Curfew Eased by Army in East Pakistan
Three Reports By Martin Adeney Who Returned To London From Dacca Yesterday
The curfew in the East Pakistan capital, Dacca, was relaxed for an extra hour yesterday as the Pakistan Government claimed that complete calm continued in the province taken over by the armed forces on Thursday night. But it hinted at serious trouble in Khulna, the second largest port in the province, where Left-wing forces are best organized. The Government said a mob of “miscreants” has created some trouble, It claimed that in Chittagong, the region’s principal port where troops were trapped on Wednesday night by crowds barricading the streets, the situation continued to improve and was well under control. In spite of claims that Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the East Pakistan leader, is still free, there is strong evidence that he is in prison in Dacca, as the Pakistani authorities claim.
A four-man team from the International Red Cross Committee left Geneva yesterday to try to reach East Pakistan to assess the relief needs of victims of fighting, The all-Swiss team was flying to Karachi and hoping to go on to Dacca, India rejected a protest from Pakistan that it had interfered in Pakistan’s domestic affairs during the crisis as “false and mischievous” Pakistani allegations that the clandestine radio “Voice of Bangladesh” Was based on a ship moored in the Hooghly river, near Calcutta.
The Press trust of India reported fewer bulletins from the Clandestine radio today, One of these claimed that Sheikh Mujib’s “Liberation Army” had captured the important northern town of Rangpur after bitter fighting with West Pakistani troops, The radio also said army units were marching to Dacca from Chittagong. The Indian news agency reported that “Free Bangla Radio” had claimed that a provisional Bangladesh Government had been set up, headed by Major Jia Khan, commander of the “army”. He had appealed for diplomatic recognition and for material aid.
It is difficult to know what weight to place on Press Trust reports that mobs have seized district headquarters at Rangpur. It seems extremely unlikely Rangpur is not only a brigade headquarters but the station of the one armored regiment in East Pakistan with its tank force, Another report that Dacca radio had announced that martial law headquarters had called for troop reinforcements in East Pakistan was not monitored on later bulletins and would be a surprising item for a Governmentcontrolled radio which often ignores disturbances completely.
Students Hostels Were Shelled
This description of the fighting in Dacca was written in the city on Friday when our correspondent was prevented from leaving his hotel by the army, and telephone communications were cut off It was cabled to the “Guardian” from outside the country on Saturday morning
The Bengali spring ended at 11-30 on Thursday night when convoys of army moved into Dacca with fire and sword, I saw the sword this morning, raised in the hand of army private as his truck drove behind a jeep fluttering an enormous Pakistani flag – a standard that has been rare in Bengal these past four weeks, The fire billowed from various sites around the town, most noticeably from a massive conflagration in the direction of the new university campus where rocket launchers opened up at 1:20 am and from which smoke is still rising nine hours later.
From my hotel on the main road to the military cantonment and airports just outside the city it is not possible to get a clear view of all that has happened, But since 11 last night we have not been permitted to leave by the army guards originally posted for the safety of west Pakistani politicians staying here, But this is what we saw at about 2:15 am. more than an hour after firing by automatic weapons appeared to become general, and an hour after the floor – shaking tremors of artillery were first felt We overlook a crossroads on one corner of which the hotel stands and opposite which is a two-storey multi-market with a number of small shops, Down one side is a broad alley across which two cars had been drawn.
Machine-guns
The area was quiet and we were listening to firing half a mile or more away when two jeeps with machine-guns came round the corner and opened fire down the deserted road, They then sent fire arcing up the alley and into the cars, There was some shouting from the roof of the market and the guns opened up on its first-storey corner window, A group of soldiers tried unsuccessfully to fire a bazooka at the building and then two infantry sections milled about the cars, shifted them. and continued to fire occasional bursts down the road and into waste ground. They broke down the entrance into a scrap yard and started a fire before moving on to the offices of the “People” newspaper, which has been outspoken about Bengal independence and army brutality.
After calling on those inside to come out, so their lives could be spared (in Urdu though the language here is Bengali), soldiers broke in and swiftly set fire to the entire range of one-storey buildings. While this was going of about 15 youths emerged farther down the street and raised a slogan. When machine- gun fire was directed at them. they scattered. The soldiers retraced their steps down the alley with cheers of “Pakistan Zindabad” (long live Pakistan) and “Nare Takbir” (victory for God).
At no time during the engagement did any fire appear to be directed at the soldiers who remained bunched most of the time and no injuries were sustained. The battle may have begun because they saw figures on a roof. It ended with two businesses burning brightly after deliberately being fired and a block riddled with bullets. If this is what happened on one street corner. one can only guess at what happened at places where barricades were being erected as early as 11 p.rn. last night
A correspondent attempting to return here after a dinner party found civilian roadblocks already erected by the cross-roads near the airport and bricks were thrown at his car. By 3 am there was a huge fire in that area. By 7 am tanks were out, followed by a crane, presumably to remove roadblocks. The heaviest firing during the night came from the direction of the university halls of residence. There must have been at least a dozen widely spaced howitzer reports with their preceding flash in the area of Mohsin Hall, the girls’ hostel, before at 2:30 the lights of Iqbal Hall, the central boys’ hostel, were blotted out by a huge tongue of flame.
Another fire was in the direction of the police headquarters from which a telephone call earlier had spoken of troops surrounding the building. It is impossible to estimate casualties accurately, but the figure must run into thousands. One fears what may be found at the university where students had trained militantly but like first-year school boy cadets with drill rifles and bamboo sticks.
