☾☾Ꮌ বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্র : অষ্টম খন্ড ষ্টেটসম্যান ২৩ মে, ১৯৭১ FLIGHT FROM TERROR & BUTCHERY To The Majority of Bangladesh Refugees the Memory of the, Ravages Wrought by a Ruthless Enemy is Fresh and the Future Void BY MANOJIT MITRA BETWEEN Tripura’s border town, Sabroom, and the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh flows the narrow and grimy Feni river. One morning in the last week of April, while crossing the river by a country boat, I could see thousands of Bangladesh refugees behind me at Sabroom, thousands more waiting on the other bank to cross over and countless others fording the river at shallow points, their meagre belongings on their shoulders. Guns were blazing about 15 miles away and the exodus was on. This was one of those scenes which revealed so much in one instant. One would only have to see the milling thousands, the stamp of terror on their faces, their eagerness to cross over to safer territory and the fatalism with which they had accepted the ordeal of sleeping on the streets to know what they had been through. Ramgarh, the border town of the Hill Tracts, was still occupied by the Mukti Fauj, but the Pakistani Army was pushing ahead. They had ruthlessly shelled and burnt villages along their route, from where these thousands had fled. Sabroom was the most crowded border of Tripura in the third and fourth weeks of April when nearly 200,000 refugees arrived within a few days. In other border area, refugees have started coming earlier. Tens of thousands had arrived from Sylhet, Comilla and Noakhali districts of Bangladesh through the Sonamura, Kamalasagar, Debipur and other borders. Travelling from Agartala to these different borders for days together, everywhere I found refugees-in roadside camps, schools and colleges, private houses, fields and the streets. The worst scenes I was were, however, at Sabroom. Thousands of people were living on the streets and on the premises of the thana. There were interminable queues for chits being issued to bona fide refugees. When I entered the thana, several old women approached me to help them get their chits. While one member of each family stood; in the queue, others looked for food. The old people slept under improvised tents. The children evidently unable to comprehend what had befallen them, played hide-and-seek. Many people looked for food, but not all of them had the money to buy it. Some families squatted near the river, offering their utensils for sale. These were their last belongings. There was an acute shortage of drinking water. District officials had grown panicky; some of them said one or two cases of cholera had already been reported and if the congestion was not relieved, this would turn into an epidemic. Trucks arrived occasionally to take groups of refugees to camps. Cycles, brought along by some across the border, were tied on the side of the trucks. Women, children and fatigued old men scrambled aboard, guided by energetic young men who kept up their spirits despite
