Pindi determined to create a Muslim State
President Yahya Khan’s Army is inciting neighbour against neighbour in a new wave of terror in East Bengal, according to refugees now escaping to India writes Denes Neeid Associated Press correspondent.
Hindus again are bearing the brunt of the wide scale killing burning and looting but Pakistani troops are encouraging the local populace itself to do the dirty work for them. The refugees say failure to take part in the pogrom is taken as an indication of disloyalty to the Yahya Khan regime and many are driven to violence against their neighbours in fear for their own lives.
Foreign relief workers who have conducted hundreds of interviews with refugees in Indian border areas, are convinced the Pakistani Government is determined to create an exclusively Muslim State.
According to official Indian figures. 5,441,688 refugees have fled Pakistan since March and they are still coming at the rate of about 100.000 a day. A new influx as Pakistani troops extend their area of control is being anticipated
The Rev. John Hastings, a British relief worker who has spent 19 year in Bengal reports the Army’s tactics everywhere follow a similar patter. As troops move into an area the local people are called together and told to declare their loyalties to Gen Yahya Khan or Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
Bengalis are then ordered to weed out the “traitors” among them and are promised a share of the loot if they take the job in their own hands. The Hindu minority in East Bengal which voted solidly for Mr. Rahman in last December’s election is a natural target for the job’s violence.
There are an estimated eight million Hindus in East Bengal. They make up the majority of refugees now fleeing the country.
Many trek to India from the interior of East Bengal and arrive starved and exhausted with little resistance to disease. Sixty-five in one group recently died almost as soon as they crossed the border.
The refugees tell of entire village being burned their daughters raped and kidnapped and hundreds massacred.
Relief workers have been told of troops decapitating their Bengali victims rather than shooting them in order to save ammunition and of children being used as bayonet practice.
In a bid to build up a new civil administration in East Pakistan members of the pro-regime. Muslim League are being appointed to positions of authority throughout the country.
Biharis who make up a favored minority in the province. Are being recruited as police and are using their new found power to settle old source against both Muslim and Hindu Bengalis.
Indian military Intelligence officers report that the Pakistani Army now had 100.000 troops four divisions plus -in East Bengal.
Reference: Hindustan Standard 13.6.71