<i>Pak atrocities still haunt war journos </i>

11 December 2011, 18:00 PM

Bss, Dhaka

Foreign journalists who covered the liberation war of Bangladesh in 1971 revisited the memory lane at a time when war crimes trial started after 40 years of its independence. The journalists were so shocked to see the brutalities and carnage carried out by the Pakistani occupation forces and their collaborators--Razakars, Al-badrs and Al-shams--that they alerted the world by sending horrifying stories, including massacre in their respective media after starting of the genocide on March 25, 1971. Sir William Mark Tully, Manosh Ghose, Simon Dring, Ingvar Oja and Sydney Schanberg were among the journalists. The journalists extensively visited different parts of the then East Pakistan and made reports on the large-scale slaughtering of unarmed Bangalees, raping of women, arson and looting in 1971. The then BBC correspondent Sir William Mark Tully was greatly shocked to see the vast devastation while leading Indian journalist Manosh Ghose said the scenes of carnage and sites of the 1971 Liberation War still gave him nightmares. “I was greatly shocked to see the vast devastation on both the sides of the river Jamuna as I was traveling to Aricha Ghat. The houses on both banks were burnt so that Pakistani forces could make easy movement in absence of locality.” Manosh Ghose of The Statesman of India said one of the worst killings he had witnessed was at Chachor Rajbari on the outskirts of Jessore town on March 30 when large-scale slaughtering of Bangalees took place and their bodies were piled up in a pond. “The genocide was the worst since the holocaust perpetrated by Hitler in the Second World War,” Manosh, the first Indian and perhaps foreign journalist to enter Bangladesh on March 28 through Jessore frontiers, three days after the launch of the Pakistani crackdown on unarmed Bangalees. Asked about the trial of perpetrators of crimes against humanity in 1971, he said, “It is a much welcome move”. Swedish journalist Ingvar Oja witnessed signs of Pakistani brutalities while making several clandestine walks across the border from West Bengal into Bangladesh territory. During the war, Ingvar, war correspondent of Sweden's highest circulated daily Dagens Nyheter, visited Dhaka once officially with Pakistani visa and later entered deep into occupied Bangladesh crossing West Bengal border risking his life to cover war events. Ingvar was in Kolkata when the open war broke out between Pakistan and India on December 3, 1971, and he had the opportunity to witness the formal surrender of the Pakistani troops on December 16, 1971, at the then Racecourse Maidan. The Pakistani rulers forcibly evicted the foreign journalists who were staying at Intercontinental Hotel (now Ruposhi Bangla) of Dhaka after starting the genocide. However, some brave journalists including Simon Dring of Daily Telegraph of the UK hid themselves at the Intercontinental Hotel laundry. Simon Dring, the then correspondent of the Daily Telegraph, witnessed the massacre of unarmed Bangalees by Pakistani Army on March 25. “Tanks crush revolt in Pakistan,” was the headline of Simon Dring's story published in the Telegraph and it was the first report that informed the world of the brutalities of the Pakistani forces. In June, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Sydney Schanberg filed a number of eyewitness accounts from Bangladeshi towns for The New York Times. In response, the Pakistan army expelled him from the country on June 30, 1971. Schanberg described the systematic subjugation and killing of Bangalees. "Army trucks roll through the half-deserted streets of the capital of East Pakistan these days, carrying “anti-state” prisoners to work-sites for hard labour. Their heads are shaved and they wear no shoes and no clothes except for shorts--all making escape difficult."