A new campaign of terror has begun in East Pakistan. Its aim is to eliminate any possibility of another secessionist uprising or political challenge to the unity of the State. The military Government in Dacca has ordered a two¬-pronged follow-up to its defeat of the Bangladesh forces in the field. First, all public servants, teachers, writers, journalists and industrialists are being screened. Second, anyone considered potentially dangerous is being “eliminated.” Army intelligence has already begun arresting and interrogating teachers, journalists and other influential Bengalis. A list of suspects or sympathisers of the secessionists Awami League, has been prepared. They are being classified in three categories - white, grey and black. The white will be given clearance. The grey will lose their jobs and may be imprisoned The black will be shot.

Action against the civil service has already begun and 36 Bengali district magistrates and sub-divisional officers have either been killed or have fled to India. When army units entered the towns of Comilla, Rangpur, Kushtia, Noakhali, Faridpur and Serajganj, the local magistrates and police superintendents were shot out of hand. Civil servants on the grey list have been transferred to West Pakistan. They include Taslim Ahmed, Inspector- General of Police. When the army struck Dacca the night March 25, the police revolted and fought for 18 hours.

A new element in the regime of terror is the Gestapo-style pick-up. Some of those wanted for questioning are arrested openly. Others are called to the army cantonment for interrogation. Most of them do not return. Those who do are often picked up again by secret agents, known as Razakars, a term first used by volunteers of the Nizam of Hyderabad who resisted the India take-over of the State in 1948. Razakar literally means duty to the King or state. By night and day parts of Dacca are sealed off by troops searching for “Hindus, Awami Leaguers and students.” Everyone must carry an identity card. Cars are stopped to the city the blocked by check-posts.

If the jawan (infantryman) at the post finds any one without an identity card and is no mood to listen, a trip to the cantonment may follow. Dacca is frequently shaken by bomb blasts after which security is tightened and areas searched for “miscreants,” the Army term for the Mukti Fouj (liberation army). Wherever the Army has completed its task of clearing an area of “miscreants” it is replaced by the militia. These are tough frontier people who are considered more ruthless and less disciplined than the regular army. They are paid three rupees (about 18 p) a day and are lured to East Pakistan by the promise of booty.

The persecution of East Pakistan’s Hindu minority and the surviving elements of its Bengali nationalism has a quality of casual horror about it. Shankar, a young student of Jagannath Collage, escaped to a nearby village on March 27. Two months later he returned alone to see what remained of his home at Thatri Bazar. Two non-Bengalis spotted him, shouted “Hindu, Hindu” and a chase and taken in procession to the mosque where his throat was cut. Abu Awal, the district magistrate at Bhola had the reputation of being a loyal government servant. He protected the non-Bengali population when the Awami League rose in revolt and prevented the police station armoury from falling into the hands of the Mukti Fouj. When the army attacked on May 1, he went to receive them. The brigadier in charge of the action asked him to resume his post. He had hardly turned his back on the officer, when a sepoy shot him with a rifle.

About a dozen Bengali officers were transferred to West Pakistan. They said good-bye to their families and reported at Dacca Airport to board a Pakistan International Airlines flight to Karachi. Their families have not heard from them. When they inquired at army headquarters, they were told that they had deserted. The mutilated body of a major was delivered to his family with a letter of regret that he had committed suicide.

The whereabouts of Brigadier Mazumdar, one of the best known Bengali officer, is unknown. He stayed with his Punjabi colleagues when his Bengali troops revolted in Chittagong. When his family asked about him, they were told that any inquiry would invite trouble. On the night of June 2, and army jeep entered the Dhanmondi residential area of Dacca. A government officer called Huq was dragged out of his house and taken to Kurmitola army cantonment. His wife telephoned Shafiul Azam, civilian head of the East Pakistan Government who contacted Army headquarters and was told that no one called Huq had been brought in.

An industrialist, Ranada Saha, was told to arrange a gala evening for Army officers at his village home in Mirzapur. He went to discuss the arrangements and did not return. Troops surrounded the house of a civil servant called Amin. He was taken away in an Army truck with his aged parents, his wife and three children. His brother was an officer in the Bengal Regiment which revolted and is now leading the Bangladesh resistance near Comilla. The Amin family returned home two days later without Mr. Amin.

A captain entered Mitford Hospital in Dacca with two soldiers on May 15, went to Ward Two and led away Dr. Rahman and another of his colleagues, They were told they were needed to work in Mymensingh. Their whereabouts are now unknown. Other troops went to the American-run Holy Family Hospital but there were no surgeons there. The hospital is now considering closing because many of its doctors have fled, including the renowned child specialist, Dr. M. N. Huq.

At Sylhet, all the doctors, except Surgeon-General Dr. Shamsuddin, fled across the border when the army entered the town. A major found Dr. Shamsuddin in the hospital operating theatre and shot him point blank. Most of the senior Bengali officers of Pakistan International Airlines are missing after being picked up, including Mr. Fazlul Huq, deputy managing director for East Pakistan and Captain Sekander Ali, chief sector pilot. Since the military takeover, the airline has dismissed about 2,000 Bengalis. Razakars have seized the two children of Major Khaled Mosharraf who deserted to the Mukti Fouj. The children aged six and four, were first taken as hostages by the Army. Their mother escaped and is now in India. The children were released but then re-taken.

