Horror in a jute mill

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32803, 31 December 1971, Page 13

Horror in a jute mill

(By

KENNETH BRADDICK.

United Press International correspondent, through N.Z.P.A.)

NARAYANGANJ, (East Pakistan), Dec. 30.

Cholera has broken out among 30,000 non-Bengalis facing death by starvation, or at the hands of vengeance-seeking Ben-

galis, huddled in squalid conditions inside the world’s largest jute mill and protected, at least for the moment, by 400 heavily-armed Indian soldiers.

Women, their faces covered with black veils, hunched around the bodies of two babies who died today. Old men, too weak from hunger and sickness to brush away swarms of flies, lay in filthy alleys. Yesterday, five adults and three children died from starvation.

There are no doctors or medical supplies, and the International Red Cross has so far been unsuccessful in obtaining approval from the Government to begin a relief programme at the . Adamji jute mill, 14 miles south of Dacca. , The commander of the Indian Army security detail (Major R. Kanwar) has ordered an around-the-clock ba on movement in or out of the fortress-like complex. He said today that Army food supplies are providing onl, subsistence-level diets for the ion-Bengalis, most of whom are Moslems who came to Pakistan when it was divided from India in 1947. I Hundreds of Bengalis •thronged the four entrances ito the mill today. ; ! Some said that they would [kill the thousands trapped in- ! side.

The mill is owned by the! Adamji family, one of the

wealthiest in West Pakistan. Hundreds of Bengalis were dismissed from employment there at the beginning of the Pakistan Army repression of the local population last March, and their jobs were given to non-Bengalis. Work at the mill stopped entirely on December 1, its managers said today that they had no idea when production would resume. A squad of 50 Bangla Desh policemen, led by officers sent from Dacca, are today searching the filthy shacks and three-storey concrete

barrack-type buildings housing the mill employees, looking for weapons and “collaborators.” At least 60 men, suspected of being ■ former Pakistani militiamen whom the police said were wanted for murder, rape and other crimes, were roped together and guarded by plainclothed Bengali policemen holding foot-long daggers. Major Kanwar said that some Pakistani soldiers were found in the mill in the days immediately after the fall of East Pakistan, and that large

quantities of weapons were uncovered. “There is not much more the Army can do here except provide security,” he said. “It is a local problem. When we go, that is when there may be the biggest problem. What happens then is the big question.” Major Kanwar gave no indication when the Army would withdraw: when it did, he said, it would leave security to the Bengali police if it was sure all weapons and Pakistani citizens had been taken into custody.