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Partial list of the war criminals with accusations and charges

Bangladesh News (Voice of the Bangladeshis in Australia)/Dec 16, 1999
Registered as a newspaper in Victoria
Level 10, 459 Little Collins St, Melbourne Vic 3000, Australia
Naming The Names –Introducing The War Criminals (By: Ahmed Ziauddin)
[Excerpt] Following is a partial list of the war criminals with accusations and charges.

Name: Lt.Gen.Niazi
No: PA 477
Post held: Corps Commander, Martial Law Administrator Zone B

Allegations: The accused is alleged to have arrived incognito at least by the 1st of March in Dacca. Thereafter, he participated in a series of high level conferences where the military operations connected with genocide were planned and finalised. His participation was under cover. After he took over as Martial Law Administrator Zone B, the accused made a large number of public statements and issued a large number of orders in respect of the plan of genocide and the military operations connected therewith. He also took upon himself the whole responsibility for all criminal acts by men under his command and indeed for all acts of his troops during the military occupation of Bangladesh. Evidences are available about mass rape and the criminal violation of women by the men under his command. It is alleged that he was personally present on the scene of the systematic murder of Bangalee intellectuals on or about 12th to 16th December, 1971. He is also alleged to have visited the site for the plan of murder of intellectuals in Brahmanbaria prior to the commission of the acts. He is also alleged to have illegally detained at least 50 women and girls in Dacca “for his personal pleasure”.

Proposed charges: Conspiracy to wage aggressive war, conspiracy to commit genocide, conspiracy to commit crime against humanity, complicity in the commission of genocide and war crimes and crimes against humanity. Failure to maintain discipline, false arrests, rape, assault and battery and murder and criminal violation of international agreements.

Name: Major General Rao Farman Ali Khan
No: PA 1364
Post Held: Deputy Martial Law Administrator Zone B (as Brigadier in March 1969 to July 1970); from July 1970 Major General Civil Affairs)

Functions: To use the civil administration for the purpose of Martial Law, screening of civil servants before posting in districts, political appreciation through daily or weekly meetings either with civil officers or intelligence officers and feeding information to military junta in Islamabad.

Allegations: Participation in all secret meetings held by General Yahya Khan from 15th March onwards in Dacca Cantonment. Participation in all military exercises in Bangladesh. His recommendations and formulation of the master plan to eliminate all Bengalee intellectuals and Awami Leaguers and selection of time and date for army crackdown in Bangladesh in executing the master plan.

Proposed charges: Conspiracy to wage a war of aggression, conspiracy to commit genocide and crime against humanity, complicity in the commission of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Execution of plan of genocide and crimes against humanity.

Name: Major General Mohammad Hussain Ansari
No. PA 4404
Post held: Station Commander, Dacca (prior to 25th March 1971). Station Commander, Chittagong, G.O.C. 9th Division, Sub-Martial Law Administrator, Sector III.

Allegations: Evidence indicates that the accused was associated with and participated in planning of the military operations that were launched from 25th March, 1971. He appears to have attended a number of high level staff and operational planning sessions in which the details of the plan of genocide were finalised. In Chittagong, he was associated with and directed the operations designed to eliminate the Bengalee military personnel serving in Chittagong Garrison. When he assumed Command as GOC, 9th Division and Sub-Martial Law Administrator, Section III, he became responsible for a large area comprising Jessore, Jinadah, Barisal, Khulna, Khulna Port, Satkhira, Magura, Kushtia, Faridpur, Chaudanga, Gopalganj, Madaripur, Patuakhali, Bhola and Bagerhat. There is wide evidence of widespread mass atrocities including murder, torture, rape and arson in the area under his control or members of the formation under his command as from July 1971 till surrender.

Proposed charges: Conspiracy to commit genocide and crimes against humanity. Execution and direction of operations in pursuance of the conspiracy to commit genocide, mass murder, torture, rape, arson, false arrest and detention etc.

