Small Indian town swamped with refugees

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32612, 21 May 1971, Page 9

Small Indian town swamped with refugees

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter —Copyright)

SEBRUM (India), May 20. The small Indian town of Sebrum opposite the East Pakistan border has suddenly become a seething mass of people and bum an problems.

Refugees fleeing across the border river as Pakistan troops moved to put down a Bengali rebellion have swollen the population in the township from 3000 to 20,000 in weeks.

The immediate surrounding subdivision of the Indian territory of Tripura has added to its nearly 60,000 peasant farmers and hill tribesmen, about 200,000 refugees since the mart'al law move in East Pakistan on March 25. 75 yards away The green and white flag of Pakistan can be seen fron Sebrum flying above the charred remains of Ramgarh, an East Pakistani town just 75 yards away across tire sluggish, muddy brown, Feni River. Nothing seems to move in Ramgarh except Pakistani soldiers posted at windows of two intact: buildings, occasionally shifting their positions. But there was plenty, perhaps too much movement in Sebrum during a visit of foreign correspondents. They found themselves hemmed in by thousands of East Pakistani refugees including most of the 3000 people who • had fled Ramgarh itself when they went to view the scorched Pakistani town from the Indian river bank.

Ramgarh’s 500-yard frontage along the river was a mass of scarred stumps

once stout poles supporting thatch and bamboo houses amid hundreds of dead and blackened bushes, trees and coconut palms. River border The international border runs along the middle of the river. Correspondents watched as a cautious farmer poled his boat along loaded with hay, carefully hugging the Indian bank. His craft flew a large green, orange and white Indian flag as an extra precaution. Soldier’s helmets could be seen protruding from three ineffectively camouflaged bunkers on the Pakistani bank, which rises steeply 25 feet above the water. And the watchers were watched a Pakistani

soldier kept his binocular trained on the journalists. The correspondents heard from the refugees how Ramgarh, a hill tract subdivisional headquarters, was at first occupied by the Mukti Fouj the Be gali •’Liberation Army” which seeks a separate state in East Pakistan from March 25 to May 2. Town shelled But the Pakistan Army moved in after bombarding the town with mortar shells and artillery fire, then soldiers set fire to the bamboo homes, the refugees said. The townspeople fled across the river to India at several points. A 45-year-old cycle mechanic, Mr Ali Hossain, said that he left

after a West Pakistan soldier set his house on fire and shot his brother dead. All he owns now is the vest and faded green lungi (cotton wrap-around) he wore when he arrived.

He said that he supported tire now-banned Awami League, which in Pakistan’s National Assembly elections last December won 167 out of 169 East Pakistani seats and which called for more autonomy. Mr Hossain said that 2000 Moslems, 500 Buddhist and 500 Hindus had lived peacefully together in Ramgarh before the trouble. Now refugees estimated that 1000 Pakistan Army troops occupied Ramgarh and the area behind it. Sebrum and the surrounding subdivisional area have been a major goal of refugees from the nearby, areas of EUst Pakistan. 34 camps The Tripura Government, with the aid of Indian central Government funds, had built 34 camps in the subdivision.' But thousands of refugees sleep in school buildings, by the roadside, or in shelters made of tree branches.

The huts built by the Government are strong and roomy and each shelter houses 75 people. Attached to each is a kitchen hut and, some distance away, a slit trench latrine. Each unit costs 4000 rupees (47.15 dollars), a Tripura Government official said.

Every refugee spoken to said he or she fled because the Pakistan Army began killing and burning indiscriminately and usually without warning. Rapes reported Two sisters from Halishahar, near Chittagong, said that they were raped by Pakistani soldiers and nonBengali civilians on March 31.

Miss Alanju Chowdhury, a 20-year-old primary school

teacher, said she and her sister, Anju, an 18-year-old student, were attacked after seven soldiers and 12 nonBengali civilians entered their parent’s house shouting “Pakistan zindabad” (long live Pakistan). Mrs Shanti Pariyal, a 40-year-old widow, after performing the last rites in one of the camps for her dead husband, said through tears that he was shot dead on April 30 by Pakistan soldiers as they fled with their seven children from Noapara village, near Chittagong. Mr Raudhir Hazari, a 30-year-old glass worker from Andarkilla, in the Chittagong district, also cried as he told how 10 days before he watched from a hiding place as his mother and father were shot dead.

Mr Hazari says that he has now lost contact with his wife and two children.