Swift Action Necessary

Northern Advocate, 30 August 1947, Page 5

Swift Action Necessary

Major-General Rees, commander of the Boundary Force, told the correspondent: “But for us the carnage would have increased a hundredfold and there would have been no organised movement of refugees.” The Daily Mail’s correspondent said rival bands if possible avoid one another and concentrate on attacking defenceless villages or columns of refugees.

The situation is beyond control, because neither the Pakistan nor the Indian Government encourages punitive firing by escorts on members of their own community. Gurkhas are the only troops who can be fully relied upon. “Swift action and cooperation between the two Governments is the only way to save the situation for our two countries,” said the Prime Minister of India (Mr Nehru) at a Press conference.

He added that the mass exchange of populations, with East Punjab Moslems moving into Pakistan and West Punjab Hindus and Sikhs moving to India, would be discussed with Pakistan.

The movement, which would involve millions of people, would be done methodically and not as at present. There had been brutality and bestiality to an extreme degree on both sides. It wa£ difficult to estimate the number of deaths, but they were on a big scale.

High Government officers from Karachi and Lahore and elsewhere had not shown the sense of responsibility which should govern their utterances at the present moment. Mr Nehru was sharply critical of what he described as highly tendentious messages which foreign correspondents had sent abroad about the Punjab situation. He said August 15, the date of the transfer of power to India, had made a difference and there was such a thing as abuse of hospitality. 1 He strongly objected to what he called the habit that some correspondents had acquired of patronising India. PLANES TO THE RESCUE BOAC will send to the troubled areas of India and Pakistan this weekend every plane not required for normal passenger services. The planes will stand by in India and Pakistan for the evacuation of European personnel.

Scottish airlines will also send aircraft.