Name: Colonel M.Yakub Malik
No: PA 3837
Unit: 53 Field Artillery Regiment (53 Brigade 14 Division)
Post held: C.O.

Allegations: His unit was stationed at Comilla even prior to 25th March, 1971 and remained in Bangladesh till surrender. On and between the 25th and 29th March 1971, 300 Bangalee military officers and other ranks were disarmed and detained in Comilla at Brigade Headquarters. In addition, 1600 civilians were also arrested. On the 30th March 1971, batches of 15 and 20 persons from among those detained were taken out and killed in the precincts of Brigade Headquarters. In the same night with the help of petromax light, these bodies of persons killed were buried in mass graves in the cantonment limits. The accused was at all material times in Comilla and on the date of the killings was actually present through the day at Brigade Headquarters where the killings occurred.

Proposed charges: Execution of planned genocide, mass murder, torture, criminal violation of international agreements, false arrest and detention etc.

Name: Lt.Col. A. Shams-ul-Zaman (also known as Col.Shams)
No: PA 4745
Unit: 22 FFR and Infantry Battalion (107 Brigade, 14 Division)
Post: Assistant Sub-Martial Law Administrator (Khulna) till June 1971; Sub-Martial Maw Administrator (Jessore) July 1971.

Allegations: The accused was stationed at Jessore even prior to 25th March 1971. Later, he moved to Khulna and appears to have returned to Jessore. He was at all material times in Bangladesh. There is evidence of widespread atrocities in area Jessore-Khulna. For example, on 4th April 1971, military personnel of Pakistani army, in company strength, went to Chachara Mahalla of Jessore town and opened indiscriminate fire killing 200 persons. From March to May 1971, nearly 2000 persons in batches were brought to Khulna Circuit House, tortured and killed at Forest Ghat which is 200 yards from the Circuit House. During this period, the accused was living in Circuit House and personally inspected the torture chambers.

Proposed charges: Execution of planned genocide, mass murder, torture, criminal violation of international agreements, false arrest and detention, etc.

Name: Major Mohammad Abdullah Khan
No: PTC 5911
Post held: Deputy Sub-Martial Law Administrator, Sub-Sector 12, Brahamanbaria.

Allegations: On 21st November 1971, the accused is alleged to have taken some 50 persons from Brahmanbaria sub-jail and killed them at a place near Pairtala Bridge where subsequently 42 bodies were disinterred. Eyewitness accounts are available. This area was visited by Lt.General Niazi and Major General Majid Khan prior to the murder of intellectuals in Brahmanbaria. Evidence discloses a design to commit genocide in that area.

Proposed charges: Execution of plan of genocide, murder, false arrest, etc.

Name: Major Khurshid Omar
No: PA 4553
Unit: 614 Field Intelligence Unit, Jessore Cantonment.

Allegations: The accused was in-charge of field intelligence unit at Jessore Cantonment at least from March, 1971 till the surrender. He appears to have had responsibility for the collection of political intelligence and submission of intelligence reports of the political situation in that area. He was also in-charge in this connection with the interrogation and screening of Bangalee military and civilian personnel with a view to executing the plan of genocide; At least 900 persons were brought before him, interrogated and in many cases tortured under his order and or supervision. The accused appears to have specialised in devising ingenious instruments of torture.

Proposed charges: Execution of the plan of genocide, murder, torture, false arrest and detention and criminal violation of international law and agreements.

Name: Captain Abdul Wahid
No: PSS 8464
Unit: 30 FF

Allegations: The accused was posted in Dacca city at about the time of military crack down which commenced on the 25th March 1971. Evidence exists of his participation in the acts of murder, loot and arson that were perpetrated on that day in Dacca.

Proposed charges: Murder, loot, arson, failure to maintain discipline.

(The writer teaches Law at Brussels Catholic University and heads, Bangladesh Centre For Genocide Studies).

(Source)

Skewing the history of rape in 1971 A prescription for reconciliation?

