NEWSWEEK, JUNE 14, 1971
DUBIOUS HAVEN
By the millions, Bengali refugees from East Pakistan have been streaming across the border into India. Fleeing from the brutal repression that followed their region’s attempt to declare itself independent, they have found a dubious haven amid disease and squalor. Last week, News week’s Tony Clifton toured several refugee camps and filed this report:
Already, the skies over the Indian state of West Bengal are turning heavy and gray in forewarning of the coming monsoon, which is due to burst at any time. Always destructive, the monsoon is certain to wreak extra havoc this year, multiplying the terror and misery of some 4 million Pakistanis who now huddle in ramshackle refugee camps just across the border of their former homeland. Indian officials have performed miracles by feeding and housing the refugees, but all their efforts could be wiped away by even “normal” monsoon rains. And if the downpour is heavy, the ensuing floods could cause a disaster that would rival the catastrophic cyclones that killed half a million people in East Pakistan only last year.
The monsoons, however, will only compound the tragedy of the refugees who, in the course of a few short weeks, have seen their entire way of life collapse. They are a pathetic sight straggling along the road, clutching bundles of clothes and an occasional black umbrella to ward off the blistering sun. There are tiny children by the thousands and a disproportionate number of young girls, special targets of the marauding Pakistani Army. There are clusters of people sitting forlornly under trees, exhausted by their march and the lack of food. “The situation is out of control here,” moaned K.K. Nuskar, government administrator of the Bongaon area some 60 miles from Calcutta. “1 cannot house or feed one more person, and they’re coming in at the rate of 100,000 a day. All I can do is give them a little food and move them on.”
Stench: Inside the overcrowded camps themselves, the scene is equally depressing. Scores of refugees-many with blistered feet, swollen legs, dysentery and other gastrointestinal diseases-are packed into crude shelters often made up of nothing more than tarpaulin roofs and bamboo poles. There are no sides to the shelters, no beds and no lighting. With garbage strewn about haphazardly and with open sewage facilities serving most of the camps, the stench is often overpowering, and the danger of widespread disease is great. Perhaps the only bright spot in the black picture is that the refugees are relatively will fed-at least by the standards of chronically undernourished India and Pakistan.
Despite the squalor of their existence, the Bengalis endure with a minimum of complaint. ‘But they are both baffled and outraged by the persecution and the terror they have suffered at the hands of their longtime antagonists, Pakistan’s ruling Punjabis. I spoke with one old woman, a widow named Rosimun Bibi who told me, “I came because they killed my son. Tie was coming home from the seed store when the Punjabis came up to him and shot him dead. I don’t know why. He had never done anything wrong in his life.” Another refugee showed me his two sons, aged 6 and 7, both of whom were still bruised from beatings that Punjabi soldiers had given them. Some refugees said the Punjabis had begun to kidnap children and hold them for ransom. And Methodist missionary John Hastings added, “I talked to a man who raised all the money he could to ransom his child, but was 200 rupees about S26 short. So he said, “Beat me for the rest. And they beat him, gouged out one of his eyes and then gave him his child.”
Disease. Even when they escape to India, the refugees are threatened by many perils, most notably cholera. When the first crowds, crossed the border, doctors inoculated them against cholera, but now the Bengalis are swarming into India in such numbers that they cannot all be immunixed. “It takes so long to use syringes,” said one doctor” “and we don’t have money for inoculation guns.” Already the nut break of cholera is nearing epidemic proportions. Last week, some 2,000 refugees died, and an equal number are said to be near death in hospital or by the roadsides. The outlook for the future is even darker, for the monsoon floods are all but certain to spread this waterborne disease.
For all their suffering, the refugees are not alone in facing hardship. As a result of the enormous influx of Pakistanis, the price of vegetables and edible oils in West Bengal has soared. Concurrently, local residents are finding their wages undercut by refugees willing to work for less. “The refugees are getting free food from the government so they can afford to work for less money than a man who has to buy food,” Nuskar explained. “The rate for a day’s work for an agricultural laborer has been cut in half.” Inevitably, such a situation plants the seeds of anger. “The people here are sympathetic to the refugees, Nuskar said, “but their sympathy is beginning to dry up. In two months, there will be nothing but resentment against the Pakistanis.”
The refugee problem is also severely straining the already sickly Indian budget. The government has put the cost of caring for the next three months at a bare minimum of $30 million, and it could go much higher. To date, the financial aid that India has received from other countries has been relatively trivial. Although the United States plans to add $14 million it has already pledged to the refugee cause, other nations have remained largely indifferent. “It is going to take an enormous amount of international aid to stop a major disaster,” warned Hastings, “yet no one seems to be stirring. West Germany has given $140,000 and you feel like saying, “Thanks very much. You’ve just bought enough food to keep us going another half a day.” Col P.N. Luthra, who is in charge of the refugee program, was equally downcast: “We have been managing, but things are getting far worse. We plan ten days ahead and find after three days that we have to start again because the number of refugees has suddenly doubled. We are doing our level best, we cannot do it on our own.”