The World: The Bengali Refugees: A Surfeit of Woe

A CYCLONE that killed as many as 500,000 people. A civil war that claimed perhaps 200,000 more. An exodus that already totals 5,000,000 and is still growing. A cholera epidemic that has barely begun, yet has already taken some 5,000 lives. It is an almost biblical catalogue of woe, rivaling if not surpassing the plagues visited upon the Egyptians of Mosaic days. And yet it is virtually certain that the list will grow even longer for the bedeviled people of East Pakistan. Last week, as fresh waves of refugees poured across the Indian border at the rate of 100,000 a day, they brought tales of pogrom against Hindus by the predominantly Moslem Pakistanis. And over the stinking, teeming refugee camps that scar the border areas of five Indian states hovered the growing threat of famine and pestilence.

The first onrush of refugees followed the outburst of civil war in March, when West Pakistan decided to crush East Pakistan's drive for Bangla Desh (an independent Bengali State). Immediately after fighting broke out between the fierce Pathans and Punjabis of the Pakistani army and the Bengali liberation forces, 1,500,000 terrified East Pakistanis—Moslems and Hindus alike —crossed into the Indian states of West Bengal, Tripura, Assam, Meghalaya and Bihar. Now the escapees are mostly Hindu, and they bring tales of torture, rape and massacre. According to the new arrivals, the Pakistani government is blaming the 10 million Hindus of East Pakistan (population 78 million) for being the principal supporters of the now-outlawed Awami League of Sheik Mujibur Rahman. The Hindus did in fact overwhelmingly support "Mujib," who at last word was under house arrest in Karachi, the principal city of West Pakistan. But so did the Moslems, for the Awami League won 167 of the 169 seats at stake in East Pakistan during last December's elections. But the Hindus, because they are a minority, are an easier target.

Battered to Death. A Hindu building contractor told of how Pakistani troops at a tea estate asked people whom they voted for in the election. "They shot 200 who admitted voting for the Awami League." In a hospital in Agartala, Indian doctors reported that a number of the refugees came in badly burned. The doctors explained that the refugees were shoved into huts by Pak army men, who then set the huts on fire. The hospital has also treated 370 men, women and children for bullet wounds, 27 of whom died.

In the refugee camp at Patrapole on the West Bengal-East Pakistan border, a 16-year-old Bengali girl recalled how she and her parents were in bed "when we heard the tread of feet outside. The door burst open and several soldiers entered. They pointed their bayonets at the three of us and before my eyes killed my mother and father—battering them to death with the butts of their rifles. They flung me on the floor, and three of them raped me." Another teen-age girl in a Tripura camp told how she was raped by 13 West Pakistani soldiers before escaping. Other girls have reportedly been taken from fleeing families to be sold as prostitutes to the soldiers, particularly if their fathers could not pay a ransom for them.