Nayanika Mookherjee runs a critical eye over Sarmila Bose’s controversial analysis of the violence committed during the Liberation War:

This is a discussion of Sarmila Bose’s article: “Anatomy of Violence: Analysis of Civil War in East Pakistan in 1971” (EPW, Oct 8, 2005). A version of this paper was first presented by Dr Bose at a two-day conference, on June 28-29, 2005, organized by the historian branch of the United States Department of State titled “South Asia in Crisis: United States Policy, 1961-1972.” This was arranged to mark the release of declassified US records relating to the theme of the conference.

As an Indian working in Bangladesh for nearly a decade on the public memories of sexual violence during the Bangladesh war of 1971, I was particularly struck by the author’s use of the phrase “civil war” to refer to the Bangladesh war. Most Bangladeshis denounce the use of the term “civil war” to refer to the Bangladesh war as it deflects attention from its genocidal connotations.Instead, they semantically and politically distinguish the Bangladesh war as either muktijuddho (liberation war) or shadhinotar juddho(independence war).

It is also important to note that occurring at the juncture of Cold War politics, with the United States government supporting Pakistan during 1971, and the Indian government assisting the East Pakistani guerrilla fighters, the genocidal connotations of the Bangladesh war remains unacknowledged, till date. The use of the phrase “civil war” in the title of the article suggests that the author was in agreement with the Pakistani and US government’s version of events of 1971. Yet the paper was claiming to provide “an impartial account.” I was intrigued.

Through what Bose refers to as “case studies,” she tries to highlight how violence was inflicted by both sides — the Pakistani army and the East Pakistani liberation fighters — during the 1971 war. She also refers to the lack of incidents of rape during the Bangladesh war in her “cases” in a small paragraph found at the end of her long article. She suggests a prescription for reconciliation through an acknowledgement of violence inflicted by all parties involved.

Soon after the Washington conference, the points made in her paper were promptly picked up by the Pakistani newspapers: The Daily Times (Hasan, June 30,2005; Editorial, July 2, 2005) and Dawn (Iqbal, July 7, 2005). Both refer to the violence inflicted by both sides, and the absence of rape during the Bangladesh war. The entry on Sarmila Bose in Wikipedia, the popular internet encyclopedia, reiterates only the brief paragraph on rape.

In a response to Uttorshuri, a Bangladeshi web mail group, on July 2, 2005, Bose said: “The heading given to the Daily Times, Pakistan, report is incorrect and not the finding of my study.” Her work unleashed a barrage of criticism in Bangladesh and her research methods have been attacked as being shoddy and biased.

Collingwood (1945) has shown that historical “facts” are the reconstitution of the past in the historian’s minds, involving the selection and interpretation of the past, as history is the choice of a particular expository style that is itself determined historically.

My discussion of Bose’s article here, nearly ten months after the publication of her article in EPW, is an attempt to show the various responses to Bose’s work, her response to these feedbacks and to highlight Bose’s expository style which is appropriated by varied configurations.

In this discussion, I critically address Bose’s exposition about: a) violence being inflicted on both sides, b) the lack of instances of rape in her “cases,” and c) interrogate her formulation of reconciliation and highlight its implications on sub-continental politics.

Violence inflicted on both sides
All parties involved are shown to “commit acts of brutality outside accepted norms of warfare, and all had their share of humanity …with Bengalis, Biharis and West Pakistanis helping one another in the midst of mayhem,” in Bose’s article. This is evidenced by the Pakistan army targeting adult males while sparing women and children. However, local Bengali “loyalists”/collaborators, and not the Pakistani army, are involved in inflicting violence on their fellow Bengalis and the killing of intellectuals.

According to these accounts the Pakistani army did not inflict all the violence. This decontextualized account of Bengali collaborators does not recognize the triggers and advantages that the presence of, and collaboration with, the Pakistani army created. It misses the analytical point that in all wars local collaborators become the indispensable foot-soldiers of the institutionalized military paraphernalia.

