পাতা:বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্র (চতুর্থ খণ্ড).pdf/৪২৭

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বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিল : চতুর্থ খণ্ড
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bidding lime to permute the reinforcement of troops with modem arms. The remarkable success of the civil disobedience movement left the Pakistan government in no doubt that the days of colonial exploitation of the East wing were gone forever. The West Pakistani rulers and capitatists were interested only in exploitation of East Pakistan. They did not therefore care for a peaceful political solution of the problem. Rather they decided to crush the movement for autonomy by ruthlessly killing all the Bengalis connected with the movement-Awami League leaders, students, teachers and all intellectuals. This barbarous and foolish action of the West Pakistan army dominated by Punjabi soldiers sounded the death-knell of Pakistan and forced the creation of an independent state in East Pakistan, popularly and officially called ‘Bangladesh’.

VIII. Massacre in Bangladesh.

 The well-trained professional troops of West Pakistan armed with most modem weapons and supported by air force and navy unleashed a massive attack against the entire people of Bangladesh on the night of March 25. The army action was wellplanned and started simultaneously in all important cities and towns. Not only political leaders and intellectuals, but also innocent unarmed civilians including children and women were killed in brutal and cold-blooded way. Exact figures of death and devastation which is still going on will never be known. Yahya Khan's regime imposed complete censorship on news and communication and expelled the thirty-five foreign correspondents from Dacca on 26th March. The conspiracy of Yahya- Tikka Khan regime was to cow down the Bengalis by completing a selective genocide within 72 hours, without allowing the outside world to know what happened in East Pakistan.

 They were partially successful in concealing their heinous crime and in creating a confusion about the East Pakistan situation in the outside world. But gradually, the brutalities and atrocities committed by the West Pakistan troops spread over the world through the eye-witness accounts of foreign correspondents, evacuated foreign correspondents who were taken, to East Pakistan in May by army authorities on a conducted tour saw signs of large scale devastation and death during army action. According to their estimates, death toll might be between half a million to one million. They found the cities deserted and half-dead, economic activities shattered and communications disrupted. The people were stunned and frightened. Reports leaking out from East Pakistan indicate that the process of terrorization and victimization is still going on. Jungle Jaws prevail there. The West Pakistan troops and their supporters non-Bengali population have license to shot anybody, to loot any property, to rape any woman and to burn any house. The fact that about six million East Bengalis have fled from their houses to India and that even now the flow of refugees is continuing at a rate of about 50,000 to 100,000 every day proves clearly that there is no law. no security, no normalcy in East Pakistan and that there must be terrible shortage of food, medicines and other necessities of life in that devastated territory.

IX. Eye-witness accounts of army atrocities.

 The thirty-five foreign correspondents who were in Dacca on the night of March 25 saw glimpses of army action. Some of them reported after their expulsion from Dacca