The year of killing

In October 1971 East Pakistan's bid for independence seemed to be getting nowhere. The Pakistan Army had occupied every sizeable town in the country. Units of the liberation army or Mukti Bahini were carrying out sporadic raids and acts of sabotage, mainly in rural areas though also in towns and cities; however these were not serious enough to weaken the hold of the Pakistan Army, which was retaliating with wide-ranging and ruthless punitive raids. It looked as if East Pakistan was in for a long period of brutal military rule aggravated by guerrilla warfare and economic decline.  Against this background I seized the chance to join a World in Action film team from Granada Television who were heading for the conflict zone. Granada TV had managed to get permission from the Pakistan Government to make a documentary film about the food situation in East Pakistan in the aftermath of the cyclone which had caused much loss and destruction the year before. I had been invited to act as the team's interpreter.
The leader of our team was Mike Beckham, one of the World in Action producers, and second in command was the researcher Ray Fitzwalter. There were also a cameraman and his assistant, and a sound recordist. I flew out on my own after the rest of the team had assembled in Dacca. The flight from London to Karachi was unexceptional, but the internal PIA flight from Karachi to Dacca was surreal. The rather dingy Boeing aircraft was full to capacity; and apart from myself and one or two other foreigners every passenger seemed to be a hulking Panjabi or Pathan male aged between twenty and forty. There were no Bengalis. The hulking young men were all in civilian dress - cotton kurta and payjama - but it was obvious that they were Pakistan Army conscripts being flown over to join the military occupation of East Pakistan. The atmosphere on board was grim and subdued.
The World in Action team had its base in the Hotel Intercontinental, an incongruous multistoreyed concrete box standing near the Mymensingh Road on the north side of Dacca. Passing the potted palms and painfully obsequious uniformed doorman (under the gaze of several khaki-clad soldiers standing on guard in the shadows) I entered a foreign world. The air inside the hermetically sealed building was cool and stuffy, smelling vaguely of soap and dust. The floors were carpeted, there was no sound. The only people to be seen were white-skinned aliens or impeccably dressed Pakistani businessmen. I was overwhelmed and disgusted by the atmosphere of smug detachment, and immediately missed the warmth, odours, clangour and humanity of the real Dacca outside.
Obviously the Pakistan Government was not keen to have a foreign television team nosing about and recording the killing and burning which, notwithstanding the official denials, was being carried out systematically by the Pakistan Army in the interior of the country. We were to operate in conjunction with the Department of Films and Publications, one of whose officials would be seconded to our team, to accompany us wherever we went and monitor our work.
Abdul Quddus was a spiritless, bespectacled civil servant, an office grub unaccustomed to fresh air and physical activity, whose pasty face suggested dullness and myopia. One guessed that he was not the most dynamic member of his department, and probably his colleagues had been very happy to let him have the uncomfortable and potentially dangerous job of shadowing us on our tour of the interior. He showed no sign of enthusiasm, and our relations with him were cold from the outset.
We flew to Chittagong, and from there organized a trip to Noakhali District, which was supposed to have been badly hit by the cyclone. Mike and Ray hoped to find scenes of devastation and visible evidence of starvation which might be attributed to the negligence of the Pakistan Govern­ment. But in Noakhali we found neither. Nor was anyone we interviewed willing to speak critically of the military regime.
Disappointed, we returned to Dhaka. Another area the World in Action team were interested in was Faridpur District, the homeland of the imprisoned leader of the Bangladesh liberation movement, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. Parts of Gopalganj and Madaripur Subdivisions in that district were rumoured to be effectively under the control of the Mukti Bahini.
The best way to reach the heart of Faridpur District was by river. However the inland waterways were generally regarded as unsafe. Pakistan Navy boats were patrolling them, and river craft were also being shot at from the shore by both pro- and anti-government militias. As a result the Buriganga river in Dacca was unusually quiet, most motor launch operators having chosen to play safe by suspending their services.
After some effort we found a launch owner who was willing to hire out a vessel, with crew, for an inflated sum. Our team, plus Abdul Quddus, boarded the small ship and we set off along the wide, deserted river in the winter sunshine.
The cameramen and sound recordist sat on deck, playing liar dice and enjoying the scenery. We passed vast green rice fields under a blue sky, shady man­­go groves on the river bank, a homestead with thatched huts, cattle byre and hay rick, a bazaar lined with corrugated iron sheds, its muddy street thronged with men in coloured shirts and cotton check lungis, carrying faded black umbrellas. It all looked peaceful and idyllic. Mike and Ray would have liked to keep going all night in order to save precious time, but before sunset the sareng drew up to a mooring close to a large riverside bazaar and refused to go any further. This was the last good mooring place for a long way, he said, and to remain on the river all night would be far too risky.