The Pakistani army is portrayed as kind, but violent when provoked, whereas the Bengalis inflict violence “for unfathomable reasons.” The situation in Bangladesh during 1971 is described through phrases like: “widespread lawlessness during March,” “encouraged to break the law,” “urban terrorism,” and “rebels.”

The treatment of the Pakistani army namely: “refusal of Bengalis to sell them food and fuel, being jeered and spat at … and the widespread disregard of curfew orders, murder of army personnel,” are not considered to be examples of resistance and opposition, but are cited as instances of the suffering of the Pakistani army and an exhibition of “extraordinary restraint of the army under provocation.”

The “rule of law” remains with the Pakistani army as they “secure” and “gain control” over territories. Army reaction is cited as “overwhelming” while the rebels are “disorganised and amateurish” who for “unfathomable reasons … take pot-shots at the advancing units in the bazaar which triggered an overwhelming reaction from the army.”

There is no commentary on the contestations that exist in Bangladesh in relation to the varied national narratives of 1971. As a result, the observation by the former liberation fighter Iqbal: “This must be the only country in the world where there are two views on the independence of the country,” remains unanalysed.

As in-depth reading of various critical literature on war and violence (Butalia 1998; Das 1995; Nordstrom 2004) would show liberation and independence of countries are not homogenous narratives, and contain within their folds multiple contesting interrogations of wars through which countries become free. This is more so the case in Bangladesh (Hitchens 2001), given its fractured histories of partitions and independence.

Also, Nixon’s reference to Bangladesh as the “place” remains uncommented upon. This article, which was first presented in a conference hosted by the US department of State, is particularly conspicuous in the absence of any critical examination of the US support for Pakistan’s role in the Bangladesh war of 1971, in the context of Cold War calculations.

The article is helpful in addressing the ethnicization of the army as “Punjabis,” and in bringing out some of the nuances of the Pakistani army. That wars and conflicts are rife with instances of violence, kindness, cowardice, complicity, contradictions by the same individuals is not anything new and has been highlighted by various feminists, critical researchers and filmmakers within Bangladesh (Akhtar et al. 2001; Choudhury 2001; Kabir 2003; Masud 1999, 2000).

They show the multiple, contradictory, subjectivities of the Bangladesh war experience, and the violence inflicted upon the poor, women, Biharis, and adivasis. In my own work, I have encountered similar complicities and contradictions. Rather than citing these experiences as ahistorical and apolitical “facts,” they need to be located at the crossroads of local and national politics and histories.

The earlier mentioned formulation by Collingwood is significant here. In her other writings, Bose has attempted to go beyond Indo-Pakistani enmities. She highlights the various symbolic roles of a flag, and the possible repercussions of possessing a Pakistani flag in India (Bose 2003). In the Christian Science Monitor she argues (Bose and Milam 2005) in support of the sale of F-16s to Pakistan as a stabilizing factor within world and sub-continental geo-politics. In the EPW article, the nature of her expository style and presentation of “facts” make her “cases” representative of war-time experiences of all in Bangladesh.

Skewing the history of rape
The small paragraph, located in the last page of the article, relating to the absence of rape in the “cases” has been highlighted as evidence that the Pakistani army did not rape. In her response to Uttorshuri, Bose says: “The issue of rape amounted to about 100 words out of a nearly 6,500 word paper on the subject of patterns of violence in 1971.” An issue as contentious as the “patterns” of violence of rape can be claimed to be absent, through only 100 words! Bose explicates: “As I pointed out in the discussion that followed, there is evidence elsewhere that rape certainly occurred in 1971. But it seems — from this study and other works — that it may not have occurred in all the instances it is alleged to have occurred.”

