পাতা:বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্র (চতুর্দশ খণ্ড).pdf/১৭৪

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বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্রঃ চতুর্দশ খণ্ড
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‘Peace Committees’ formed

 Throughout East Pakistan the Army is training new paramilitary home guards or simply arming “loyal” civilians, some of whom are formed into peace committees. Besides Biharis and other non-Bengali, Urdu speaking Moslems the recruits include the small minority of Bengali Moslems who have long supported the army-adherents of the right-wing religious parties such as the Moslem League and Jamaat-e-Islami.

 In the election last December those parties failed to win a single seat for East Pakistan in the National Assembly.

 In a sense the election spawned the crisis, for the Awami League, an East Pakistani party campaigning for more self-rule for the province, unexpectedly won a national majority. With the previously suppressed Bengalis about to assume a strong national role, the leading political group of West Pakistan, the Pakistan People's party, refused to attend the coming session of the National Assembly, which was to have written a new constitution to restore civilian rule. President Agha Mohammad Yahya Khan responded by postponing the session, set for March 3.

Negotiations and attack

 Protests and rioting erupted in East Pakistan, and the Bengalis answered the Awami League's call for a non co-operation movement in defiance of the military.

 The President flew to Dacca to negotiate with the Awami League leader. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. During their negotiations, on the night of March 25, the army launched a surprise attack on the largely unarmed civilian population to try to crush the autonomy movement. The league was banned and Sheikh Mujib jailed as a traitor.

 The initial Bengali resistance-led by men in the police and national army who had switched allegiance was quickly routed, but it is now emerging from its Indianborder sanctuaries, with new recruits and supplies, to wage Vietnam-style guerilla warfare-and cause increasing torment to the army.

 Since the offensive began the troops have killed countless thousands of Bengalisforeign diplomats estimate at least 200,000 to 250,000-many in massacres. Although the targets were Bengali Moslems and the 10 million Hindus at first, the army is now concentrating on Hindus in what foreign observers characterise as a holy war.

 The West Pakistani leaders have long considered the Hindus as subverters of Islam. They now view them as agents of Hindu India, which has been accused of engineering the autonomy movement to force Pakistan's disintegration.

 Of the more than six million Bengalis who are believed to have fled to India to escape the army's terror, at least four million are Hindus. The troops are still killing Hindus and looting their villages.

 West Pakistani officials insist, however, that normalcy is returning and have appealed to the Hindus to “return to their homes and hearths,” assuring them that they have nothing to fear. Only a handful of refugees have returned and the reception centers the Government has crccted to show foreign visitors remain largely deserted.