eight children had been killed. A finger across the throat told the story. The refugees were so eager to tell their story that they in fact did not discover we did not know the language.
A man caught my arm with a strong grip. lie carried a little girl on his arm. He pointed at the girl and I grasped that he wanted to tell me something about the mother of the little girl, his daughter. Something horrible had happened to her-some place inside East Pakistan. Twice he tried to tell me his story. Each, time he swallowed and started to open his mouth. And each time he burst into helpless crying. He held my arm and cried out his sorrow.
A woman looked at me without saying-a word. Tears trickled down her checks. The children got frightened seeing their parents crying so openly and started to shriek out, Several of the grown-ups put up their hands to hide their faces and passed us without saying anything. We were now in the middle of the refugee stream, a tremendous river of people.
On both sides people were passing us with faces wet with tears, on the oxcarts people lay outstretched, some wounded. A man went by hiling and hitting the oxcart with his bare fist. Others looked ahead with frozen faces, stiffened by sorrow.
I threw a look at the cameraman, and discovered he had trouble in filming. He kept drying his eyes all the time to get rid of the tears. He fought with himself to look into the camera, but his crying intensified. At last he helplessly threw out his hands. He could not take it. The TV reporter from Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation had been talking all the time. I heard him saying: “Something terrible has happened. These people are coming from a burning village. There has been shooting and many people have been killed. They tell us that I cannot tell you more. We will make the pictures speak.”
And then I discovered he was unable to speak. He also was crying. Then I couldn't take any more. Tears came bursting, and we all left the road and went aside, letting the refugees pass.
Four tough men not being tough at all
FREDERICK NOSSAL, TORONTO TELEGRAM
I visited several refugee camps near Calcutta in June 1971. Despite tremendous efforts by the Governments of India and of West Bengal, conditions were simply terrible. Particularly young children and old people were dying by the score from cholera, malnutrition and diseases connected with food deficiency. Makeshift canvas shelters let through the rain, and thousands lay or slept on damp straw mats and even on the wet ground. They were too weak to move. Those who found shelter in steel and concrete pipes at construction sites considered themselves lucky. At least they were dry.
Conditions seemed worse than during the 1967 famine in Bihar, which I also witnessed, mainly because of the number of East Bengali refugees involved. Hospitals were so overcrowded; patients were accommodated on the floor and in the corridors. Many children and infants were only skin and boncs, and obviously dying from dysentery, cholera and malnutrition, and perhaps a combination of different diseases. There was a
