Bengali diplomats stage a walk-out
The East Pakistani employees left the Pakistan High Commission here with their families today to join the BanglaDesh movement. They claimed that they had been beaten up by West Pakistani members at the High Commision.
Two of them appeared to have been extensively injured while others had head wounds and torn clothes.
A total of 43 people, including women and children, left the building. They told reporters outside that one Bengali member of the staff and his family were being forcibly held inside. In another case a man and two of his sons had left but his wife, third son and two daughters were being detained in the High Commission.
* The East Pakistanis said they were initially allowed to come out, but when they went back to bring out some colleagues they were beaten up and thrown out by the West Pakistanis. They claimed that the one Bengali member of the staff to have been prevented with his family from leaving the building had been badly beaten and was lying injured inside the High Commission.
When they later tried to storm the building together with Mr Humayun Rashid Chowdhury, head of the BanglaDesh mission in New Delhi, they were beaten back by a half of hundreds of stones thrown from the terrace of the High Commission’s residential block.
High Commission officials were not immediately available for comment. Correspondents who attempted to telephone received the constant reply, “Not available.”
Our Correspondent writes from Geneva : Mr Rahman has asked Swiss authorities for asylum for himself, his wife, and two sisters who fled from Dacca.
It is almost certain that he will be granted political asylum, but it is highly unlikely he will be permitted to open a BanglaDesh office. Such a development would be regarded as incompatible with Swiss neutrality.
Reference: The Guardian New Delhi, November 2, 1971