Bangladesh Newsletter
No. 16
January 10, 1972
Editorial
JOI BANGLA : LONG LIVE BANGLADESH
Bangladesh is free. Long dark night of occupation is over. Liberation of Bangladesh has been achieved at a cost with parallels in history. By the time the occupation army laid down their weapons in surrender they reduced the entire Bangladesh inot rubble. Today the whole country is a mass grave. With each passing day our worst fears about the Pakistani occupation are confirmed : that savage regime used torture, rape and murder systematically and cold-bloodedly to terrorize the people of Bangladesh into submission. Their last days were spent in a final splurge of bloodletting : killing villagers as they retreated towards Dacca. We have all read the news of the mass murder of more than 200 intellectuals in Dacca, a massacre that was perpetrated only a day or so before the surrender. Dispatches have identified 3 of the mutilated bodies so far : Dr. Rabb, Chief Cardiologist, Dacca Medical College ; Dr. Munier Chowdhury, Head of the Department of Bengali Language and Literature, Dacca University ; Nizamuddin Ahmed, journalist, Consistent to the end, the Pakistan regime was determined to destroy the resources of Bangladesh in every way they could.
In the nine months that the Pakistan army ravaged our land and our people, there were some who collaborated with the Pakistan army. The army used them as a para-military force to carry out the most vicious of its directives. As was to be expected, the Pakistan army has now deserted them. Reprisals against these collaborators and their families appear to be easy. We call upon our countrymen to desist from taking revenge. The cold-blooded torture and murder of four men that occured a few days ago must not be repeated. It is a matter of immense shame and sadness to us that those responsible for this atrocious conduct were Bengalis who claimed to be part of the Mukti Bahini.
The destruction of Bangladesh has been massive. But our liberation will be a hollow triumph if our oppressors have succeeded in transforming us into their barbaric image. Enough blood has stained the Golden Bengal. Let it not be said that those who fought to secure justice and dignity for their people denied it to their defeated enemy.
Bangladesh is free. But at this moment in our history, hardly we have time and hardly we are in a position to rejoice over the accomplishment of the dearest of our objectives. We have ahead of us an enormous task of reconstruction of Bangladesh. It needs equal tenacity of purpose and dedication as we have brought to bear upon our struggle for the liberation of our homeland. It does not require us to be reminded that it is time for all of our techincal persoinnels and professionals who are working abroad to return to Bangladesh and dedicate themselves to the rebuilding of our economy and the national institutions.
Liberation of Bangladesh will not be complete until the leader of the seventy-five million people of Bangladesh returns to his country. We do not expect to discover a reservoir of goodwill and friendship toward the people of Bangladesh in Mr. Bhutto, the new dictator of Pakistan, The hat which he is now wearing will not hide the fact that it was he who advised, supported and led Yahya into unleashing the brutal army in Bangladesh to liquidate the majority party in the National Assembly. But we hope Mr. Bhutto will see the writing on the wall more distinctly than his predecessor did and let Sheikh Mujibur Rahman return to his people immediately. We shall watch with great interest how much ‘leverage’ the U.S. administration excercise over their new found friend and admirer in Pakistan in this regard.
AMERICAN SCHOLARS CRITICIZE NIXON POLICY
Twenty-nine professors of the leading U.S. universities issued the following statement criticizing the policy of the Nixon administration in the South Asia. The text of the statement is given below :
American policy in South Asia, based on several crroneous assumptions and factual errors, is fixed on a tragic course. At stake are the U.S. capacity to play a constructive role in South Asia and the very future of this vitally important area. The administration admits that the vital national interests of the people of West Pakistan, East Bengal, and India are involved ; but denies that the United States has the ability to significantly influence the course of events. It publicly proclaims a desire to play n neutral role ; but both by word and deed, we have intervened in a manner which is clearly partisan.
This intervention has resulted in destroying the legacy of a quarter century of good will in South Asia. It has needlessly heightened India’s dependence on the Soviet Union. It has also encouraged those in Pakistan who have sought to stifle the legitimate aspirations of the majority of their own population through through brutal and repressive measures. While professing concern for the preservation and extension of democratic institutions, the United States has also placed condiderable strain, through economic pressure, on the continued functioning of democratic institutions in India.