Relatives of missing persons believe that the Razakars and junior army officers are working independently in league with non-Bengalis. Some families have received ransom demands and one case is known of the money being paid without success. The Razakars have now extended their operation from murder and extortion to prostitution. In Agrabad in Chittagong, they run a camp of young girls who are allocated nightly to senior officers. They have also kidnapped girls for their parties. Some have not returned. Ferdousi, the leading Bengali singer, narrowly escaped a similar fate when officers entered her house. Her mother telephoned a general whom she knew and military police were sent to her rescue.

A recent development is the return to duty, under duress, of a number of Intelligence Department officers who went absent in early March in response to Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s call for non-cooperation with the Federal Government. They are now obliged to submit the names of “undesirable persons” to the army, which is taking care not to pick up the wrong people as it did on the night of March 25 and 26. On those two nights, the army killed more than 20 university professors. Of these, Dr. Moniruzzaman of the Physics department was shot instead of his namesake in the Bengali department. Mr. Monaim of the English department was similarly killed instead of Mr. Munir, also of the Bengali department. Some university teachers reported for duty on June 1 at the instigation of General Tikka Khan, the martial law administrator, but some of them have since fallen into the hands of the Razakars.

The activities of Razakars are known, if not overtly approved, by the military administration. Occasionally, they are a source of concern. Recently the administration managed to induce a few hundred jute workers to resume production in Dacca. On May 29 three of their trade union leaders were taken away in an Army jeep. By the following day the workers had fled.

The problems of return for the 6 million refuges seem insuperable. In Dacca, Jessore, Rangpur, Ishurdi, Khulna and Chittagong their houses and shops have been taken over by non-Bengalis. Backed by the Army on April 28, they cleared Mirpur and Mohammadpur, two residential districts covering 15 square miles in Dacca, of their entire Bengali population, killing everyone who had ignored an advance warning to leave. In Jessore soldiers surrounded the house of Mr. Mashiur Rahman, an Awami League member of the National Assembly, and non-Bengali civilians went in killing everyone. A 10-year-old boy jumped from the first-floor window and was shot in the mid-air by a sepoy.

Organizations caring for the refugees who came into East Pakistan at the time of partition and the Razakar-backed “peace committee” are publishing Press notices inviting applications for “allotment” of shops and houses left by Bengalis. In Chittagong locked shops and houses in Laldighi and Reazuddin Bazar were broken open by the army and handed over to non- Bengalis. Nearly all sequestered property now have sign boards and name¬plates in Urdu, the language of West Pakistan.

In the villages the houses have been distributed among members of the right-wing Jamat Islam and Muslim League which were humiliated in the last elections by the Awami League. All Hindu bank accounts have also been frozen, together with those of suspected Awami League supporters. The manager of the British National and Grindlays Bank in Dacca was the only Dacca banker to have queried the directive.

Bengalis have also been forbidden to approach major railway, port and dock installations. When 5,000 labourers returned to work at Chittagong docks on May 1, they were driven away. The installations are now operated by military, naval and non-Bengali personnel. Senior railway officials in Chittagong were shot and the workers colony burned down. In Dacca, Ishurdi and Saidpur, no Bengali dares approach a railway junction. At Dacca and Chittagong airports, 250 porters were flown in from West Pakistan to replace the Bengalis. Three thousand Punjabi police now patrol Dacca while Khyber Rifles from the North-West Frontier and Rangers from the West Pakistan border man police stations outside Dacca.

Most of the 10,000 militiamen in the East Pakistan Rifles who revolted in March have either crossed the border or are in hiding in the villages. Those who responded to an amnesty call surrendered in Dacca on May 15. They were then seen being driven away in open trucks blindfolded with their hands tied behind their backs. A few days later hundreds of naked corpses were found in the rivers Buriganga and Sitalakhya, eyes covered and hands tied. The East Pakistan Rifles have now been re-named the Pakistan Defence Force and hundreds of Biharis have been recruited. They are now being trained with rifles and machine-guns at Peelkhana.

On May 28 in the Khilgaon district of Dacca, 100 suspects were picked up after a bomb damaged a non-Bengali shop. At Motijheel, a non-Bengali demanded 10,000 rupees (about £600) from his neighbour, threatening to hand him over to the army if the money was not paid within 24 hours. A radio and camera retailer in Stadium Market, Dacca, found his stock missing on May 12 and reported the incident to martial law headquarters. That night, during curfew, his shop was set on fire.

Begum Mazeda, a housewife, was fetching water from a street tap. Two Punjabi policemen tried to lift her on to a truck. She screamed and the Punjabis were beaten off with sticks and stones. That night the whole of the Bashabo area of Dacca was on fire. It is now considered unsafe to wear a wristwatch on the streets in Dacca and transistor radios and television sets are kept hidden at home. Soldiers sell looted transistors, TV sets and watches at between £3 and £6 each on the streets.

One officer, Col. Abdul Bari has deposited one crore of rupees - the equivalent of £833,000 - at the State Bank of Pakistan. Efforts are now being made to clean the cities up. Just before the sponsored visit to Dacca of a small party of foreign journalists in May. The bodies of students were removed from Jagannath and Iqbal Halls in the university campus and debris was cleared away from the shelled areas of Shankharipatti, Tantibazar, Shantinagar and Razarbagh. Schools and colleges have reopened but there are few students. One school with 800 students before the fighting reopened with only 10. Most young people between the ages of 16 and 26 have crossed the border to join the Mukti Fouj training camps. Their widespread fear is that to be young in East Pakistan is to be killed....