পাতা:বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্র (চতুর্দশ খণ্ড).pdf/৮১

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বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্রঃ চতুর্দশ খণ্ড
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 apparent whim of their commanders, clanged through the streets. It was a blatant exercise in terror and vengeance. There can never be any excuse for the sort of firepower we saw and heard being directed against unarmed civilians. There can be no excuse for the merciless burning of the shanty homes of some of the world's most impoverished people.

 And we had already seen too much to suit the Pakistani Army. “You must pack and be ready to go hi a half hour” Major Siddiq, the army's uninformative Public Relations Officer, told all the foreign correspondents in Dacca. “Are we being expelled?” I asked, “I would not use those words,” he replied. “But you are all leaving."

 Two hours later, we were herded into four army trucks and taken under guard to Dacca's airport, where we were searched and most of our notes and films confiscated. A Pakistan civilian jetliner flew us to Karachi in West Pakistan, where we were searched again. My type-writer and radio were dismantled and two rolls of film I had hidden in the radio's battery compartment were seized. I was then taken into another room and stripped and a packet of film that I Was carrying in my underwear was taken. “You will have only your memory left", a police official chortled cheerfully.

Unity

 That I do have I can still recall the sight of men, women and children hacking down trees and tearing up construction sites to build barricades to hamper the army's movements. Bullets fired into darkened homes were answered with cries of “Bengalis Unite!” And earlier, before the army crackdown, I had visited a village where volunteers, directed by ex-noncoms from the old British Indian Army, were training for guerrilla resistance “We will cut roads, stop ferries, destroy bridges.” One resistance leader to Id me, “and we will get guns from our enemy.” Perhaps his prophecy will not come true. But if a guerrilla war does engulf the East Pakistan countryside, the struggle for Bangladesh promises to be long and bloody. Whatever happens to Mujib himself, such a conflict will be the final test of his contention that machineguns cannot kill the spirit of his people.

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