Unbelievable Misery
Peter Hazelhurst
Bongaon, May 14-An overworked medical officer pointed hopelessly towards the never ending stream of refugees from East Bengal who so far have almost doubled the population of the Indian town of Bongaon, 50 miles north-east of Calcutta “What is to become of them when the monsoon rains come?” he said.
“They don’t even have straw huts for shelter, and it is doubtful whether we can control a cholera epidemic under these conditions. They are going to die like flies. It is estimated that during the past few weeks nearly two million refugees have already crossed the border, and at least 200,000 have been settled in Bongaon and the surrounding district. With fixed stares, “the emaciated figures plod across the border as they flee from the terrors of civil war, starvation, and poverty to face an even more homeless and impoverished future in India.
The lucky ones have been given shelter in the huge camps established by the Indian Government and international relief agencies on the outskirts of Bongaon-but schools, public buildings, and communal tents are already overflowing and newcomers have to fend for themselves.
Those with a little money have managed to purchase flimsy grass matting and have constructed pathetic huts in the fast developing squa- tter camps on the side of the road. But most of the millions of men, women, and children who have fled East Bengal belong to the most impoverished nation on earth’ where a man earns on average about £30 a year, and they have come across the border with nothing but a few rags on their backs.
With hollow cheeks and sunken eyes, they go wearily down the road out of the overcrowded border town towards the south-west, towards Calcutta, where a million people are already elbowing each other for sleeping proof on the pavement.
As we passed the stream of refugees, Mr. Daniel Dolui of St. Paul’s College, Calcutta, a student volunteer attached to CA.S.A., said “Where is it going to end. Twenty thousand new refugees are arriving in the district every day. We had camps in town two days ago. Now there are 22.”
The misery and poverty are unbelievable. The Indian Government has done a magnificent job, but it has been taken by surprise and its resources are limited.
We passed a village school converted into a shelter for women and children. There was a queue of thousands outside the communal kitch-ens. Some will wait for five hours for their Ib ration of cooked rice. A few lucky children get a half cup of milk from church distribution points.
There are no more canvas awnings and many shelters consist of Flimsy grass mats thrown across rough bamboo frames but most of the people arc living in the open., Those who have found shelter on the stairs and verandahs of Government buildings and in forgotten ruins, are jealous guardians of their precious few feet of sleeping space. As men and women join the food queues, the children are left as the stake to the family’s quarters.
Among the hundreds of thousands of Bengalis searching for shelter is Kati Chandra Dey, aged 25, a Hindu laborer from Jessore. We found him clutching his youngest child, surrounded by his family of nine on the outskirts of Bongaon. He said that they had spent three days tramping between one camp and another looking for shelter-but there is nothing.
Why did he leave East Pakistan? “When the Army came we knew they would kill the Hindus. They burnt down my house with petrol but we got away.” From the stories of other refugees who have fled into West Bengal it is evident that the Army has sought out Hindus and Bengali Muslims as their main victims.
It is equally evident that most of the killings came in the form of reprisals for communal riots last month, when Bengalis systematically massacred the nonBengali Muslim immigrants (Biharis) in East Pakistan.
“There are no Bihari refugees,” a Bengali social worker told me confidently. “Fourteen of them tried to come into West Bengal two days ago, and the Bengalis beat them to death with spars and stones.”
The Army has been equally ruthless and most of the refugees have fled after reports of mass murders and killings.
Hasan Ali is a 25 year-old Muslim peasant of Bengali stock from the district of Jessore. He was in the small CASA field hospital. which has been set up in the old Salvation Army headquarters on the out- skirts of Bongaon. He says that the West Pakistan soldiers refused to believe that he was a Muslim and shot him down in his paddy field.
He pointed to the gaping hole in the front of his neck and the wound at the back of his shoulder, and explained that miraculously the bullet had passed through his neck without killing him.
“I was working in my field when Pakistan Army troops came up from behind us. There were about 70 troops and they surrounded three of us. They wanted to know whether we were Hindus or Muslims.
“They refused to believe that we were Muslims. They told us to put our hands up and we began to beg them to spare our lives. Then they started to shoot and I fainted.”
Binod Behary Shah, a Hindu laborer aged 70, also from Jessore, had a similar story to tell. He held up fingers torn by a bullet as, with palms folded on his chest, begged West Pakistan soldiers to spare’ his life. “I was sleeping when two soldiers ordered me out of my house, which is about 20 yards from the main road. At first they wanted to know whether I was a Bengali or a non- Bengali. Then they wanted to know whether 1 was a Hindu or a Muslim.
When I told them I was a Hindu, they ordered me to kneel and they began to load their guns. I folded my two hands on my chest and begged them not to shoot, but they fired. The bullet went through my hands and the top part of my chest, and fell to the ground and pretended to be dead.”
Ahmed Ali, aged 25, is a cultivator from the village of Diara, about 17 miles east of the Indian border. His right leg and left arm were in plaster casts. He said that about two weeks ago troops entered the village and rounded up all the able-bodied young men they could find, marching them to a small village nearby called Mahadevpur, about a mile to the west.
“They asked us whether we were Bengalis or non-Bengalis and told us to lie down on the ground. They surrounded us and started shooting. A bullet hit me in the arm and I lay still. As they left, they bayoneted me in the groin, and crushed and stamped on my legs.”
Mr. Ali explained that he and three other villagers escaped with wounds and were eventually carried to the Indian border for treatment.
Narayan Chandra Biswas, another patient in the small CASA hospital and tea stall owner from Jessore, was rounded up by the West Pakistan troops and taken to central market place, where dissident Bengali police had executed an unknown number of West Pakistan civilians and non-Bengalis last month.
The Army alleged that the tea stall owner was a policeman and a Hindu. He was made to kneel and the soldiers began to jab him with bayonets. He pointed to wounds all over his stomach and chest and said be fainted, being revived by friends after the soldiers had left him for dead.
Reference: The Times, Lovdon, May 15, 1971