By Moira Dynon B.Sc.
1971 Melbourne
On 28 November 1971, Moira addressed the Wesley Church Sunday Forum.
The struggle of the people of East Pakistan to emerge as the sovereign independent nation of Bangla Desh is the result of the West Pakistan Government’s attempts to exploit and crush the freedom loving people of East Bengal. For the Bengalis the revolt is no less than their opposition to tyranny, their resistance to genocide, their struggle for survival and their demand for human rights.
In a press statement issued on 17th April 1971 after the inauguration of the Government of the People’s Republic of Bangla Desh (not yet recognised by Governments of the world) the Prime Minister of Bangla Desh Mr. Tajuddin Ahmed stated:
‘Bangla Desh is at war. It has been given no choice but to secure its right of self-determination through a national liberation struggle against the colonial oppression of West Pakistan.
In the face of positive attempts by the Government of Pakistan to distort the facts in a desperate attempt to cover up their war to genocide in Bangla Desh, the world must be told the circumstances under which the peace-loving people of Bangla Desh were driven to substitute armed struggle for parliamentary politics to realise the just aspirations of the people of Bangla Desh.’
On the 19th November the President of India Mr. Giri said: ‘the influx of more than nine million Bengalis from East Pakistan has cast an intolerable burden on our slender resources and our economic stability and viability are at stake.’ (reported in The Age 20th November 1971)
To understand the significance of this it is necessary to go back in history.
When the India Independence Act was passed by the British Parliament in 1947 British power was transferred to the people of India as far as British India States were concerned. At the same time British India was partitioned. Part of the country seceded to become the new State of Pakistan. The partition was confined to British India States and the existence of Muslim majority provinces in the North West and East of India were taken into consideration in drawing the partition line. Other arrangements governed the future of the Princely States. West Pakistan north west of India is separated from East Pakistan by more than 1,000 miles of Indian territory. The population of the Western wing is approximately 58 million; the population of the eastern wing some 75 million. The language, culture and way of life of the people of the two wings are different. The common bond was religion. The differences between the peoples of the two wings of the State made it very difficult to build a nation out of Pakistan. The geographical absurdity of the State of Pakistan created formidable strains. From the outset the two provinces have had all the appearances of two countries.
Since the assassination of Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan in 1951 the dominant element in the political power structure of Pakistan has been the bureaucratic elite which has pursued policies of economic exploitation and suppression of the rights of the 75 million people of East Bengal. For the last 13 years Pakistan has been under military rule. The rulers of Pakistan have followed ruthless colonial policies towards East Pakistan and drained its resources for the development of the western wing. The resulting sense of injustice gave rise to demands for greater autonomy for the eastern wing and for a greater share in the total resources of the country.
The Pakistan News Digest of December, 1970, reported:
‘The first ever general elections on the basis of universal adult franchise were held all over Pakistan on December 7 in a peaceful and orderly manner. The voters returned in large numbers at the polling stations to elect their representatives to the National Parliament, primarily charged with the task of constitution making.’
It was planned that the Assembly would have the responsibility of drafting within 120 days of its first meeting a Constitution for a return to civilian rule.
In the East Wing, the Awami League led by Sheik Mujibur Rahman won 167 out of 169 seats for the National Assembly. This result gave it a clear majority over the Pakistan People’s Party in the West wing, led by Mr Zulfikan Ali Bhutto.
From December 1970 to February 1971 political negotiations took place between Sheik Mujibur and Mr. Bhutto regarding the formation of the new Government and the new Constitution. But serious differences arose mainly because Mr. Bhutto and President Yaha Khan were reluctant to concede autonomy to East Bengal despite the fact that the Awami League had been elected on the platform of the famous six-point formula. These six points, first put forward in 1966 and supported by the overwhelming majority of the people of East Bengal aimed at autonomy in the management of East Pakistan’s economic, commercial and financial affairs.
On 1st March President Yahya Khan postponed the Meeting of the National Assembly which was to have taken place on 3rd March. A crisis developed. Sheik Mujibur called for non co-operation and civil disobedience. On 6th March President Yahya Khan announced that a Meeting of the National Assembly would be held on the 25th March. That meeting did not take place. On 15th March he flew to Dacca for talks with Sheik Mujibur. But the talks broke down completely.
