INDONESIAN OBSERVER, DJAKARTA. AUGUST 30, 1971
Editorial
TRAGEDY OF UNPRECEDENTED PROPORTIONS
The main reason, why events in East Pakistan continue to get a wide press coverage everywhere, is simply because in that part of the world a tragedy of unprecedented proportion is unfolding as a result of the endless flow of refugees into India.
Senator Edward Kennedy, after an extensive tour of the refugee camps in India’s West Bengal in his capacity as Chairman of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Sub-committee on refugees, confirmed that the five-month-old conflict between East Pakistan and West Pakistan had driven over seven and half million Bengalis to take refuge in India.
On his visit to some of the refugee centers inside India, Kennedy said he saw “a scene which only can be described as the most appalling tide of human misery in modern times”.
What the Yahya Government is accused of is the militaristic way with which it attempts to solve a political problem, one which since the period of Ayub Khan has plagued not East Pakistan alone but the entire Republic as a whole.
Yahya Khan is worse than his predecessor only because in this case he threw the full weight of his army against the unarmed millions of Bengalis, driving them into India and inviting bloody clashes from a meaningless few.