680 বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্রঃ ষষ্ঠ খণ্ড শিরোনাম সংবাদপত্র তারিখ Death And Terror Reign Bangladesh Newsletter 10 October, 1971 In Occupied Bangladesh Chicago : No. 10 DEATH AND TERROR REIGN IN OCCUPIED BANGLADESH A higly placed citizen of Bangladesh who just fled the country attended the Bangladesh defense League meeting in Chicago on September 25. He gave a report on the current situation. For, fear army reprisal on the members of his family he left behind, he wishes not to be identified by name. Dacca is a city of death and terror, he reports, and so is the rest of occupied Bangladesh. Nobody ventures to go out of their houses after sunset. If you go out, chances are that you may not return. Even for people who do not indulge in such risky enterprises-life is not quite guaranteed. Some of them, for no reason, disappear. You never hear from them again. Offices and schools in Dacca are open, but ‘functioning hardly is a word to describe them. Bengali officers, high or low, are not trusted. They are relegated to positions of clerks while the army personnel keep the decision-making to themselves. Attendance in Dacca University is below 5 percent. When the University opened for the first time only 32 Students attended out of Six thousand. Attendance has now increased to the present level after continuous campaign of reprisal against the parents. In Rajshahi University attendance, it still below 3 percent of total Majority of the students attending classes are non-Bengalis. Out of 94,000 students who were scheduled to appear in the high schools graduation examination about 3500 appeared. Again, the bulk of them are nonBengalis. Bengali youths are prime suspect. Harassment and physical torture of the youth is common place of experience. Cities are gradually becoming the prison of the middle aged. Atrocity stories proliferate, each competing with every other in terms or savagery. An eyewitness described bow a Bengali Wing-Commander of Pakistan Air Force was kept in his detention cell with legs tied to the ceiling. After 66 days of ceaseless torture he succumbed to death. About 300 women prisoners in Dacca military Cantonment are not allowed to wear clothes because some of them have committed suicide by converting their saries into hanging ropes. Rightist organizations like Muslim League and Jamat-e-Islami have been activated to recruit Razakars (vigilante group) Razakars are regularly sent out to loot and burn