On 25th March the President returned to the western wing and ordered an attack on the people of East Bengal. The demand for autonomy became one for secession. Sheik Mujibur was arrested, imprisoned and charged with treason. The London Times in an editorial on 27th March stated that Sheik Mujibur Rahman had: ‘responded heroically to the Pakistan Army’s intervention with a call for resistance and a declaration of independence.’
The world has heard reports of the terror and brutality which were unleashed on the unarmed civilians of East Pakistan.
In his speech in the United States Senate on 11th May 1971, Senator Saxbe referred to a letter which he had received from Dr. John E. Rohde (of Hudson, Ohio) who was stationed in East Pakistan as a physician under the U.S. Aid Programme. He is one of the several hundred Americans evacuated from East Pakistan soon after the civil war started in last March.
In the letter, Dr. Rohde gives an eyewitness account of the terror and killing by the West Pakistan army upon the unarmed civilian population of the city of Dacca in East Bengal. Dr. Rohde and his wife walked through the University of Dacca area only 4 days after military action started. They reported seeing the student dormitories of Dacca University shelled by army tanks and artillery. They saw evidence of the slaughter of young inmates of those dormitories. They saw the breaches in walls of those dormitories where tanks had broken through. They saw graves in which dead students were heaped together outside the halls where they had studied. Dr. Rohde sums up what he saw in the following words:
‘It is clear that the law of the jungle prevails in East Pakistan where the mass killing of unarmed civilians, the systematic elimination of the intelligentsia and the annihilation of the Hindu population is in progress.’
Senator Saxbe went on to point out:
‘It appears to me from Dr. Rohde’s account and the accounts of other eyewitnesses that systematic and brutal killings on a scale unprecedented in recent times have been committed in East Bengal. And it is a matter of profound sorrow to me…that this brutality in large part has come with the arms provided to Pakistan by our country.’
Following on the campaign of murder, arson and rape conducted by the Pakistan troops on the people of East Bengal nearly ten million refugees have fled to India. Reports indicate that refugees are still going into India at the rate of over 15,000 every day.
In a speech in the Rajya Sabha on 15th June 1971, the Prime Minister of India, Mrs. Indira Gandhi pointed out that the refugees are an international responsibility. She added: ‘we are looking after the refugees on a temporary basis. We have no intention of allowing them to settle here nor can we allow them to go back merely to be butchered.’
I think it is important that we remember that India could have refused entry to the refugees but at great sacrifice she chose the path of compassion.
In a document ‘The Testimony of Sixty on the Crisis in Bengal’ issued by Oxfam, sixty distinguished men and women including Mother Teresa, Senator Edward Kennedy, international journalists and experienced relief workers from British, European, North American and Indian organisations give eye-witness accounts and tell of millions of human beings who have fled from their homeland. The story is horrifying.
Following his visit to several refugee camps near Calcutta Frederick Nossal of Toronto Telegram wrote:
‘Despite tremendous efforts by the Government of India conditions were simply terrible. Particularly young children and old people were dying by the score from cholera, malnutrition and diseases connected with food deficiency. Makeshift canvas shelters let through the rain, and thousands lay or slept on damp straw mats and even on the wet ground. They were too weak to move. Those who found shelter in steel and concrete pipes at construction sites considered themselves lucky. At least they were dry. Hospitals were so overcrowded, patients were accommodated on the floors and in the corridors. Many children and infants were only skin and bones, and obviously dying from dysentery, cholera and malnutrition, and perhaps a combination of different diseases.’
From my personal observations in September at the refugee camp at Salt Lake City and at Bangoan about 35 miles from Calcutta, I can assure you that these reports are not exaggerated. At Bangoan, a village with a population of 400,000 there were over 700,000 refugees. Many could not fit in the camps and were living in open spaces. At the hospital which normally accommodates 150 there were over 500 patients. Seven Bengali doctors were working night and day tending to children and adults suffering cholera, malnutrition diseases and gun shot wounds.
