Pak Campaign Against Refugees’ Return
COMILLA (East Bengal), July 27. – Despite Government professions that conditions are being created for the refugees to return and resume their living as before, there is good evidence that a campaign is underway to carry things in the opposite direction, writes Robert Kaylor. UPI correspondent now touring East Bengal.
A Bengali-speaking foreigner who knows many people in Dacca and less than five miles from the Indian border noticed recently that workmen were refurbishing the house of a India during the army attacks which started on March 25.
He asked if the Hindu had returned . “No” a workman replied, “a military man has taken over this house.”
At about the same time, soldiers were seen breaking the official seal on the lock of a pharmacy whose owner also had fled. Asked what was happening, they said the store’s inventory was going to be removed and auctioned.
“But still they are asking these people to return and telling them that they can come back to their homes as though nothing has happened”. the foreigner said.
The situation in Brahmanbaria, the district’s second largest town, runs counter to the official words put out by Maj Gen Foreman Ali, Chief of Civil Affairs, Martial Law Administration, Gen Ali said in an interview in Dacca: “We are making all efforts that these people should come back despite caste and creed.”
The Government has announced that so far 75,000 refugees have taken advantage of the offer to return to Pakistan. However, at a reception camp set up in a school in Comilla for the returnees, the only occupants were five cows placidly grazing on the athletic field. Syed Abdul Rab, an army pensioner who was in charge, said no refugees had come to the camp since it opened on June 15.
The first thing that strikes the eyes on the main street is the frequent gaping fronts of burned out stores. In a rubbish warren of narrow streets in the town’s heart, the destruction is complete. Buildings that still stand show the marks of fire. and in many cases. shelling.
The townspeople on the main street are reluctant to talk but off a side street among the destroyed shops they are eager to comment on the Government’s statements and actions.
Why did this happen in Brahmanbaria where most of the population had already fled the town by the time the army arrived?
“Because they want to destroy us”. a youngman said.
“We are Muslims”. he said. gesticulating at the ruined buildings. “There were no Hindus here”, he and others said.
While some sit in the shells of their shops and stare violently into space others have started reconstruction work. Officials say the Government is planning some sort of unspecified rehabilitation assistance but nothing has been done yet.
In Comilla, some Muslim families gave shelter in thier homes to Hindus who remained in the city while the army and police continued to be active. Around Comilla and a nearby army base are burned and deserted villages that townspeople said were destroyed by the army.
Officials said they did not know what had happened in the villages around the town nor did they know the whereabouts of the former police chief and the top civilian official both of whom supported the Awami League.
Other sources in the town said the two were taken to the army base and never heard of again. Like the civilian official, the police chief too was replaced by a West Pakistani.
The highway between Comilla and Brahmanbaria runs through flooded paddy and jute fields and is marked by bridges that have been either destroyed or damaged by guerrillas and later repaired by the army.
I also passed a tower on a high tension line that was knocked down by the freedom-fighters earlier this month, leaving Comilla without electricity for seven days. The army has left units throughout the area including artillery positioned in at least two locations along the road.
“The people are still keeping their independence flags,” said one young Bengali in the district. “Do you think they will not have the chance to raise them again?”
In another dispatch the UPI correspondent said : through a combination of official apathy, poor communications and the operations of freedom-fighters. East Bengal is headed for a food crisis that could see millions starve to death by the end of the year unless immediate action is taken.
That is the view of foreign aid experts in Dacca, who say East Pakistan will need millions of tons of extra food in order to keep its 76 million residents at their present inadequate level of diet. But, the experts say, the country’s ports and patchwork transportation system will be able to handle only half of that total even if operated at peak efficiency.
“I don’t think that there’s anything we can do to save East Bengal from the catastrophe that’s coming but we could make it a little less severe.” said one expert. Who has made a recent study of the situation.
So far, however, according to this and other experts the Government has done little to mobilize itself to meet the crisis which is expected to reach a high point just before the next rice harvest from mid-September to mid-November.
Reference: Hindustan Standard, 28.07.1971