Bose’s comment that rapes did occur elsewhere in 1971 is absent in her EPW article. In it she emphasizes the need to distinguish between the instances where rape occurred and where it did not. Throughout, it shows that the Bengalis raped Biharis while the Pakistani army did not rape anyone during the war. Also, it is not very clear which “cases” are being referred to in the statement: the rapes “may not have occurred in all the instances they are alleged to have occurred.” Rather than this generalized statement, it would have been more transparent scholarship to cite the specific “cases” where the rapes were alleged which the research instead finds, is absent.

Bose shows, in the case of “mutinies” by “rebels,” that “there was assault and abduction” of women. The Pakistani army however, “always” targeted adult males while sparing women and children. The Hamdoodur Rahman Commission (2000) established by the Pakistani government, while referring to the attack and rape of pro-Pakistani elements by Bengalis, also cites various instances of rape.

Eyewitness accounts can also be found in the eighth volume of the Dolil (Rahman 1982-85: 106, 192, 385). There is literature from the 1970s (Greer 1972; Brownmiller 1975) and recent scholarship and films based on oral history from within Bangladesh (Akhtar 2001; Choudhury 2001; Guhathakurta 1996; Ibrahim 1994, 1995; Kabir 2003; Masud 2000) which shows that the Pakistani army committed rapes and highlights the complexities of these violent encounters. Bose makes no reference to any of these documentations.

Recently, in Bangladesh, various women from different socio-economic backgrounds have narrated their violent experiences of rape by the Pakistani army and local collaborators. The well-known sculptor, Ferdousy Priyobhashini, has been vocal about her war-time experiences and the role of Pakistani army and Bengalis. My own work with various women who were raped during the war shows the contradictions of the war-time experiences while highlighting their violent encounters. All these documentations emerge as important counter-narratives to the various prevalent Bangladeshi nationalist accounts of the war.

Emphasizing these war-time contradictions is not tantamount to a denial of the incidents of rape perpetrated by Pakistani army and their local collaborators.

A prescription for reconciliation?
Reconciliation, according to Bose, is possible through an acknowledgement of violence inflicted by all parties involved. However, for her, this is hinged on an unequal reliance on literally accepting the various viewpoints of the Pakistani army and administration, drawn from secondary sources (only one interview with General Niazi is briefly quoted).

While referring to the innumerable publications on 1971 as a “cottage industry,” Bose seems to negate the emotive expressions of her informants as “the cultivation of an unhealthy victim culture” and a “ghoulish competition with six million Jews in order to gain international attention.” This highlights a lack of empathy with her informants, and insensitivity to their comprehension of violence.

Primo Levi’s work on Auschwitz shows that individuals who have encountered and survived violence make various complicated, competitive and contradictory negotiations to inhabit their survival and “victimhood.” Here, Bangladeshi testimonials are ironically the means through which war-time narratives are negated.

The various individual accounts of violence, in turn, become muted with the prescription of “reconciliation.” Significantly, for many Bangladeshis, “reconciliation” has a jarring resonance, as it is perceived to be the objective of various war-time collaborators, who are currently rehabilitated in the Bangladeshi political landscape.

Seen only as a “place” (Nixon), a “basket case” (Kissinger), Bangladesh is stereotypically viewed internationally, and in South Asia, as a country ravaged only by poverty, floods, cyclones and, hence, in need of the saviour, interventionist, developmental paradigms.

Here, Bangladeshi histories and politics are again delegitimized as a result of sub-continental dynamics, as there is no engagement with the wider picture in Bangladesh.

The expositions in this article itself stand in the way of reconciliation between Bangladesh and Pakistan, and cannot provide a prescription to resolve these hostilities. War-time contradictions, complicities, nuances can be highlighted without negating the foundational violence of the history of rape of the Bangladesh war perpetrated by the Pakistani army and the local collaborators.

