RUTHLESS VIOLENCE IN PUNJAB

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25274, 28 August 1947, Page 7

RUTHLESS VIOLENCE IN PUNJAB

“Settlement By Blood And Fire”

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright)

LONDON, August 26. ‘‘With blood and fire the peoples of the divided Punjab are settling a problem which the Boundary Commission left unsolved—the separation of the Moslems from the Sikhs and Hindus,” says Reuters correspondent in Lahore. “Along the roads of the Central Punjab hundreds of thousands oL terrified refugees are on the move east and west. The influx of Moslem refugees into Lahore is estimated at 200.000, while about the same number of Hindus and Sikhs has left the city. “Half a million Moslems are reported to be drifting, by any means possible, towards Pakistan out of the devastated areas around Amritsar.” The Lahore correspondent of “The Times” says that according to the best neutral sources, no fewer than 10,000 Moslems have been killed in the Amritsar district alone this month. The Boundary Force is meeting large well-organised bands of Sikhs. In one - affray the force attacked a “Jatha” (Sikh band) of 800 and killed 61 of them. The correspondent adds that the illconceived and ill-timed Sikh conspiracy is having results which its planners did not foresee. The 1,500,000 Sikhs in Pakistan have become the targets of a bitter Moslem hatred. Moslem mobs stopped a train from Rawalpindi to Lahore to-day and killed every Sikh they found. The Sikhs displayed the same ruthlessness and brutality ii Jullundiir as in Amritsar. Out of one Moslem village of 350 people who fought off a Sikh attack for six hours, only 40 survived. Women and children were hacked into small pieces, and women had their hands cut off while kneeling in an attitude of supplication. Many of the younger women have been carried off. To date in this district there have been seven reported Moslem attacks on Sikh villages, and 100 Sikh attacks on Moslems. r The correspondent says that several senior former officers of the Indian

National Army, which fought beside the Japanese, have played a leading part in forming and arming raiding parties. ; The local authorities in the Gurdasjmr district seized two private aeroplanes which Moslems had been using to direct ground operations of raiding parties. In New Delhi on Tuesday the Government of India decided to mobilise a fleet of aeroplanes and lorries to rush Hindus and other minorities out of Pakistan (West) Punjab if the Pakistan Government granted the necessary facilities for their evacuation. The Government of India would grant Pakistan similar facilities for the evacuation of Moslems from Indian (East) Punjab. The New Delhi District Commissioner has announced that it is impossible to accommodate any further refugees from the Punjab. Official sources on the spot say that the entire Moslem population of the districts around Amritsar, Jullundur. Ferozepore, and Gurdaspur—2,soo,ooo —is i.i an unsettled condition. Tara Singh, a village schoolmaster who rose to be one of the Sikhs* chief leaders, interviewed in Amritsar, said he hoped that one day Sikh rule would return to the Punjab. He said that the Sikhs felt for the Punjab as the Jews felt for Palestine. The present trouble, if not quickly checked, would spread and become extremely difficult to control. Tara Singh’s appeal for peace was dropped from an aircraft, and it appears to have had a favourable effect round Amritsar, where life is slowly returning. But the appeal was double-edged. Tara Singh, while asking for order, also declared that the Sikhs would never accept the boundary award, and that they must be prepared to fight to the death for their just rights. He spoke with sorrow of the massacres,- but like everyone else he blamed the other side for starting the trouble.