British MPs face evacuees’ demonstration
From A Staff Correspondent, SILIGURI JUNE 30. – Four British MPs now in India visited some of the evacuee camps in North Bengal today. The evacuee demonstrated before them demanding immediate recognition of Bangladesh by the British as a measure to end further blood-shed there.
The British delegation led by Mr. Arthur Boitomley (Lab) a former Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations reached Bagdogra airport shortly after noon and drove straight to the camps to meet the evacuees sheltered there.
They tried to ascertain why the evacuees had left their homes. The answers were the same. “We had to leave our homes because of the massacre and carnage by Islamabad’s blood-thirsty troops.”
“When do you expect to go back?” asked one of the MPs. The reply was : “We can be safe in our homes only after Yahya’s troops have been withdrawn completely.”
An evacuee who migrated from Thakurgaon told the MPs that his brother in law had been butchered by the Army.
They asked the inmates of a camp whether any of them had joined Sheikh Mujib’s Mukti Fouj “Yes, from this camp about a hundred men have gone back and got themselves enlisted in the Mukti Fauj to fight the occupation Army.”
Earlier in the morning the delegation flew straight to Agartala from Kolkata by a RAF plane overflying Bangladesh territory. They visited some evacuee camps in Tripura too.
The MPs were back in Calcutta in the evening.
The MPs who arrived from Dacca after a four-day tour of Bangladesh on Monday visited some refugee camps in 24-Parganas yesterday. They will leave for New Delhi tomorrow morning on their way back to London.
Reference: Hindustan Standard, 01.07.1971