Late at night a small band of freedom fighters bearing assorted weapons came on board our launch to question us. The arrival of a boatload of foreigners had not gone unnoticed; probably everyone in the bazaar had been talking about us for hours and speculating as to the reason we were there. Taking on the role of spokesman for our team I tried to explain our intentions and reassure the guerrillas that we were sympathetic to their cause.
The following day we reached Madaripur Subdivision and found everything Mike and Ray had been looking for: terrified countryfolk, corpses in the river, burned villages, witnesses who were willing to describe Pakistan Army atrocities, Bangla Desh flags on display, crowds shouting "Joy Bangla!" and any number of freedom fighters.
The liberation army asserted its authority by sending a junior officer with orders for us to report to the area commander at his temporary base in a remote village accessible only by rowing boat. It took us a whole day to get there and back and the filming schedule was seriously delayed. But in the end the cameraman was able to capture a number of powerful scenes.
Back in Dhaka, Abdul Quddus was released from his uncomfortable ordeal and reverted from being an unwelcome eavesdropper caught up in a wild and dangerous spying mission to his normal role as a staid government bureaucrat. He was now in a position to take his revenge. In his official report on our team's activities he revealed that we had consorted with anti-government miscreants and filmed unsuitable scenes without permission. His department promptly confiscated our film, locking it in a cupboard in its office in Shantinagar. It seemed that all our efforts had been in vain.
But not everyone in the Department of Films and Publications was a quisling. A patriotic officer who worked in the Shantinagar office and knew all about our affair quietly planted a pack of explosives before going home that night. The building was blown wide open. The film was rescued from the ruins and smuggled to Mike Beckham in the Hotel Intercontinental. Mike put it in his baggage and caught the next available plane back to London; fortunately in the confusion the pro-government side had failed to warn the airport staff to check all outgoing foreign journalists carefully.
The film was shown on Granada TV as a World in Action special, entitled The Year of Killing, in December 1971, shortly after the Indian Army had stepped into the breach and assured the freedom and independence of the new nation of Bangladesh.

The writer is a former Long Term Volunteer (LTV) of International Voluntary Service, UK (IVS). He visited occupied Bangladesh with Granada TV in 1971

The year of killing

In October 1971 East Pakistans bid for independence seemed to be getting nowhere. The Pakistan Army had occupied every sizeable town in the country. Units of the liberation army or Mukti Bahini were carrying out sporadic raids and acts of sabotage, mainly in rural areas though also in towns and cities; however these were not serious enough to weaken the hold of the Pakistan Army, which was retaliating with wide-ranging and ruthless punitive raids. It looked as if East Pakistan was in for a long period of brutal military rule aggravated by guerrilla warfare and economic decline. Against this background I seized the chance to join a World in Action film team from Granada Television who were heading for the conflict zone. Granada TV had managed to get permission from the Pakistan Government to make a documentary film about the food situation in East Pakistan in the aftermath of the cyclone which had caused much loss and destruction the year before. I had been invited to act as the teams interpreter. The leader of our team was Mike Beckham, one of the World in Action producers, and second in command was the researcher Ray Fitzwalter. There were also a cameraman and his assistant, and a sound recordist. I flew out on my own after the rest of the team had assembled in Dacca. The flight from London to Karachi was unexceptional, but the internal PIA flight from Karachi to Dacca was surreal. The rather dingy Boeing aircraft was full to capacity; and apart from myself and one or two other foreigners every passenger seemed to be a hulking Panjabi or Pathan male aged between twenty and forty. There were no Bengalis. The hulking young men were all in civilian dress - cotton kurta and payjama - but it was obvious that they were Pakistan Army conscripts being flown over to join the military occupation of East Pakistan. The atmosphere on board was grim and subdued. The World in Action team had its base in the Hotel Intercontinental, an incongruous multistoreyed concrete box standing near the Mymensingh Road on the north side of Dacca. Passing the potted palms and painfully obsequious uniformed doorman (under the gaze of several khaki-clad soldiers standing on guard in the shadows) I entered a foreign world. The air inside the hermetically sealed building was cool and stuffy, smelling vaguely of soap and dust. The floors were carpeted, there was no sound. The only people to be seen were white-skinned aliens or impeccably dressed Pakistani businessmen. I was overwhelmed and disgusted by the atmosphere of smug detachment, and immediately missed the warmth, odours, clangour and humanity of the real Dacca outside. Obviously the Pakistan Government was not keen to have a foreign television team nosing about and recording the killing and burning which, notwithstanding the official denials, was being carried out systematically by the Pakistan Army