While the Bangladesh war might be a “civil war,” or Indo-Pakistan war for India and Pakistan, for most Bangladeshis it is the war of liberation and independence, even though that liberation might be interrogated in post-colonial Bangladesh. Only by recentring the issues which concern Bangladesh, along with highlighting the contradictions of wartime experiences, rather than proffering an argument which caters to Indo-Pakistan geo-political concerns, could one help the cause of reconciliation between Pakistan and Bangladesh.

This piece is adapted from “Bangladesh War of 1971: A Prescription for Reconciliation?” EPW, Vol. 41 No 36: 3901-3903. We have reprinted it here by special arrangement with EPW due to the intense interest within Bangladesh generated by the original Bose article that Dr Mookherjee discusses.

Dr Nayanika Mookherjee is a Lecturer in the Sociology Department in Lancaster University and a Research Fellow for the Society of South Asian Studies, British Academy.

References
Akhtar, Shaheen, Suraiya Begum, Hameeda Hossain, Sultana Kamal, and Meghna Guhathakurta, eds. 2001. Narir Ekattor O Juddhoporoborti Koththo Kahini (Oral History Accounts of Women’s Experiences During 1971 and After the War). Dhaka: Ain-O-Shalish-Kendro (ASK).

Bose, Sarmila. 2005. “Anatomy of Violence: Analysis of Civil War in East Pakistan in 1971,” Economic and Political Weekly, October 8, 2005.http://www.epw.org.in/showArticles.p…&filetype=html

Bose, Sarmila and WB Milam. 2005. “The Right Stuff: F-16s to Pakistan is Wise Decision.” Christian Science Monitor, April 11, 2005. http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0411/p09s02-coop.html

Bose, Sarmila. 2003. “What’s in a Flag?” The Daily Times (Pakistan), September 23, 2003. http://www.countercurrents.org/ipk-bose230903.htm

Brownmiller, Susan. 1975. Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape, pp. 78-86. London: Secker & Warburg.

Butalia, Urvashi. 1998. The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India. New Delhi: Viking Penguin India.

Collingwood, RG. 1945. The Idea of History. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Das, Veena. 1995. Critical Events, pp. 55-83. Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Greer, Germaine. 1972. “The Rape of the Bengali Women.” Sunday Times, April 9, 1972.

Hamdoodur Rahman Commission of Enquiry. 1971. Published in August 2000. Pakistan Government.

Guhathakurta, Meghna. 1996. “Dhorshon Ekti Juddhaporadh” (Rape is a War Crime). Dhaka: Bulletin of Ain-O-Shalish Kendra (ASK), February 6-8.

Hasan, K. 2005. “Army Not Involved in 1971 Rapes.” June 30, 2005. http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default…0-6-2005_pg1_2

Hitchens, Christopher. 2001. The Trial of Henry Kissinger. London: Verso.

Ibrahim, Nilima. 1994-5. Ami Birangona Bolchi (This is the “War-Heroine” Speaking), 2 Volumes. Dhaka: Jagriti.

Iqbal, Anwar. 2005. “Sheikh Mujib Wanted a Confederation: US Papers.” July 7, 2005. http://www.dawn.com/2005/07/07/nat3.htm

Levi, Primo. 1996. Survival in Auschwitz: The Nazi Assault on Humanity. Translated from the Italian by Stuart Wolf. New York: Touchstone Books.

Mookherjee, Nayanika. (forthcoming). Specters and Utopias: Sexual Violence, Public Memories and the Bangladesh War of 1971. Durham: Duke University Press.

Mookherjee, Nayanika. 2006. “Remembering to Forget: Public Secrecy and Memory of Sexual Violence in Bangladesh.” Journal of Royal Anthropological Institute (JRAI), 12 (2), June 2006: pp. 433-450.

Mookherjee, Nayanika. 2004. “My Man (Honour) is Lost but I Still Gave my Iman (Principle): Sexual Violence and Articulations of Masculinity.” South Asian Masculinities. R Chopra, C Osella and F Osella, eds. New Delhi: Kali for Women: pp. 131-159.

