250,000 Killed During Pakistan Civil War
MASS KILLINGS IN EAST BENGAL BY WEST PAKISTANI TROOPS
London, April 28 (AP),
– A British Parliamentarian who has just returned from East Pakistan charged Wednesday that West Pakistan troops were committing mass murder in that province.
Bruce Douglas-Mann, Labour Member of Parliament, estimated at least 250,000 Persons had been killed so far in the civil war.
Douglass-Mann, who had spent a week in East Pakistan, told newsmen : “The evidence is undoubtedly true. There are deliberate and mass Killings in East Bengal by the West Pakistan troops”.
He added : “I am afraid I did not see the villagers which were attacked, but all the reports I received from refugees told of the way they had been burned to the ground and men, women and children had been shot.”
Douglas-Mann had only got within earshot of the shooting, but he said : “I saw more than enough to convince me that what is happening in East Bengal is an invasion of the Bengali area of Pakistan by the completely foreign forces of West Pakistan.”
He urged the British government to withhold aid to West Pakistan until peace was secured and said Britain should recognise an independent state of Bangla Desh- East Bengal.
Meanwhile, representatives of the charity organisations, “Oxfa”, “War on Want” and “Christian Aid” said Foreign Secretary Sir Alex Douglas-Home had told them the government would “sympathetically consider” sending relief supplies to Calcutta for the refugees who had crossed into India from the strife torn province.
Reference : Indonesian Observer, 30.04.1971