Massacre Of Refugees By Bengalis Alleged
Peter Hazelhurst
Hili, Northern West Bengal, April 5. Thousands of helpless Muslim refugees who settled in Bengal at the time of partition are reported to have been massacred by angry Bengalis in East Pakistan during the past week. The facts about the massacres were confirmed by Bihari Muslim refugees who crossed the border into India this week and by a young British technician who crossed the Indo-Pakistan frontier at Hili today. The technician, who does not want to be identified because he has to return to Bengal, was trapped in the northern region of Bengal after the civil war erupted.
He said that hundreds of non-Bengali Muslims must have died in the northwestern town of Dinajpur alone after victorious Bengalis drove the Punjab regiment out of the town last week. “After the soldiers left, the mobs set upon the non-Bengali Muslims from Bihar. I don’t know how many died, but I could hear the screams throughout the night”, he said. Later, the police and the Awami League were able to restore order and camps were set up to protect the non-Bengali minority community which has cultural links with West Pakistan.
In other parts of the region, he said, Biharis had been rounded up and were being held as hostages against the lives of the estimated 400,000 Bengali settlers who are stranded in West Pakistan. Thousands of non-Bengalis have already been evacuated by boat to West Pakistan from the turbulent eastern wing, and in the western province where communal trouble erupted last month, a vast number of terrified Bengalis are queuing for air and sea passages back to their home province. The British technician also confirmed hitherto unsubstantiated reports that the Army has been routed in most of the big towns of the northern regions of East Pakistan which are now under control of the liberation front.
The technician, who was near Dinajpur at the time of the massacre, said that he could feel the tension begin to mount the moment that President Yahya Khan reimposed martial law. “There had been no trouble with rioting in the area until then”, he said. “But on Friday morning the Army took up positions. There were about 500 members of the Punjab Regiment and about the same number of men from the East Pakistan Rifles were about to mutiny. A curfew was imposed on Friday and Saturday. Students walking down the street out of earshot of Army troops kept muttering ‘Hail, Bengal’ (Joi Bangla) and everyone knew that something was about to happen. On Sunday morning the Army put the deputy district commissioner under house arrest, presumably because he had hoisted the new flag of Bengal on Republic Day. A little later, troops expecting trouble began to dig trenches around their headquarters.
On Sunday afternoon, the Bengali troops in the East Pakistan Rifles lines rebelled and firing broke out between the Army and the police. By Monday night the Army began to suffer heavy casualties and retreated from the town. The British technician said: “I don’t know what happened to the Army’s wounded but there is no denying the fact that the Punjabis had raped had looted houses before this and the people were angry.”
Reference: The Times, 6 April, 1971