Nordstrom, Carolyn. 2004. Shadows of War: Violence, Power, and International Profiteering in the Twenty-First Century. California Series in Public Anthropology, University of California Press.

Rahman, Hasan H, ed. (1982-1985). Bangladesher Shadhinota Juddho Dolilpotro (Documents of the Bangladesh Independence War). Sixteen Volumes. Dhaka: People’s Republic of Bangladesh, Information Ministry.

Films

Choudhury, Afsan. 2001. Tahader Juddho (Their War).

Kabir, Yasmin. 2003. Shadhinota (A Certain Freedom).

Masud, Tareque and Catherine Masud. 1999. Muktir Katha. (Words of Freedom). Dhaka: Audiovision.

Masud, Tareque and Catherine Masud. 2000. Women and War. Dhaka: Ain-O-Shalish-Kendra (ASK) and Audiovision.

Web-sites
Discussion Forum: Story of Pakistan http://www.storyofpakistan.com/discf……d=11&page=1

Drishtipat: http://drishtipat.org/sarmila/sarmila.htm

IndPride: Sarmila Bose: In Praise of Pakistan http://www.indpride.com/mediamonitor.html

The Daily Times (Pakistan), July 2, 2005. http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_2-7 2005_pg3_1

US Department of State South Asia in Crisis: United States Policy, 1961-1972 June 28-29, 2005, Loy Henderson Auditorium, Tentative Program. http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ho/46059.htm

Uttorshuri: “Revisionist Historian on Rapes of 1971,” July 2, 2005.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/uttorshuri/message/4090

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarmila_Bose

Credit: AK Zaman

The Terrible Blood Bath of Tikka Khan

Newsweek June 28, 1971; pp. 43-44

Ever since the Pakistani civil war broke out last March, President Mohammad Yahya Khan has done his utmost to prevent reports on the ruthless behavior Pakistani Army in putting down the Bengali fight for independence from reaching the outside world. Most foreign journalists have been barred from East Pakistan, and only those West Pakistani newsmen who might be expected to produce “friendly” accounts have been invited to tour East Pakistan and tell their countrymen about the rebellion. In at least one instance, however, that policy backfired. Anthony Mascarenhas, a Karachi newsman who also writes for London Sunday Times, was so horrified by that he and his family fled to London to publish the full story. Last week, in the Times, Mascarenhas wrote -that he was told repeatedly by Pakistani military and civil authorities in Dacca that the government intends “to cleanse East Pakistan once and for all of the threat of secession, even if it means killing off 2 million people.” And the federal army, concluded Mascarenhas, is doing exactly that with a terrifying thoroughness.”

That the Pakistan Army is visiting a dreadful blood bath upon the people of East Pakistan is also affirmed by newsmen and others who have witnessed the flight of 6 million terrified refugees into neighboring India. NEWSWEEK’s Tony Clifton recently visited India’s refugee-dogged border regions and cabled the following report:

Anyone who goes to the camps and hospitals along India’s border with Pakstan comes away believing the Punjabi Army capable of any atrocity. I have seen babies who’ve been shot, men who have had their backs whipped raw. I’ve seen people literally struck **** by the horror of seeing their children murdered in front of them or their daughters dragged off into sexual slavery. I have no doubt at all that there have been a hundred My Lais and Lidices in East Pakistan-and I think there will be more. My personal reaction is one of wonder more than anything else. I’ve seen too many bodies to be horrified by anything much any more. But I find myself standing still again and again, wondering how any man can work himself into such a murderous frenzy.

Slaughter: The story of one shy little girl in a torn pink dress with red and green Bowers has a peculiar horror. She could not have been a danger to anyone. Yet I met her in a hospital at Krishnanagar, hanging nervously back among the other patients, her hand covering the livid scar on her neck where a Pakistani soldier had cut her throat with his bayonet. “I am Ismatar, the daughter of the late Ishague Ali,” she told me formally. “My father was a businessman in Khustia.