We still have the opportunity, as well as an obligation, to play a constructive role in South Asian affairs. We urge the President to reconsider our present policies and to take into account the vastly changed circumstances in South Asia. Our old policy, predicated upon maintaining a balance of power between India and Pakistan was never valid. Bangladesh is a reality and will have to be recognized as such if American policy is to be effective. Economic and humanitarian aid, to the entire region, must be restored and enhanced in order to meet the compelling needs occasioned by the events of the past nine months. In addition, we should seek to play a constructive role in the repatriation and rehabilitation of all persons displaced during the current conflict. Only in this way will we able to implement our professions of neutrality and humanitarian concern.
LAST MINUTE EXECUTIONS OF BENGALI INTELLECTUALS
Over two hundred Bengali doctors, professors writers and teachers were found murdered in a field outside Dacca. All had thier hands tied behind their backs, garroted or shot, apparently just before the Mukti Bahini and the Indian troops swept into Dacca. They were rounded up in the last days of the war.
They lay in pools of water stained with blood, almost unrecongizable from their wounds. Sobbing relatives were among thousands of people who went to a deserted brickyard to identify the murdered men and women. Razakars, holed up in a mosque, fired at the mureners trying to identify score of bodies strewn across fields within rifle range. Family members identified three bodies as those of Dr. F. Rabbi, Chief Cardiologist of Dacca Medical College ; Dr. Munier Chowdhury, Head of the Department of Bengali Language and Literature, Dacca University ; Mr. Nizamuddin Ahmed, Associated Press correspondent in Dacca.
PLEASE NOTE
1. This issue of Bangladesh Newsletter is being mailed on Tuesday, December 28.
2. Notify us your change of address. Undelivered copy cost us additional postage.
WHITE HOUSE VERSION OF US ROLE AND THE TRUTH
The Bangladesh Information Center, rerpresenting a group of Americans concerned about the crisis in South, issued the following statement in response to Dr. Henry Kissinger’s December 7th White House press briefing. (The entire text of Dr. Kissinger’s briefing was placed in the December 9Th Congressional Record be Senator Barry Goldwater.)
Presidential adviser Henry Kissinger at a December 7th press briefing presented for the first time the White House version of the role played by the Unitet States in South Asia crisis.
In pointing to seven “accomplishments” which he claims the U.S. involvement helped bring about, Kissinger displays not only a shocking misunderstanding of the facts of the crisis but reveals the shortsighted bias of the United States diplomatic effort on the subcontinent. Kissinger claimed that U.S. involvement helped achieve the following results :
KISSINGER CLAIM #1 : All of the relief supplies in East Bengal were distributed through international agencies.
REALITY : As of the middle of November and less than one week before ist entire force was withdrawn from East Bengal, the United Nations East Pakistan Relief Operation (UNEPRO) had not yet even started any actual distribution of relief supplies, according to a press release issued by the U.N. on November 19th .
Most of the aid contributed by the United States was in the form of PL 480 food grains sold to the Government of Pakistan which in turn distributed the grains mainly to those loyal to the martial law regime. (See New York Times, November 17th and 20th, Baltimore Sun, November 11)
No food gaains or other assistance was distributed in areas controlled by the Mukti Bahini freedom fighters.
KISSINGER CLAIM #2 : The Government of Pakistan announced a timetable for the return to civilian rule.
REALITY : In the new “election” scheduled for late December 1971, a majority of seats won by the Awami League in the December, 1970 election was declared invalid because the holders were charged with treason against the Government of Pakistan. John E. Woodruff of the Baltimore Sun reported from Gopalganj, East Bengal on November 12, that of the 78 Natioanl Assembly seats that were to be at stake “only about 20 will probably be decided in voting contests”.
A coalition of six right-wing splinter groups was planning to divide among itself all of the remaining seats by uniting on the candidacy of one man in each district who would then run unopposed.
KISSINGER CLAIM #3 : Although Dr. Malic did not have the fear-inspiring repatation of his predecessor, he possessed few qualifications for holding office in a democratic society : Dr. Malik, a) had never held an elected office in his life, b) was hand-chosen by Yahya Khan, c) was governing East Bengal under martial law and d) was denounced by his own daughter as a traitor to his Bengali countrymen.
KISSINGER CLAIM #4 : The Government of Pakistan announced a declaration of amnesty.
REALITY : In the continuing atmosphere of terror the announcement of amnesty was an empty gesture which inspired few, if any, refugees to return and contributed nothing toward easing the tensions inside East Bengal. Pakistan Army soldiers did not cease burning villages and committing the innumerable atrocities which by now have been exhaustively documented by the world press.
