Priests speak in a whisper at a Roman Catholic mission hospital in East Pakistan where Father Mario Veronese from Padua, was gunned down by soldiers last month. They look over their shoulders for the officer outside as journalists ask them questions. Repeat the experience scores of times over four days and it conjures up the fear - justified or not - that lurks outside the military cantonments in a land where tens of thousands of people have been put to death.

A horrifying picture of slaughter and destruction met journalists on an official visit over the past week. The scale of it went beyond the imagination. No one will ever know the full truth but authoritative sources put the figure of dead at 300,000 and others asserted that it was perhaps as high as half a million.

The Eastern Province - already hard hit by last year’s cyclone disaster - now lies victim of a ruthless civil war. Apart from fears of a guerrilla war from sanctuaries in India, the army must now contend with the threat of famine and the dangers to the economy of failure to restore communications. Chittagong port, one of the main outlets for exporting jute products, remains without rail or road links with the rest of the country. Hundreds of tons of food grains are locked up on the dockside and in cargo vessels there.

The military Government plans to exploit water transport to distribute food and to move export products. But even the Governor himself considers it will take at least a year to return the province economically to the state it was in three months ago. One banker said it would never be the same. Meanwhile the Army says no one in the country need die from lack of food. It is marshalling river craft to move large stores inland and to carry jute for export.

CRUCIAL

Restoring jute mill production is crucial to Pakistan’s foreign earnings at a time when the World Bank has been asked to allow a six-month moratorium on its debt payments. But it is estimated that the jute industry is working at less than 20 per cent of its normal level. This figure indicates the general economic situation, which foreigners in Dacca say, is all but beyond repair.

No one doubts the Government’s contention that some killing and intimidation began before the army action ordered by President Yahya Khan on the night of March 25. There is evidence that non-Bengalis, largely immigrants from India who sought refuge after the 1947 partition, were attacked, hacked to death, and burnt in their homes by mobs. Spurred by this and convinced that Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s Awami League intended to go beyond autonomy within the State - aided by Indian arms and cash - General Yahya sent the army out of its cantonments to “restore law and order.” The army says its action pre-empted by a few hours a plan for a full scale rebellion.

Moving systematically, it first secured Dacca and then moved against strongholds at six other centres - Chittagong, Comilla, Jessore, Rangpur, Khulna, and Rajshahi. Not only last month did it complete this task and not until early this month was the border area with India fully within its control. In Dacca itself, the heart of the rebellion, the army blasted its way through a string of roadblocks, using mortars and bazookas, barring its path into the city. One of its first objectives was the university. Army estimates put the university death roll at about a hundred. Other sources mention “hundreds”. Authoritative reports say a number of professors were killed by machine- gun fire. The army has not denied this. It says any intellectual caught up in the attack had no right to be there.

Atrocities which began before March 25 by now appear to have become widespread as the army operation raised an already inflamed nationalist and communal feeling. Reporters saw burned out mosques and Hindu temples.

SLAUGHTER

Witnesses told stories of 1,500 widows and orphans fleeing to a mosque at Mymensingh, in the north, as armed men identified as secessionists slaughtered their husbands and fathers. At Chittagong, where regular army troops of the East Bengal Regiment mutinied and also joined the secessionists, unsubstantiated reports say, women and children had their throats cut by rebels - to save ammunition. A mill manager showed journalists a mass grave where he said well over 100 women and children were buried. Scene of the killing - just before the army moved in - was the mill recreation hall and it stank of death the day journalists saw it this week. Human hair and bloodstains lay about the building.

In each single incident related to journalists, army officers used four figures to estimate the dead. The assistant postmaster at Mymensingh showed journalists a neck scar and bayonet wounds. He said he was one of only 25 survivors out of 5,000 non-Bengalis attacked by Awami League supporters and army deserters. Lawlessness and massacre were the army’s justification for cracking down. But there are those who say there were excesses by soldiers using overwhelming firepower. They strongly contest the army’s version of events.

Traveling by helicopter daily, journalists paid only fleeting visits to the scenes of fighting and had only four complete days in the province. Wherever they went frightened villagers generally would not talk of their experience. Looking around at the small north-west town of Natore, one Bengali said of the large scale destruction. “The military did this. I cannot speak - there are non-Bengali spies all around.” At Jessore, just inside the border with India, pitched battles were fought with the “Liberation Army”, in support of the Bangladesh movement. According to well authenticated accounts available there the army itself was guilty of indiscriminate killing. One resident said over 5,000 died in the army attack.

Father Mario is reported to have been shot down at Jessore as he stood with his hands up and the Red Cross shirt that he wore was stained by his blood as he fell. This was the only reported case of a European having been killed in the rebellion. Punjabi soldiers from the West were blamed for it. The army’s method of combating rebels was described by a senior officer at Khulna, centre of jute milling industry. “It took me five days to get control of this area. We killed everyone who came our way. We never bothered to count the bodies.”