How the 1971 Army
Crackdown Story in BD Reached the World
By
Arnold Zeitlin
CENTREVILLE,
VA: On the evening of March 25, 1971, I was at a dinner in a Dhaka
suburb at the home of the well-to-do Ispahani family, celebrated
for their tea business, among others. Other guests included Kaiser
Rashid, a Bengali from Sylhet who had been personal secretary
to Z.A. Bhutto when Bhutto was Pakistan’s foreign minister;
and the genial Pathan who was Federal Information Secretary (probably
Younus Sethi.)
We
all had been through an extremely difficult month of March during
desperate negotiations to keep East and West Pakistan together
after the 1970 elections in which the people of Pakistan essentially
voted to split the country.
Because
anything could happen anytime, I left word of my whereabouts with
a friend, Henry Bradsher, then the correspondent for the now-defunct
Washington Star, and like me a guest at the Intercontinental Hotel
in Dhaka.
At
about 10 pm, Henry called me at the Ispahani home and warned against
my returning to the hotel. He said the Pakistan Army had rounded
up all the foreign correspondents at the hotel and was preparing
to expel them immediately. He said the army had attacked a Bengali
newspaper office across the road from the hotel.
My
hostess, Akhtar Ispahani, called a political general at the cantonment
where the Pakistan Army command was located. She told him she
had the federal information secretary as a guest and asked what
was happening. The general advised her to get the information
secretary to the cantonment at once.
Her
husband, Isky, drove the secretary to the cantonment (he, too,
was a guest at the Intercontinental, by the way). Kaiser and I
were in the car, thinking we might return to the city to see what
was going on. After dropping the information secretary, we headed
down the Airport Road to the main part of Dhaka. We had to stop
because someone had thrown a huge tree across the road. In the
darkness beyond the tree, we could see what looked like armed
figures. We turned back to the Ispahani House and spent the night
on the roof listening to the shooting and watching the tracers.
We spent the next day under curfew in the house. There was no
news on the radio.
The
army had gone on a rampage, killing thousands and arresting Shiek
Mujibur Rahman, the man who had won the most seats in the election
and who could have become the prime minister of Pakistan. I did
not get back to the hotel until the second day, when the curfew
was lifted.
The
reception clerk gaped when I walked up to him at the hotel. Everyone
else had been expelled, and there I was. When I asked for my key,
he asked if I was staying or leaving. I said to myself: "Are
you with me or against?" I went to my room. It had been ransacked.
But my passport was there. I heard a sound in the adjoining room,
where my young French photographer had been staying. I opened
the connecting door -- and there he was. Michel Laurent told me
he had gone upstairs when the army ordered all journalists to
pack up. He just never came down, and the army took off the other
correspondents without even realizing he was missing. He then
was hidden in the hotel kitchen by the Bengali staff and spent
the first night wandering around Dhaka taking pictures. Amazingly
courageous.
We
heard a plane was available at the airport to take out foreigners.
We wanted to leave because there was no way to file a story or
photographs. So he and I went to the airport, where we were searched
thoroughly for almost two hours. The army searchers took my notes
and papers and as much of Michel's film as they could find. Just
as we were about to board the plane, a plainclothesman who said
he was an army captain kept me back briefly, searching me once
more before he let me board. The authorities took my passport.
I wrote a story on the plane.
In
those days, Pakistani aircraft could not over fly India. So the
plane went to Karachi via Colombo in Sri Lanka. When the plane
landed to refuel in Colombo, I considering getting off and refusing
to re-board. But my family was then in RawalpindI and I feared
reprisals against them. So I ran around the airport for a telephone
and reached Manik de Silva, then the AP stringer there. I dictated
hurriedly what was the first story of the army crackdown from
a witness to reach the outside world.
I
wrote another story and gave it to Michel with the idea that I
would head for Rawalpindi and he would take the morning Pan American
flight to Bangkok where he could file the story and photos. At
Karachi, we were again searched. Michel was virtually strip searched
as the army hunted for his films. He was funny because the harder
the army searched, the worse his English became until at the end
of the search, he spoke to them only in French. The authorities
found the story I had given to him hidden in a belt he wore.
But
he went off to Bangkok, where in fact he did produce pictures
that had eluded the searchers. I told him to tell the Bangkok
correspondents the story and have them write a story under his
byline.
I
went to the Palace Hotel in KarachI and called Zamir Siddiqi,
my stringer there. He reported that the story I had dictated in
Sri Lanka had come back over the AP wire and had been taken immediately
to the President's House in Karachi. By then, it was 2 am. I lay
fully clothed on the bed, awaiting authorities to come and throw
me out of Pakistan. But by 6 am, I knew I was safe.
At
that hour, the hotel slipped under my door a copy of the Morning
News of Karachi. On the top of the front page was a boxed item.
In that item was the clue I was safe. The military had allowed
the newspapers to print one line out of my story. It read: "according
to APA correspondent Arnold Zeitlin, the army was in full control
in Dhaka." I figured that line saved me from expulsion.
One
last memory: Michel went on to win a Pulitzer Prize in Bangladesh
for his photographs. He was killed while taking battlefield photos
on the last day of the fighting in Vietnam in April 1975.
The
writer was AP Correspondent in Pakistan and was the first journalist
to report an eye witness account of the 1971 Army crackdown which
led to the break-up of Pakistan. He now runs a private company
in Virginia, US.
