পাতা:বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্র (চতুর্দশ খণ্ড).pdf/৩২৫

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বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্র : চতুর্দশ খণ্ড
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tinder for any political movement and have made eastern India more nearly ungovernable than ever, casting the stability of the entire country in doubt.

 Sending to learn for whom the bell tolls, I went to visit several refugee camps in West Bengal. The misery that paralyzes its victims does not spare its observers, and it is with a great emotional reluctance that I attempt to describe what I found there. No two camps are alike. Some camps have as many a hundred and sixty thousand people, while others have only ten thousand; some have tube wells, while others have no water supply of any kind; some have structures of tarpaulin and thatch, and trench latrines, while others have no structures or latrines at all; some are knee-deep in water, while others are choked with dust.

 In one camp I went to, which has over a hundred thousand people living in an area of about a square mile, old men, old women and young children, all looking wasted and weak, were sitting dully on a strip of ground between makeshift shelters and a long open drain brimming with brown sludge. The stench was so overpowered.

 "There appear to be no young men or young women,” I remarked.

 "Young women never seem to get through,” he said. “The soldiers rape them and keep them for themselves or carry them off to the military brothels. As for the young men, we Indians train them for guerrilla warfare and send them back to fight in the Mukti Bahini, the liberation army."

 We passed some elderly women squatting over the open drain and defecating, with a total lack of self-consciousness. A few steps beyond them, some other women were washing clothes and utensils in the drain. I wondered whether these women were too ignorant to know any better, or too weak to go searching for clean water, or whether there was no clean water to be had in the vicinity, or whether they were not allowed to leave the camp, but when I put these questions to the women, they seemed dazed and uncomprehending, and it was hard to get even the slightest response from them. As for the official, he merely waved the questions aside as unpleasant reminders of the way things were or bad to be.

 "They all have dysentery,” he said, moving on.

 "Why don't you at least get them to dig some latrines?” I asked.

 "We would have a riot on our hands" he said. “That would be taking work away from the local laborers. We've already had a Jot of trouble with the local people over the refugees."

 "And the tube wells 2"

 "We've given out the contracts. The contractor should get around to this camp soon."

 We passed some children sitting listless and stilt by the open drain I had already noticed that the usual train of curious children and beggars who attach themselves to visitors in the bazaars and streets was missing here,