The army believes it now has the province firmly under control. As one captain put it this morning, “Things will be better now. Now no one can come out and speak. At first we did not take this seriously but now we have taken it very seriously.” Another captain physically propelling us from the hotel forecourt towards the lobby, said: “If I kill my own people, I can also kill you. I can deal with you in a second.” He reminded me of the words of a military public relations official who said two weeks ago at a press briefing: “If we get the word. we can crush it like that,” and he snapped his fingers.
The army moved swiftly last night as soon as it became clear that the talks had failed. The action came after a meeting of generals in Dacca on. Wednesday morning. Thus the army appears to have acted according to a well-coordinated plan but also to forestall any reaction from Sheikh Mujib to the breakdown of the talks, The situation was made critical by events at Chittagong and Saidpur in Rangpur district. north of Dacca. Barricades erected to prevent troops unloading cargo at Chittagong paralysed the whole town and cut it off from Dacca. Both in Chittagong and Saidpur, a number of people died in confrontations with the troops. The army’s three main targets appear to be political groups, armed civilians, and the press. According to the drum rattle of martial law orders beaten out this morning, all political activity is banned. The carrying of even such weapons as wooden sticks is prohibited. and rigorous censorship has been imposed.
With other foreign journalists, I was today put on a plane for Karachi. An army spokesman who passed on the martial law authorities’ request to leave said the troops had met little resistance. Most of the rocket launcher firings had been against barricades. But as I left, a huge pall of smoke hung in the air, a dense mass of it coming from the slum quarter of the old city. The spokesman said the army had prior knowledge of arms dumps at the university halls and had made for them which explained the big explosions there. “Had they,” I asked, snapping my fingers, “dealt with them like that?” He hesitated. “Yes”, he said, they had. The object. he said, had been “more or less to throw out an illegal de facto Government.”
Troops Used ‘Shoot First Tactics
Dacca was still burning when I and other foreign journalists left nearly 24 hours after the army began its military assault on an almost unarmed population. During the day, the smoke of early morning fires had been replaced by a thick, rising column of dark smoke from two areas south of the civic buildings. A Bengali estimated that it came from the area close to old Dacca where slum dwellers huddle and from where Sheikh Mujib’s banned Awami League drew some of its hard-core support. As we drove to the airport, we saw further evidence of burning – glowing embers of what had been a collection of bamboo shacks on waste ground and a rectangle of market stalls which had recently been set alight.
Sporadic fire
Throughout the day, sporadic bursts of automatic fire could be heard, sometimes interspersed with something heavier, even though the army had claimed that the operation was completed successfully. On the way, we saw the pitiful attempts people had made to barricade the road, which is also the principal route between the town and the military cantonment area. A few trees had been cut down and from marks on them apparently pushed aside easily by tanks or bulldozers.
One can say with certainty that the army used vastly more force than was necessary to occupy the city, that it chose certain targets such as the “People” newspaper for specific vindictive treatment, and that it decided to shoot first and ask a few questions later. Judging by the demeanor of troops we saw in one apparently innocent alley, heavy firing in the direction in which they were headed was regarded as a useful safety measure. It was also true that certain buildings were set on fire deliberately and I suspect that the large fires on Friday midday while the army curfew continued were encouraged, if not started by the army. An official spokesman’s claim that many had begun because people had stored kerosene next to the barricades for use against the troops sounds unconvincing.
Indiscriminate
That was not the case at the “People” – front page motto “You cannot fool all of the people all the time,” – nor do I believe it was the case with the market stalls near which nobody appeared to live and which had been deserted. How the army dealt with the civilian population is difficult to assess. A Russian journalist driving back to our hotel said he saw some jeep loads of troops firing machine-guns indiscriminately through people’s windows. A brigadier, when asked if the army was shooting everybody in the streets. replied: “Not the women and the children.”
Together with about thirty other non-Pakistani journalists I was requested to leave Dacca by the martial law authorities at 5:30 p.m. East Pakistan time on Friday. as two columns of smoke were rising over Dacca and some shooting was still continuing. “There are some requests which are requirements,” said Major Saliq, the army’s public relations officer, when we asked for clarification. At last I think that is what he said, because every note I have taken in India and Pakistan in the last six weeks, several books and pamphlets, the addresses of a number of friends, and a cutting from the “Daily Mirror” which, I think, says, “Immigrants posed as skin divers” or something equally bizarre, are now in the possession of the martial-law authority of Pakistan in whose representatives company I have spent about 13 of the last 48 hours.
I cannot say for sure why we were expelled from Dacca. It may be that the authorities were anxious about our safety. On one or two occasions cameramen who put the noses of their equipment out of the window were threatened with being shot at by the army. But an army which claimed the situation was under control should not have been afraid for us, although I fear it was because it does not want the world to know what is going on in East Pakistan today.
At 8:15 we were taken in army trucks to the airport, where we waited until 4 am together with a number of non-Bengali families who, in far more frightening condition than us, were waiting to leave the wing of their country where they feared their lives were in danger simply because they were not Bengalis. The water ran out about 1 am and we were given two biscuits by a sweeper who bought them out of his own money. We each spent about half an hour while a captain of artillery went through all our papers, confiscating from me my notebook of the day’s events, a roll of film, and a paper on capital development in Bengal.
At 11 :30 in Karachi, after a six-hour flight by way of Colombo where six of us tried unsuccessfully to leave the aircraft, we lined up for customs inspection again. At 3 p.m. I was allowed out after turning my pockets out and losing every note I had anywhere in my luggage and almost everything that referred to Pakistan. I did, however, manage to rescue a statement on the size of the Indian Army which the customs official seized with a cry of “Ah, the man behind the machine-gun.” The same happened to all my colleagues. The wife of one was stripped to see if she was carrying any documents. French television lost $ 8,000 worth of unexposed film which they were taking to Cambodia; ABC lost $ 2,000 worth.
Reference: The Guardian, 26 March, 1971