To the Editor:

Excerpts from the World Bank mission report published on July 13 show that some World Bank representatives have allowed themselves to be so duped by anti‐Pakistan propagandists that they have stepped well outside the limits of their own professions and of the World Bank's nonpolitical charter and joined the ranks of these propagandists.

I am taking exception in particular to the exaggerations and distortions contained in Hendrik van der Heijden's report on conditions in the western area of East Pakistan. He visited this area between May 30 and June 11. I visited most of the same area on June 12 and 13. In this time gap of a few days not even an army of construction workers could have given Jessore, Khulna and Phultala face lifts that would have hidden from a Bengali like me, who knows these towns well, the scars of devastation Mr. Heijden describes.

I can understand Mr. Heijden's difficulties in communicating through interpreters with Bengali‐speaking people but I cannot overlook his visual inaccuracies. Reporting on Jessore, he says that more than 50 per cent of the shops have been destroyed with out specifying whether he is talking about the whole town or of a part of it. The impression he leaves is that 50 per cent of Jessore's shops have been destroyed. This is absolutely untrue because on June 12 I saw scores of shops in various areas not only open but doing business. If Mr. Heijden is referring to a block of shops on the roadside, from the airport to the town, then I would fault his estimate by about half.

Mr. Heijden also says 20,000 people were killed in Jessore and he implies that this was part of the army's punitive action. No one knows exactly how many died in Jessore, but I was told by local Bengali political leaders that a reasonable estimate would be a few thousand, with non‐Bengalis making up the larger proportion.

About Khulna Mr. Heijden is also off the mark. He says less than 7 per cent of the Platinum Jubilee jute mill's permanent labor force is back at work. Local political leaders and trade union leaders told me in Khulna that 30 per cent of the labor had returned.

I also visited Phultala shortly after Mr. Heijden saw its “bewildered” people. My impression certainly does not tally with Mr. Heijden's, who says Phultala's agricultural development has been set back by at least five years. I found the Phultala people purposeful and full of demands; the most persistent being that more paddy seed be rushed to the area so that not single acre of land should remain fallow. I conveyed this demand to the authorities in a press statement published in Pakistan about a month ago.

For over six months now distortions about Pakistan are being projected as facts. Mr. Heijden's report, under the seal of the World Bank, will have very uncalled‐for, adverse reaction.

Mahmud Ali
Vice President
Pakistan Democratic Party
Dacca, Pakistan, July 14, 1971