KISSINGER CLAIM #5 : The Government of Pakistan was willing to talk to Bangladesh representatives “even if there might have been some dispute about who they were”.
REALITY : The Government of Pakistan, despite what now seems to have been considerable U.S. prodding, at no point agreed to negotiate with any Bangladesh government representatives. Although Dr. Kissinger first notes in his briefing that the Government of Pakistan “accepted” the U.S. suggested negotiations with Bangladesh representatives, he later qualifies that by saying that the Government of Pakistan agreed to “talk only to those Bangladesh people who were not charged with any particular crime”. By this definition all of the Bangladesh Government leaders, including Syed Nazrul Islam, the acting president and Tajuddin Ahmed, the prime minister, would be excluded.
Later in the briefing Kissinger contradicts all of this by noting : “we did not get the agreement of the Government of Pakistan…I am just saying what we were trying to do”.
KISSINGER CLAIM #6 : The Government of Pakistan allowed the U.S. to establish contact with Mujibur by talking to his defense attorney.
REALITY : Rather than a concrete accomplishment of U.S. diplomacy this point indicates a resounding failure.
After continuing to send military equipment to the Pakistan Army in order not to lose its leverage, and after strictly maintaining a posture of public silence in the face of untold barbarism, it is a sad commentary that United States representatives were still refused permission to confer with Mujib.
KISSINGER CLAIM #7 : The Government of Pakistan indicated that substantial political autonomy would be granted to East Bengal.
REALITY : This claim demonstrates not only a deep misunderstanding of the crisis but an inability to appreciate how a nation will respond to the kind of butcherey imposed by the Pakistan Army.
Kissinger places the blame for the breakdown of the President’s negotiation scheme on the Indian governmemt which “wanted things so rapidly that it was no longer talking about political evolution but about political collapse”.
For so fine a master of realpolitick, it is surprising that Kissinger did not realize that the collapse of Pakistan was already sealed when the Army unleashed it fury against its own people.
Dr. Kissinger’s failure to understand this in April or May can perhaps be explained as human shortcoming ; his refusal to visit the refugee camps during his trip to India in June at a time when 4 million refugees had already crossed the border, demonstrates a more serious recalcitrance ; but his continuing to respond in the same fashion after eight months when no signs of the abatement of Pakistan terror were forthcoming and after repeated Congressional and public warnings, is entirely inexcusable.
Up until General Yahya Khan unilaterally ended the negotiations with Mujib last March an agreement between the East and the West on the basis of autonomy could still have been reached.
But once the troops moved, once the army was released to begin its work of destruction and the genocide began, all hopes of a united Pakistan were crushed.
After March 25, there was never any doubt that independence and not autonomy was the issue.
PRESS COMMENTS
December 11 :
New York Times (Anthony Lewis)
…Mr. Nixon is a committed supporter of Pakistan. The exten of that commitment, if anyone doubted it, was made clear when in receiving a new Pakistani Ambassador he publicly welcomed “the efforts of President Yahya Khan to move to reduce tensions in the subcontinent”. That of a men whose forces in the last eight months have cold-bloodedly murdered thousands of innocent civilians and forced millions to flee because of their race—the most savage pogrom the world has seen in many years.
Among those who know or care about the Indian subcontinent, American policy has evoked widespread incredulity. That may rest on moral grounds, as in the case of a former American official in Pakistan who wrote Mr. Nixon to say that he could not square the policy with “my life as an American”. Or the reaction may be as hard-boiled as that of The Economist of London, which in an article highly critical of India said, “It is a mystery why the Americans should have chosen to climb so ostentatiously on board the sinking Pakistani ship”.
The President must have recognized that his policy had gone to a self-defeating extreme when he sent a White House aide cut to explain it all to the press. There was a defensive tone to what this unidentified man said. We still thought India was a great democracy, he said, and a stanch friend. But she had precipitately broken up secret American efforts to bring President Yahya to a political settlement with the Bengali rebels—efforts that had been near success.
Is it conceivable that the White House official believed that explanation as he gave it? Sincerity must be assumed, but it would really be worrisome if a serious man believed such a fantasy as the idea of an imminent political agreement being aborted by India…Why did Mr. Nixon react so intemperately, so emotionally on the side of Pakistan when hostilities began?
The emotion suggests that the President felt himself involved—and injured—on a very personal level. It is well known that Mr. Nixon has long liked and respected Yahya Khan. On the other hand, he is said to have found Mrs. Indira Gandhi cold and didctic. In the words of one close observer, “This was a matter of personal chemistry”…..