in the interior of the country. We were to operate in conjunction with the Department of Films and Publications, one of whose officials would be seconded to our team, to accompany us wherever we went and monitor our work. Abdul Quddus was a spiritless, bespectacled civil servant, an office grub unaccustomed to fresh air and physical activity, whose pasty face suggested dullness and myopia. One guessed that he was not the most dynamic member of his department, and probably his colleagues had been very happy to let him have the uncomfortable and potentially dangerous job of shadowing us on our tour of the interior. He showed no sign of enthusiasm, and our relations with him were cold from the outset. We flew to Chittagong, and from there organized a trip to Noakhali District, which was supposed to have been badly hit by the cyclone. Mike and Ray hoped to find scenes of devastation and visible evidence of starvation which might be attributed to the negligence of the Pakistan Government. But in Noakhali we found neither. Nor was anyone we interviewed willing to speak critically of the military regime. Disappointed, we returned to Dhaka. Another area the World in Action team were interested in was Faridpur District, the homeland of the imprisoned leader of the Bangladesh liberation movement, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. Parts of Gopalganj and Madaripur Subdivisions in that district were rumoured to be effectively under the control of the Mukti Bahini. The best way to reach the heart of Faridpur District was by river. However the inland waterways were generally regarded as unsafe. Pakistan Navy boats were patrolling them, and river craft were also being shot at from the shore by both pro- and anti-government militias. As a result the Buriganga river in Dacca was unusually quiet, most motor launch operators having chosen to play safe by suspending their services. After some effort we found a launch owner who was willing to hire out a vessel, with crew, for an inflated sum. Our team, plus Abdul Quddus, boarded the small ship and we set off along the wide, deserted river in the winter sunshine. The cameramen and sound recordist sat on deck, playing liar dice and enjoying the scenery. We passed vast green rice fields under a blue sky, shady mango groves on the river bank, a homestead with thatched huts, cattle byre and hay rick, a bazaar lined with corrugated iron sheds, its muddy street thronged with men in coloured shirts and cotton check lungis, carrying faded black umbrellas. It all looked peaceful and idyllic. Mike and Ray would have liked to keep going all night in order to save precious time, but before sunset the sareng drew up to a mooring close to a large riverside bazaar and refused to go any further. This was the last good mooring place for a long way, he said, and to remain on the river all night would be far too risky. Late at night a small band of freedom fighters bearing assorted weapons came on board our launch to question us. The arrival of a boatload of foreigners had not gone unnoticed; probably everyone in the bazaar had been talking about us for hours and speculating as to the reason we were there. Taking on the role of spokesman for our team I tried to explain our intentions and reassure the guerrillas that we were sympathetic to their cause. The following day we reached Madaripur Subdivision and found everything Mike and Ray had been looking for: terrified countryfolk, corpses in the river, burned villages, witnesses who were willing to describe Pakistan Army atrocities, Bangla Desh flags on display, crowds shouting Joy Bangla! and any number of freedom fighters. The liberation army asserted its authority by sending a junior officer with orders for us to report to the area commander at his temporary base in a remote village accessible only by rowing boat. It took us a whole day to get there and back and the filming schedule was seriously delayed. But in the end the cameraman was able to capture a number of powerful scenes. Back in Dhaka, Abdul Quddus was released from his uncomfortable ordeal and reverted from being an unwelcome eavesdropper caught up in a wild and dangerous spying mission to his normal role as a staid government bureaucrat. He was now in a position to take his revenge. In his official report on our teams activities he revealed that we had consorted with anti-government miscreants and filmed unsuitable scenes without permission. His department promptly confiscated our film, locking it in a cupboard in its office in Shantinagar. It seemed that all our efforts had been in vain. But not everyone in the Department of Films and Publications was a quisling. A patriotic officer who worked in the Shantinagar office and knew all about our affair quietly planted a pack of explosives before going home that night. The building was blown wide open. The film was rescued from the ruins and smuggled to Mike Beckham in the Hotel Intercontinental. Mike put it in his baggage and caught the next available plane back to London; fortunately in the confusion the pro-government side had failed to warn the airport staff to check all outgoing foreign journalists carefully. The film was shown on Granada TV as a World in Action special, entitled The Year of Killing, in December 1971, shortly after the Indian Army had stepped into the breach and assured the freedom and independence of the new nation of Bangladesh. The writer is a former Long Term Volunteer (LTV) of International Voluntary Service, UK (IVS). He visited occupied Bangladesh with Granada TV in 1971