Calcutta, May 23
Terror stalks every corner of East Bengal today. The Army is shooting Bengalis on sight. The Bengalis are killing non-Bengalis. Non-Bengalis are hunting down the small number of Bengalis who are still in Dacca; and the Liberation Front is deliberately liquidating its political rivals in the Muslim League.

Millions of people have been left homeless. Famine is around the comer and there are not enough doctors left to combat an expected epidemic.

This is the grim picture of life in East Pakistan as painted by Bengali lawyers, journalists and teachers who have fled to India.

After discovering that it could not control the highly populated areas adjoining the main highways and the smaller towns with a limited number of men, the Pakistan Army embarked on a scorched earth policy in East Bengal last month to clear the principal communication routes and urban areas of all pockets of resistance.

This is the impression of a young journalist, who left Dacca two weeks ago to trek north-west-wards across East Bengal to the Indian border. The journalist, Mr. Abul Hossein, of The Pakistan Observer in Dacca, says that the Army has driven millions of people from towns and villages adjacent to main roads. Mr Hossein says that these sudden and deliberate acts of terror are responsible for the large influx of refugees into India.

"But most of these refugees are from the border areas. I discovered that most of the people living in the small towns and in the villages near main roads in the hinterland have fled to remote villages. All the small towns are deserted and most people have moved away from the main roads. I saw burnt-out villages everywhere", Mr. Hossein says.

"But they did not terrorize the people out of any form of vengeance. I think they deliberately embarked on a programme to clear all communication routes of people when they discovered they could not move, except at battalion strength, from town to town. How does one company hold a town of 30,000 hostile people?" be asked.

Mr- Hossein's description of the latest conditions in the towns and countryside supports the growing fears that tens of millions of people have been displaced during the past few weeks of civil war.

According to Mr. Hossein, there was a second exodus of terrified Bengalis from Dacca earlier this month after non-Bengalis began to slaughter Bengalis. He believes that only 5 per cent of the original 1,500,000 inhabitants of Dacca are left in the city. "And most of them are non-Bengalis, who have come in from other parts of the country ", he said.

Bodies are still floating down the Buriganga river which flows through Dacca and non-Bengalis are hunting down Bengalis on street corners, he claimed. "I saw many bodies floating down the Buriganga between May 6 and May 10. Their hands were tied together and in some cases six to seven victims had been roped together. There were no signs of violence on the bodies. Some people near by told me that the victims were workers belonging to the Sattar match factory on the outskirts of Dacca and that non-Bengalis were responsible for the killings. But I have no proof or this."

Mr. Hossein said that all Bengalis in Dacca are living in terror. "Mr. Hasan Ullah Chowdhury, the manager of our Bengali edition, Purbadesh, was hacked to death two weeks ago by non-Bengalis in his house in Mirpur, nine miles out of Dacca. This is a non-Bengali residential area and most of the Bengalis were either attacked or killed there after the Army took over.

Mr. Hossein alleged that non-Bengali Bihari Muslims are pointing out Awami League supporters to the Army and that they are being shot on sight. "On May 5 was passing Nawabpur Road in the old areas of Dacca. I saw three Army trucks stop next to a group at Bihari Muslims. They pointed towards a Bengali at a near by shop. A soldier lifted his rifle and shot the man without asking a question.

"If they see any able-bodied Bengalis, they pick them up in a truck and take them away. I don't know what happens to them". Mr. Hossein went on.

Mr. Hossein said he finally decided to flee from Dacca when he felt he could no longer work as a journalist under martial law censorship regulations. "One of my colleagues was sent to Jessore and told to write a story about the normal conditions there. Every member of his family had been butchered, but they still wanted him to write a story claiming that the situation was normal", he declared.

He and other journalists were also told by colleagues on a pro-Government newspaper Sangram that the martial law authorities had collected a list of the active members of the East Pakistan Journalists' Union and they were warned that they might be rounded up.

On his way to India, Mr. Hossein said he passed through the town of Sirajganj on the western banks of the Brahmaputra river, "The town was deserted. Except for the power station and the court building and a jute mill, most buildings were damaged. A labourers' residential colony was completely gutted and deserted. I had relatives in the town but found their house empty. It had been deserted. I passed the jail. The doors were open and it was deserted."

The journalist moved northwards towards the next tows of Sherpur. It too was deserted. " It was the same story all the way to the border. Any village within two miles of a main road was burnt out and deserted", Mr. Hossein said.