The cost of caring for over 9 million refugees has been met largely by the Government and people of India. This has imposed great strain on the Indian economy. In addition, as Mrs. Gandhi has pointed out the situation is a threat to the peace and stability of Asia.
In the words of Mother Teresa:
‘Let us all wherever we are realize that we have millions of children suffering from malnutrition and starvation and there are other difficulties, the enormity of which people find it hard to appreciate. Here again, unless the world comes in with food and proteins and those other things the children need… these children will die – and the world will have to answer for their death.
I have been working among the refugees for five or six months. I have seen these children and these adults dying. That is why I can assure the world how grave the situation is and how urgently it must help. …The world must answer.’
Newspaper headlines tell the story: Hindustan Standard of 30th October:
‘90,000 evacuee children may die in three weeks unless a crash programme to feed them was taken up immediately’, says Director General of Health Services Mr. J.B. Srivastava;
‘4,300 refugee children dying every day’, says Senator Edward Kennedy (Statesman, 3rd November 1971);
‘I don’t think it would be an exaggeration to say that half a million children will die by January’ says Mr. Harry R. Labouisse, Executive Director of U.N.I.C.E.F. (Statesman, 13 October, 1971).
The Australian people who understand have responded with warm hearted generosity. But if widespread starvation is to be averted, much more help is urgently needed – cash, milk products, baby foods, blankets, shelter material.
I think it is appropriate to recall the message of Sir Henry Bolte (President Victorian Committee for World Refugee Year (1 July 1959 to June 30 1960):
‘If thousands of refugees were pouring across our borders as the result of some terrible disaster, surely none of us would hesitate to help. We would set up emergency relief centres. We would share our homes and arrange food services. We would give time and money. A lucky accident of geography has saved us from all this. I am thankful to say that most of us know nothing first-hand of the terrors of political oppression or the miseries of a refugee camp. But our responsibility to help others does not diminish with distance. Rather, our own security depends on the solution of refugee problems in other parts of the world.’
In the interest of peace and stability in the Indian Sub Continent in Asia and the world a political settlement acceptable to the people of East Bengal is imperative.
Bangla Desh independence is inevitable. The question is how is this to be achieved and how soon. Every hour’s delay means more human suffering.
When he transferred his allegiance to Bangla Desh on 5th September, the former Pakistan Ambassador to the Philippines, His Excellency, Kurrum Khan Panni denounced the Pakistan Government as: ‘totally illegitimate and absolutely barbarian’ in maintaining its hold over the East. By his failure to call the Meeting of the National Assembly could it be that President Yahya Khan has brought into question the legal and constitutional basis of the State of Pakistan?
Now the people of East Bengal are determined at all costs to sever their connection with West Pakistan. This position has become inevitable as a direct result of the policies and actions of the West Pakistan military junta.
The barbarity has unleashed Bengal nationalism. As Mr. M. Hossain Ali, High Commissioner for the People’s Republic of Bangladesh in Calcutta stated (at a meeting at the Press Club, Calcutta on 17th July 1971):
‘The barbarity and the atrocities could not cow down the spirit of the Bengalis. A nation which believed in Constitutional movement suddenly was pushed to a war. Now Bangla Desh is at war, a war of liberation. The people of Bangla Desh are determined and united to liberate the motherland from the hands of the West Pakistan occupation forces… Yahya’s final solution of the Bengali question has since taken on an added sinister dimension… denial of food to starve the Bengalis into submission. A famine of unimaginable proportions is threatening Bangla Desh.’
The situation created within East Bengal and the mass exodus of nearly ten million refugees into India has created a vast human problem not only for the refugees and the people of Bangla Desh but also for the people of India. President Giri has warned that: ‘the influx of more than nine million Bengalis from East Pakistan has cast an intolerable burden on our slender resources and our economic stability and viability are at stake.’
Geographically situated as we are Australians must not fail to understand what is happening. A friendly strong secure India is vital to Australia. The policies and actions of West Pakistan have threatened the stability of India. The situation is fraught with danger.
Massive aid and a political settlement acceptable to the people of East Bengal are imperative for peace in the Indian sub continent and the Asian region in which we live.
At this very grave hour in the Indian sub-continent, the people of democratic India and the people of Bangla Desh must be wondering just who are their friends.