পাতা:বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্র (চতুর্দশ খণ্ড).pdf/১৩৪

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বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্রঃ চতুর্দশ খন্ড শিরোনাম সূত্র তারিখ ৪৭। অনিশ্চিত আশ্রয় নিউজ উইক ১৪ জুন, ১৯৭১ NEWSWEEK, JUNE 14, 1971 DUBIOUS HAVEN By the millions, Bengali refugees from East Pakistan have been streaming across the border into India. Fleeing from the brutal repression that followed their region's attempt to declare itself independent, they have found a dubious haven amid disease and squalor. Last week, News week's Tony Clifton toured several refugee camps and filed this report: Already, the skies over the Indian state of West Bengal are turning heavy and gray in forewarning of the coming monsoon, which is due to burst at any time. Always destructive, the monsoon is certain to wreak extra havoc this year, multiplying the terror and misery of some 4 million Pakistanis who now huddle in ramshackle refugee camps just across the border of their former homeland. Indian officials have performed miracles by feeding and housing the refugees, but all their efforts could be wiped away by even "normal" monsoon rains. And if the downpour is heavy, the ensuing floods could cause a disaster that would rival the catastrophic cyclones that killed half a million people in East Pakistan only last year. The monsoons, however, will only compound the tragedy of the refugees who, in the course of a few short weeks, have seen their entire way of life collapse. They are a pathetic sight straggling along the road, clutching bundles of clothes and an occasional black umbrella to ward off the blistering sun. There are tiny children by the thousands and a disproportionate number of young girls, special targets of the marauding Pakistani Army. There are clusters of people sitting forlornly under trees, exhausted by their march and the lack of food. "The situation is out of control here," moaned K.K. Nuskar, government administrator of the Bongaon area some 60 miles from Calcutta. "I cannot house or feed one more person, and they're coming in at the rate of 100,000 a day. All I can do is give them a little food and move them on." Stench: Inside the overcrowded camps themselves, the scene is equally depressing. Scores of refugees—many with blistered feet, swollen legs, dysentery and other gastrointestinal diseases-are packed into crude shelters often made up of nothing more than tarpaulin roofs and bamboo poles. There are no sides to the shelters, no beds and no lighting. With garbage strewn about haphazardly and with open sewage facilities serving most of the camps, the stench is often overpowering, and the danger of widespread disease is great. Perhaps the only bright spot in the black picture is that the refugees arc relatively will fed-at least by the standards of chronically undernourished India and Pakistan. Despite the squalor of their existence, the Bengalis endure with a minimum of complaint. 'But they are both baffled and outraged by the persecution and the terror they have suffered at the hands of their longtime antagonists, Pakistan's ruling Punjabis. I spoke with one old woman, a widow named Rosimun Bibi who told me, "I came because