December 17 :
Wall Street Journal
…But, according to some experts familiar with Pakistani politics, this Kissinger version overstates whatever chances of success the White House ever had…
That’s because Pakistani’s military leaders, to put it mildly, aren’t men of great political sophistication or flexibility. They are basically soldiers, schooled in British military traditins (some retained from Victorian days) ; they are often personally engaging yet unable to grasp some modern political truths. They viewed suppression of the Bengalis as a military necessity ; letting the Easterners gain independence would divide Moslem Pakistan just as its big Hindu neighbor was rearming with new Soviet weapons. This feeling was compounded by a West Pakistani disdain for East Pakistanis on racial grounds. The Western Punjabis tend to look upon the Eastern Bengalis as inferior begings ; “wogs” is a deregatory term commonly used.
Thus, when the Bengalis tried to exercise political power, General Yahya replied “with a whiff of grapeshot”, as one expert puts it, in hopes of cowing the upstarts. It failed, as most outsiders predicted. West Pakistan’s 70,000 troops in the East, at the other end of a long ocean supply line, were no match for the 75 million hostile people they tried to rule. This imbalance tipped even more as India, for its own reasons, became increasingly involved in aiding Bengali guerrillas and finally entered the war openly.
State Department and other analysts found this course of events highly predictable as long ago as last spring, when General Yahya first chose force rather than compromise to resolve his problems with East Pakistan. They concluded then that only major changes in the general’s policies could prevent Pakistan’s eventual dismemberment—and on Indian terms.
Thus, many favored telling Pakistan’s rulers in clear terms that American aid and political support would cease unless they softened their martial ways. These analysts felt that a subtle approach would fail, leading to what they now see as a major foreign-policy setback for the U.S….
The Courier Journal (Editorial)
Americans, because “we know better”, are sometimes moved to laughter when confronted by that unrelenting Communist propaganda line that U.S. foreign policy is imperialistic. Yet it’s no laughing matter when the U.S. appears once more to be resorting to gunboat diplomacy, that stock-in-trade of the 19th century British empire-bulders.
How else are we to characterize the decision to send a naval force, headed by the nuclear-powered aircraft-carrier Enaterprise, into the Bay of Bengal than as a heavy-handed attempt to put pressure on India? There have been official hints that its mission might be to evacuate American citizens in beleaguered East Pakiatan, but those have deceived noone. Why send a whole fleet, complete with 2,000 Marines, to rescue less than 200 people, when a plane would be allowed in to do the same job with much less fuss?…
Some restraint! It’s beginning to look as though, having sat on its hands for nearly a year while the Pakistani crisis was slowly rising to the boiling point, the Administration is now flailing around in all directions trying to look as though it’s doing something useful. Its demand for another Security Council meeting last weekened, for instance, even though there were no indications that anyone had come up with a resolution that would avoid the veto, annoyed many of our friends around the world, who felt the U.S. was simply using the United Nations for its own political purposes.
What is especially disturbing is that President Nixon doesn’t seem to be pursuing any coherent policy in South Asia, but is merely stumbling from one blunder to the next. One can just hope he’s aware of the possible consequences of following the “let’s send the fleet and show the flag” line. The Victorian imperialists were prepared to shoot it out, if necessary. In this situation Mr. Nixon, we pray, is not.
December 19 :
Chicago Tribune (Clayton Fritchey)
…The administration’s preference or authoritarian Pakistan over democratic India is, of course, only the latest manifestation of this chronic tendency to preach “self-determination” but practice aid and comfort to those who are bent on destroying it.
Nixon didn’t invent the policy. He is mostly carrying on where his predecessors left off, but his record, perhaps, is more spectacular, for 1971 has been a notble year for militarists allied with the United States. They have, forinstance, recently stamped out the last vestiges of democratic government, not only in Pakistan, but also Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Greece. And not a cross word from Washington.
The Nixon policy vis-a-vis India and Pakistan is almost incomprehenisble, for it is lacking in pragmatism as well as in principle. It can’t even be justified on the grounds of self-interest, since it is all too plain that we have bet on a loser, while needlessly alien ating the winner.
It could be argued that some years ago, at the height of the cold war, the U.S. patronage of the Pakistani generals made at least a little sense, in that they played ball with us in our secret activities against the Communist world. Since then, though, Pakistan has allied itself with Communist China, and now, faced with defeat and dismenberment, it has little choice but to rely even more on Peking…
Washington Post
…Several U.S. officials privately question Kissinger’s arguments that the administration was working effectively for a plausible political solution.
