Slaughter And Burning Continue In The Punjab

Greymouth Evening Star, 1 September 1947, Page 5

Slaughter And Burning Continue In The Punjab

(Recd. 11.10 a.m.) NEW DELHI, August 31. As the Prime Ministers of India and Pakistan, Pandit Nehru and Liaqat Ali Khan set out on their 1000-mile aeroplane and motor tour seeking’ to restore peace in the riot-torn Punjab, fresh reports came in of slaughter and burning of villages, says a message from Lahore. Royal Air Force pilots said they saw bodies lying in the fields, and columns of smoke from flaming villages spiralling into the rainy skies.

The Indian Defence Minister Baldev Singh and Abdur Rab Mishtar, the personal representative of Mr Jinnah, who is touring the disturbed areas in Pakistan, said they met thousands of refugees on the roads, mostly Sikhs and Hindus. Some of these reproached Nishtar for the Moslems’ attacks.

Health officials fear disease may break out in the refugee centres where only the sketchiest sanitation is provided for the thousands congregated in the camps. Military units are safeguarding the refugee centres from rioting gangs. Thousands of non-Moslem refugees, making their way from Pakistan to India, were pouring into Lahore tonight. General Sir Frank Messervy, commander-in-chief of the Pakistan Army, in an order-of-the-day, told all ranks that their main duty at present was to maintain law and order

and to stop bloodshed, looting and arson. They had to capture or shoot hooligans and robbers and stop, with the most severe action, the crimes of ignorant citizens and villagers whose savage feelings of revenge towards the opposite community carried them away. When the troops were defied they must shoot to kill. Mr Jinnah told the West Punjab Assembly that the Pakistan Government would rehabilitate the Moslem refugees from India, “even to the point of facing bankruptcy.” Broadcasting over the Lahore radio Mr Jinnah said the Moslems had achieved Pakistan by the power of the pen. “Are we going to tarnish this greatest achievement by resorting to savagery and butchery.”

Mr Jinnah added that the Pakistan people must abide by the boundary commission’s award, though it might be unjust.