I find it difficult to understand how any Presidential spokesman. with knowledge of the problems that exist in the area. could make such an unctious statement. I have just returned from India. where I traveled the road to Jessore from Calcutta to the Bengal border. I saw for myself the endless stream of refugees fleeing East Pakistan. 1 days part of the multitude that has inundated the bordering states of India during the past 8 months. I visited a field hospital near the border. where wounded refugees were brought for treatment. Half of the patients were laid out on the floor. for lack of beds. and the surgery was crudelike that which took place during our own civil war a century agodue to the limited facilities and the incapacity to administer blood transfusions. Every complicated gunshot wound could be treated only by amputations. Patients were surviving who would have died a century ago. only because of sulfa and penicillin. These refugees were the victims of Pakistan fire. Most were Hindus but many were Muslims who supported Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in the elections which took place In East Pakistan last year. In those elections the people of East Pakistan had spoken in one voice. They had massively elected the candidates of the Awami League. endorsing a platform which called for an autonomous East Bengal. "Bangla Desh" was the rallying cry in those elections. as it remains the rallying cry today. I wandered through the refugee camps. questioning men. women. and children on every side. Invariably. their story was the same. the same sad tale of villages pillaged. families decimated. young girls raped. Mothers spoke proudly of their sons of fighting age who had escaped and had now returned to fight in the ranks of the Mukti Bahini guerrilla forces to free their country.
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refugee refugees