One such official has characterized the administration’s mediation attempts as “desultory” and devoid of any real effort to persuade Yahya Khan to negotiate a political settlement.
According to this official, the White House ignored warnings that a war was imminent until it was too late. At that point, he said, the administration exploded in anger at the Indians and sought to penalize their belligerence. Focusing on key elements in Kissinger’ December 7 exposition, another U.S. official centends that they were either put forth deceptively or distorted deliberately in order to justify the administration’s claim to have striven to prevent war. The official points out, for example, that Kissinger accurately reported that Yahya Khan favored the return of East Pakistan to civilian rule by the end of December. But what Kissinger neglected to say, this official asserts, is that Yahya intended to install an East Pakistani government of local politicians responsive to his orders.
According to this source, such an approach would by no means have appeased the East Pakistani dissidents but would, on the contrary, have aggravated the crisis in the region.
Kissinger elsewhere in his December 7 statement claimed that Yahya had agreed to allow U.S. diplomats in Pakistan to talk with Mujibur’s defense attorney. Again, another American official here asserts, that claim in not entirely accurate.
As this U.S. official tells it, Ambassador Farland initially received permission from Yahya to see Mujibur’s attorney after learning that the lawyer was seeking to speak to him. But soon afterward, the official here says, Yahya retracted his authorization on the grounds that the lawyer had changed his mind. Another U.S. official here points to Kissinger’s claim that Yahya had agreed to an “amnesty” for all refugees as a misleading statement that did not really reflect the situation on the ground.
Yahya did proclaim an “amnesty” under which refugees returning to East Pakistan could retrieve their property by resgistering by September 15. But in practice, the official here explains, numbers of refugees who did return were either killed or arrested by the Pakistani army. Thus, Yahya’s proclamation was more rhetorical than real, this U.S. official submits…
December 20 :
New York Times (Anthony Lewis)
…The fact, as opposed to fantasy, is that unconditional American support prolonged Yahya Khan’s intransigeance. That is dramatically demonstrated in an account by Gavin Young, a British reported of measured temperament who spent the fourteen days of the war in Dacca and in close touch with A.A.K. Niazi and other Pakistani generals.
Young writes in the The Observer that the generals in the East were ready to ask for a cease-fire on December 10, and for a “peaceful transfer of power” to the elected Bengali leaders. They messaged Yahya, but he replied with the story that China and America were about to intervene militarily on Pakistan’s side. Niazi, says Young, threw up his hands and said happily, “We are off the hook”. That ended the hope of an early cease-fire.
The position of Sheikh Mujibur is another revealing matter. The United States never criticized his arrest, apparently believing that Yahya Khan had no political alternative. But now the former Commander-in-Chief of the Pakistan Air Force, Asghar Khan, a politician who is harly an Indian stooge, has said that Yahya should never arrested Mujibur and could have made a political settlement with him.
With the war over, the Nixon Administration camp up with an ingenious new ex post facto justification. It had prevented an all-out Indian assault in the West and a widening of the war, it said, by strongly warning the Indians and their Soviet supporters of possible retribution. That was said to be the import of the talk about cancelling Mr. Nixon’s trip to Moscow and of the movement of the aircraft carrier Enterprise to the Bay of Bengal.
Such boasting is inappropriate in the diplomacy of a great power even if the claims are convincing, and they are not. The Russians in this case have hardly been hotheads who needed to be cooled down by the United States. The best evidence is that, far from urging their Indian allies to war, they urged restraint ; certainly that is believed by British officials, who have no inordinate administration for the Soviets…The uncontrolled brutality has in fact been on the other side. Can anyone doubt that? Outside Dacca the Bengalis have found bodies of 200 of their leading intellectuals, bayonetted, choked or shot before the Indian troops arrived. That discovery has immediacy that arouses horror, but Pakistan forces had slaughtered many others starting last March. Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger have taken no public note of those horrors since they began. Will they face that reality now, or will they go on with their private fantasy of righteous American influence that no one else can see?
MALRAX’S OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT NIXON
In a testy open letter to President Nixon Andre Malraux, the quintessential literary man of action, condemned Pakistan, attacked American criticism of India and defended the Bangladesh cause he espoused three months ago. Malraux, who had offered then to fight for Bangladesh included in his letter published in the newspaper Le Figaro a conversation with Mr. Nixon and the late President de Gaulle, presumabley in early 1969.
