TEN E. BENGALI QUIT PAKISTAN HIGH COMMISSION
New Delhi.
Ten East Bengali employees Tuesday quit the Pakistan High Commission here with their families to join the rebel Bangla Desh movement after an apparent scuffle with the West Pakistan staff inside.
At least two of them had been beaten up badly and had bleeding injuries all over their bodies. Some others had head injuries and others had clothes torn. A total of 43, people, including woman and children, had left the Commission bulding.
They claimed that one Bengali staff, Hossain Ali, a clerical assistant, and his family was being forcibly held inside. Another man and his two sons were out while his wife two daughters and a son were not being let out.
With their baggage strewn about outside the family gate of the High Commission; the Bengalis told reporters that they were initially allowed to come out. But when they went back to get a few Bengalis still left inside they were beaten up and thrown out by the West Pakistanis.
They claimed that Hosain Ali was beaten up badly and was lying inside the High Commission in a precarious condition.
And when they later tried to storm into the High Commission along with Humayun Rashid Choudhury, head of the Bangla Desh mission here, they were beaten back by a hail of stones.
Correspondents watched hundreds of stones being hrown from the terrace of the High Commission’s residential block. As people ran for safety one stone hit a local newsman.
Choudhury, who quit the High Commission as head of chancery last month, latter challenged the High Commission to produce Hosain Ali in good shape.
He also served in ultimatum that if the man was not released within 48 hours, the lives of thousands of West Pakistanis in East Pakistan would not be safe.
Expionage
He and others, many openly weeping, claimed that Hossain Ali was actually not a clerk but personal assistant to Abdul Ghani, a first secretary in charge of espionage and subversive activities in India, and that was why he was not being letout. He knew too much.
The fromer diplomat charged that Ghani, Group Captain Azim Duadpota, air adviser and a group of West Pakistanis had beaten up the Bengalis mercillessly before they were allowed to go.
In Berne also
Meanwhile in Berne Williur Rahman, Second Secretary of the Pakistan Embassy in Swizerland and former charge d’Affaires, announced Tuesday that he had resigned and was asking for asylum in Switzerland.
He accused the Pakistan Government at a press conference of having killed 1,500,000 people in East Pakistan.
The Pakistan Embassy in Berne confirmed Rahman’s resignation. A spokesman said it was understood he intended to set up an information service for “Bangla Desh.”
Rahman told the press confernce at a Berne hotel: “This is not a fight between India and Pakistan: it is a war between, West Pakistanis and Patriots of Bangla Desh. It is a war between good and evil, between moral and immoral forces.”
“It is a war between democracy and dictatorship, between a suppressed majority and a megalomaniac minority, hell-bent on exploiting the majority.”
Rahman, who has been in Berne since February 1970 and has acted as charge d’Affaires several times in the absence of the ambassador, said he was asking for Swiss asylum for himself, his wife and two of his sisters-in-lawoRtr
Reference : The Djakarta Times, 04.11.1971