বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্রঃ তৃতীয় পত্র
building, their hands in the air, by West Pakistan troops. Then he heard a sustained burst of firing and assumed that the Bengalis had been killed".
The Steering Committee of the 'International Committee on the University Emergency' in a statement reported from New York and published in HINDUSTAN STANDARD, India of April 24 said “It was obvious that the University has been a major target. A premeditated massacre appears to have been conducted from a master list of victims prepared possibly as early as last fall. Leading teachers as well as artists, musicians and writers associated with Bengali literature and culture were the victims. It was genocide in its cruelest and most abject sense".
Syria's AL-THAWRA called this action of West Pakistan troops as “an organized campaign of mass-killing in East Bengal".
Dan Coggins, Correspondent of TIME Magazine was another newsman who Was expelled on 26th evening but subsequently became the first American journalist to visit Dacca by truck, bus and bicycle through less prominent routes. He wrote “the tales of brutality are seemingly endless. A young man whose house was being searched begged the soldiers to do anything, but to leave his 17 years old sister alone; they spared him so that he could watch them murder her with a bayonet. Col. Abdul Hai, a Bengali Physician attached to the East Bengal Regiment was allowed to make a last phone call to his family; an hour later his body was delivered to his home. An old man who decided his Friday prayers were more important than the curfew, was shot to death as he walked into a Mosque".
The most revealing of all the reports, was that of Anthony Mascarenhas who in his 4-page account in the SUNDAY TIMES on June 13 said “This is genocide conducted with amazing casualness". Mascarenhas was a guest of West Pakistan army in Bangladesh in April 1971 and toured the whole of the territory assisted by army officers. In his despatch which came out under the heading “GENOCIDE" he writes “I think that in reality there is no contradiction in the Government's East Bengal policy. East Bengal is being colonized........President Yahya Khan is riding on the back of a tiger but he took a calculated decision to climb up there".
"But the army is not going to pull out easily. The Pakistan Government's policy for East Bengal was spelled out to me in the Eastern command Headquarters at Dacca. It has 3 elements:
(i) the Bengalis had proved themselves 'unreliable' and must be ruled by West
Pakistanis.
(ii) the Bengalis will have to be re-educated along proper Islamic lines. The
'Islamisation of the massess'-this is official jargon-is intended to eliminate
secessionist tendencies and provide a strong religious bond with West
Pakistan.
(iii) when the Hindus have been eliminated by death and flight their property will
be utilized as a golden carrot to win over the under privileged Muslim middle
class. This will provide the base for erecting administrative and political
structures in the future. This policy is being pursued with the utmost
blatancy".
