies still stand in the area, but some of them have their upper floors in ruins from the shelling.
Much of the city, however, is untouched by shellfire, and bicycle rickshaws and street vendors have begun once more to ply the streets. The town again has its water, electricity and communications, and even a complaint bureau.