পাতা:বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্র (চতুর্দশ খণ্ড).pdf/৪০৮

376 বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্রঃ চতুর্দশ খন্ড শিরোনাম সূত্র তারিখ ১৫৫। গণহত্যা সানডে টাইমস ১৩ জুন, ১৯৭১ THE SUNDAY TIMES, JUNE 13, 1971 GENOCIDE By Anthony Mascarenhas |A Sunday Times reporter conies out of Pakistan with the horrifying story of why five million have lied.] West Pakistan's Army has been systematically massacring thousands of civilians in East Pakistan since the end of March. This is the horrifying reality behind the news blackout imposed by President Yahya Khan's government since the end of March. This is the reason why more than five million refugees have streamed out of East Pakistan into India, risking cholera and famine. The curtain of silence is broken today for the first time by Anthony Mascarenhas, the Sunday Times correspondent in Pakistan. He has seen what the Pakistan army has been doing. He has left Pakistan to tell the world. The army has not merely been killing supporters of the idea of Bangladesh, an independent East Bengal. It has deliberately been massacring others. Hindus and Bengali Muslims. Hindus have been shot and beaten to death with elubs simply because they are Hindus. Villages have been burned. Sporadic and unconfirmed reports of atrocities by the Pakistan army have been reaching the outside world for some time, notably from refugees, missionaries and diplomats. The report by Anthony Mascarenhas is a detailed eye-witness account of unique precision and authority. He supplies the missing centre-piece of the tragedy of Bengal: why the refugees have fled. There is a remarkable story behind Anthony Mascarenhas's report. When, at the end of March, the Pakistan army flew two divisions into East Pakistan to "sort out" the Bengali rebels, it moved in secret. But about two weeks later the Pakistan government invited eight Pakistani journalists to fly to East Bengal. The idea-as government officials left the journalists in no doubt-was to give the people of West Pakistan a reassuring picture of the" return to normalcy" in the eastern half of the country. Seven of the journalists have done as they were intended. But one was Mascarenhas, who is assistant editor of the Morning News in Karachi, and was also The Sunday Times Pakistan correspondent. On Tuesday, May 18, he arrived, unexpectedly, in The Sunday Times office in London. There was, he told us, a story he wanted to write: the true story of what had happened in East Bengal to drive five million people to flight.