Sheikh Calls For Help
By Our Foreign Staff
Conflicting reports came out of Pakistan yesterday about the whereabouts of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, leader of the Bengali revolt. The official Pakistan radio said he had been seized in his suburban home in Dacca and was in custody. Then a broadcast was picked up in India purporting to be by the Sheikh. It said: ‘I am in Chittagong and as free as Bangladesh’ – the name he gave to East Pakistan when he declared it independent on Friday.
Chittagong, East Pakistan’s main sea port, is reported to be in the hands of Sheikh Mujibur’s Awami League, now organized into “liberation fighters.’ It is the landing point for Pakistan troops making the long journey round the tip of India from West Pakistan to reinforce the two divisions. Pakistan’s President, General Yahya Khan, already, has in action in the East. The town is said to be under attack by bombers and tanks.
The broadcast said to be by the Sheikh came from a transmitter calling itself Free Bengal Revolutionary Radio. The speaker said: “Tanks and bombs will not crush the spirit of the people of Bangladesh. He urges his followers to seek out the ‘infiltrators from West Pakistan’ and to destroy them. He ended with a cry of ‘Jai Bangla!’ – ‘Victory to Bengal!’ The Revolutionary Radio also put out an appeal for help to the United Nations. It sent a similar appeal to all countries – (especially those neighboring Bangladesh’ – to help the freedom movement in East Pakistan. The only neighboring countries capable of responding are India .. which has a level and barely defensible frontier with East Pakistan running northward from Calcutta to the Coach Bihar corridor – and Communist China, whose Liberation Army has units poised along the high frontier of Tibet, little more than 100 miles away. up the massive staircase of the Himalayas.
Because of total censorship. all news coming out of East Pakistan is limited. sketchy and probably unreliable. One news agency has put the first day’s death toll at 10,000. But Radio Pakistan said there was no foundation for reports of heavy fighting in East Pakistan. It claimed the situation throughout the province was fast returning to normal. But in spite of these doubts, the reaction of India’s Parliament has been sharp and strongly in favor of aid for East Bengal. The Prime Minister, Mrs Indira Gandhi. hinted strongly at the possibility of Indian intervention. She said: “We welcome the democratic action of an entire people’ who have spoken with one voice – a reference to last December’s election in which East Pakistan voted almost unanimously for Sheikh Mujibur and his Awami League’s policy of almost total autonomy.
Mrs. Gandhi added: “The Indian Government is fully alive to the situation and will take a decision at the appropriate time. We must not talk in purely theoretical terms, but equally we must abide by international law. However, the fact is that unarmed people have been met with tanks.’ The Prime Minister’s statement came after an excited House had reacted with displeasure against a speech by the Foreign Minister, Mr. Swaran Singh, in which he had evidently tried to cool things down. He said his Government hoped that even at this stage, Pakistan would be able to ‘resume democratic processes.’ Based on his report on Press accounts, the Foreign Minister said that more than two divisions of the Pakistan Army were ‘deployed in suppressing the people of East Pakistan,’ and added: ‘our hearts go out in sympathy to the people there, who are undergoing great suffering.”
Mr. Krishna Menon, the former Defence Minister, urged that India should immediately invoke the provisions of the Genocide Convention. He also hoped that if the new Government of Bangladesh asked for recognition, India would give it. Meanwhile, General Sam Manekshaw. Chief of the Indian Army, has hurriedly returned to Delhi from a visit to Poona. However dubious some of the reports now being put out chiefly by Indian news agencies, there can be little doubt that East Pakistan is in the grip of a massive upheaval. So far as any general picture emerges, it seems that while street fighting is occurring in Dacca, the main conflicts with the Army are centered on towns close to the Indian border and along the main route to Chittagong.
These are plainly the points where the main concentrations of General Yahya’s forces are likely to be – down the western side of the country against the possibility of Indian intervention and along lines of communication with Chittagong, the only source of heavy reinforcement. At Jessore, a mass of Awami League fighters, wearing only sarongs and armed with spears and daggers, are reported trying to take over the airport. The East Pakistan Rifles and the Bengali police are said to have joined the uprising on the Sheikh’s side. The most dramatic single incident is reported from Dacca. An Awarni League mob is said to have attacked the residence of LieutenantGeneral Tikka Khan, General Yahya’s Chief Military Law Administrator in East Pakistan, and killed him. General Tikka was dispatched to the East earlier this month, when Sheikh Mujib proclaimed his immensely successful civil disobedience campaign. The President’s intention was that General Tikka should be appointed Governor of the Province, but a patriotic East Bengali judge refused to swear him in.
All this time. Radio Pakistan has been sedulously putting out the impression that President Yahyas military government is in full control. New military law regulations are being regularly broadcast, ordering people to return to their work and threatening them with arrest if they fail. The radio also announced a lifting of the curfew for nine hours of daylight today and said that Press reporters were being exempted from curfew at all times.
More than 600 Britons are still in East Pakistan and the High Commission offices in Dacca are said to be out of touch with them. British women and children were evacuated some time ago. Those remaining are chiefly male members of the High ‘Commission staff, businessmen and planters. The Australian Government has ordered the immediate evacuation of all Australian women and children. They are the families of Colombo Plan experts and of missionaries.
A report from Calcutta says that 200 East Pakistanis crossed into India yesterday, across the West Bengal frontier, to escape the Pakistan Army. They included women and children and led the Indian authorities to fear a flood of refugees might follow. In New Delhi, four MPs from Mrs. Gandhi’s Congress Party headed a demonstration of more than 1.000 Indians to the Pakistan High Commission, where they burned pictures of General Yahya and Tikka Khan and shouted demands for an end to ‘aggression’ in East Pakistan. According to Radio Pakistan, General Yahyas Government has lodged a strong protest with India against its ‘blatant and deliberate interference in Pakistan’s internal affairs.” No indication was given of the form this interference has taken.
Reference: The Observer, 28 March, 1971