About two months ago he left our house and went to his shop and I never saw him again. That same night after I went to bed I heard shouts and screaming, and when I went to see what was happening, the Punjabi soldiers were there. My four sisters were lying dead on the floor, and I saw that they had killed my mother. While I was there they shot my brother-he was a bachelor of science. Then a soldier saw me and stabbed me with his knife. I fell to the floor and played dead. When the soldiers left I ran and a man picked me up on his bicycle and I was brought here.”

Suddenly, as if she could no longer bear to think about her ordeal, the girl left the room. The hospital doctor was explaining to me that she was brought to the hospital literally soaked in her own blood, when she pushed her way back through the patients and stood directly in front of me. “What am I to do?” she asked. “Once I had five sisters and a brother and a father and a mother. Now I have no family. I am an orphan. Where can I go? What will happen to me?”

Victims: “You’ll be all right,” I said stupidly. “You’re safe here.” But what will happen to her and to the thousands of boys and girls and men and women who have managed to drag themselves away from the burning villages whose flames I saw lighting up the East Pakistani sky each night? The hospital in Agartala, the capital city of Tripura, is just half a mile from the border, and it is already overcrowded with the victims of the rampaging Pakistani Army. There is a boy of 4 who survived a bullet through his stomach, and a woman who listlessly relates how the soldiers murdered two of her children in front of her eyes, and then shot her as she held her youngest child in her alms. “The bullet passed through the baby’s buttocks and then through her left arm,” Dr. R. Datta, the medical superintendent, explains. “But she regained consciousness and dragged herself and the baby to the border.” Another woman, the bones in her upper leg shattered by bullets, cradles an infant in her arms. She had given birth prematurely in a paddy field alter she was shot. Yet, holding her newborn child in one hand and pulling herlelf along with the other, she finally reached the border.

“Although I know these people, I am continually amazed at how tough they are,” says Datta. Still, there are some who cannot cope. I step over two small boys lying on the floor, clinging to each other like monkeys. ..Refugees say their village was burned about a week ago and everyone in it was killed except these two,” the doctor says. “We have had them for three days and we don’t know who they are. They are so terrified— by what they saw they are unable to speak. They just lie there holding onto each other. It is almost impossible to get them apart even long enough to feed them. It is hard to say when they will regain their speech or be able to live normal lives again.”

New Jersey Congressman Cornelius Gallagher, who visited the Agartala hospital, says he came to india thinking the atrocity stories were exaggerated. But when he actually saw the wounded he began to believe that; if anything, the reports had been toned down. A much-decorated officer with Patton in Europe during World War II, Gallagher told me: “In the war, I saw the worst areas of France-the killing grounds in Normandy-but I never saw anything like that. It took all of my strength to keep from breaking down and crying.”

Rape: Other foreigners, too, were dubious about the atrocities at first, but the endless repetition of stories from different sources convinced them. “I am certain that troops have thrown babies into the air and caught them on their bayonets,” says Briton, John Hastings, a Methodist missionary who has lived in Bengal for twenty years. “I am certain that troops have raped girls repeatedly, then killed them by pushing their bayonets up between their legs.”

All this savagery suggests that the Pakistani Army is either crazed by blood or, more likely, is carrying out a calculated policy of terror amounting to genocide against the whole Bengali population.

The architect appears to be Lt. Gen. Tikka Khan, the military governor of East Pakistan. Presumably, Pakistan’s President knows something about what is going on, but he may not realize that babies are being burned alive, girls sold into virtual slavery and whole families murdered. He told the military governor to put down a rebellion, and Tikka Khan has done it efficiently and ruthlessly. As a result, East Pakistan is still nominally part of Pakistan. But the brutality inflicted by West on East in the last three months has made it certain that it will only be a matter of time before Pakistan becomes two countries. And those two countries will be irreparably split-at least until the last of today’s maimed and brutalized children grow old and die with their memories of what happened when Yahya Khan decided to preserve their country.