FOREIGN EVACUEES FROM
EAST PAKISTAN TELL OF GRIM FIGHT

 

More than 100 foreign evacuees arrived here today after a 34-hour voyage from Chittagong, East Pakistan's major port, bringing the latest eyewitness reports about the Pakistani army's attempt to suppress the independence movement.

 

"It's a massacre," said John Martinussen, a Danish student.

 

"We saw the army shooting civilians," said Neil O'Toole, an American from New Rochelle, N.Y. "I don't want to say too much because I'am afraid of reprisals against our organization." He asked that the name of his organi­zation not be mentioned.

 

The 119 foreigners, who arrived at the Calcutta docks this afternoon aboard a British cargo vessel that had been sitting in Chittagong harbour unable to unload because of the fighting, were of 17 nationalities. The two largest groups were 37 Americans and 33 Britons.

 

As they came down the gangplank of the vessel, the Clan Mac-Nair, they were met by diplomatic officials and a crowd of Indian and foreign newsmen.

 

Though some of the evacuees were reluctant to talk, others painted a grim picture of Chittagong, East Pakistan's second-largest city. Until now little has been known of how that city of 400,000 inhabitants has fared in the fighting.

 

The foreigners said that after several days of fighting, the army-all West Pakistani troops-had pushed the East Pakistani resistance forces out of the city.

 

But, they added, the army's control ends five miles outside the city, at the banks of the Karnalphuli River.

 

Everything from the river south, they said, is in the hands of the "liberation army which consists of civilians and members of the East Pakistani police, the East Pakistani Rifles and the East Bengal Regiment who have come over to the independence movement.

The foreigners said that they could hear shooting on the outskirts of the city even as they were leaving for Calcutta yesterday morning. Most of the residents have fled the city and gone into the countryside, they said.

 

Army Burns Slums

 

In the city, where fighting broke out early Friday morning, on March 26, the foreigners said the army had burned to the ground many of the flimsy slums of the poor, the stanchest supporters of independence.

 

The ashes of the bamboo huts in these neighbourhoods were still smoldering, the foreigners said, as they were taken to the docks under military escort yesterday morning to be evacuated.

 

The Pakistan Radio, speaking for the Pakistan Government, contends that all of East Pakistan is calm and that life is returning to normal.

 

"Nothing is calm, and nothing has come back to normal," said Mr. Martinussen, who came to Chittagong seven months ago with his wife Karen to study Pakistani politics as part of his master's degree program at Aarhus University in Denmark.

 

"They systematically burned down the districts of the poor people, apparently because they felt they could'nt search them thoroughly," he went on. "They seemed to be enjoing killing and destroying everything."

 

"Many Bengalis have been killed," the 23-year-old student went on. "In the river just four days ago, you could count 400 bodies floating in one area."

 

Mr. Martinussen, who related several accounts of civilians being gunned down in shops and on the street, forecast eventual victory for the 75 million East Pakistanis, who have long protested their exploitation by West Pakistan, which is situated more than 1,000 miles away across Indian territory.

 

Independence Movement

 

"So many Bengalis want their Bangla Desh," said the slim student, "that I'm sure they will get it."

 

Bangla Desh is Bengali for Bengal nation. It is the independence movement's name for East Pakistan.

 

His views were echoed by Mr. O'Toole, who is 26 years old. "Chittagong is controlled by the army," he said. "It is controlled by brute force and terror. The army kept coming in. They were shooting civilians. We saw dead bodies. We smelled the stench of death."

 

"There was a lot of harassment and beating," he added, "and there was indis­criminate looting and burning by outsiders."

 

Vengeance Reported

 

Mr. O'Toole did not explain what he meant by "outsiders"-but he apparently was talking about West Pakistanis living in East Pakistan.

 

Other refugees reported that some Bengalis had taken vengeance by killing non­Bengali businessmen.

 

The foreigners said that a 7 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew prevails in Chittagong, that electric power, cut for three days, has been restored only in some areas of the city, and that the port was virtually shut down since there were no Bengalis to work there.

 

Some of the evacuees left their homes during the heavy fighting and took refuge in the Hotel Agrabad, away from the center of action.

 

They said that soldiers had visited some of their homes while they were away.

 

"The army was very polite," Edward J. McManus, an American engineer from Montrose, N.Y., said with sarcasm. "They drank all my whisky, but they gave me all my glasses back. Very honest."

 

(SYDNEY H..SCHANDERG, IN NEW YORK TIMES-April 7, 1971)

 

 

Source: Bangladesh Documents, vol – I, p.393-395