He recalled that he had then told President Nixon “the United States is the first country which become the most powerful in the world without having tried to do so…Alexander (the Great) wanted to be Alexander, Caesar wanted to be Caesar, you did not at all want to become the masters of the world. But you cannot allow yourself the luxury of being (masters of the World) absentmindedly.
The long front page letter was devoted to what Malraux felt was present “absentminded” U.S. policy. “What I am saying today”, Malraux wrote, “I should not be saying, you should”. At a time when Mr. Nixon is trying to reestablish a dialogue with China, Malraux hoped that in “free Bengal’s” case the United States would not “wait 20 years before remembering that it was unfitting for the country of the Declaration of Independence to crush poverty trying to fight for its own independence”.
He took Mr. Nixon to task for not advising Pakistani President Yahya Khan to honor results of the East Bengal elections which gave now imprisoned Bengal leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman a stunning victory.
“I know your country a bit”. Malraux wrote and “it doesn’t like people to send the winners (or even losers) of elections to jail” or like “its allies to sweep 10 million refugees toward a neighboring country”, He ridiculed the presence of a U.A. naval squadron in the Bay of Bengal. “When the most powerful army in the world, yours, cannot beat the barefoot beggars of Vietnam, do you think that Islamabad’s army will retake a country driven wild by its independence and which is fighting 1100 miles away?”
EYE-WITNESS TO PAKISTANI TERROR
(Washington Post, December 12)
Two Italian Catholic missionaries, Fathers Anthonio Alberton, 50, and Francis Spagnolo, 58, spoke of a Pakistani reign of terror that began early last April and continued intermittently until the Pakistani forces were driven out this week. One of the priests estimated that 10,000 in Jessore and its eviorns had been slaughtered by the Pakistanis.
During the week of April 4 to April 10, Father Alberton related, the streets and houses of Jessore were full of bodies of local residents who had been executed in batches by the Pakistani soldiers and the “razakars” or collaborators.
The missionary, who also functioned as a physician in Fatima hospital here, said that early in the occupation “There were dead bodies everywhere and dogs eating the flesh of men—a terrible thing to see”. A fellow missionary, Father Mario Veronesi, was guuned down in front of his rectory by a Pakistani soldier with a Sten gun, Father Alberton said. In another incident, he said, Pakistani soldiers took several young women out of the Christian mission compound, where a group of 300 residents had sought refuge, and raped them, at gunpoint on the mission grounds.
Young Bengali women from Jessore were rounded up by the soldiers and kept naked inside the military compound to satisfy the garrison, he said.
Today I could count fewer than half a dozen women in this city with a normal population of about 50,000. Many were in hiding and just beginning to return, it was explained. Others had vanished during the occupation and there was no accounting for their disappearance.
In the nearby community of Dhikargacha, a group of townsmen stood beside the two blownup bridges over the Kabatachaki River and also spoke of the disappearance of the women.
Izzatali Munshi, a 52-years-old deliveryman with sunken craters in each cheek, stood on the bank and recounted the experience of the occupation.
“The Pakistani soldiers and the razakars lined people up and tied their hands. Then they would cut their jugular veins with knives and bayonets and throw them in there”, He pointed to the river. No young women would dare come out of hiding, nor the young boys, who would be killed. On market day and prayer day, people were too frightened to come out”.
BANGLADESH RECONSTRUCTIOIN ERA BEGINS
London Times : Dacca, December 17
The Bangladesh Government has begun work on a new constitution and new elections to be held in the middle of next year. The “war cabinet” of five, headed by the acting President, Mr. Nazrul Islam, has set to work as a postwar government of reconstruction. The predominant mood, as Bangladesh becomes a reality, is that a new era is beginning for 75 million Bengalis who have already lost an estimated million dead to achieve the independence of their country. Sources close to the Bangladesh Government say that their immediate problems are :
1. The release from detention in Pakistan of the father of the nation, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
2. The repatriation of some 400,000 Bengalis in Pakistan in exchange for about two million Pakistanis and non-Bengalis in Bangladesh.
3. The cases of hundred who willingly or under duress have collaborated with the Pakistan Army in the past eight months. The Government will examine each case individually before any action is taken.
The Government proposes to bargain for the release of Sheikh Mujib in exchange for the Pakistan Army officers and civilians who have surrendered. The war has left damage and destruction everywhere and the Ministers are in the unenviable position of beginning almost entirely from scratch. Except for the aid and loans so far promised by India, almost everything from rice to consumer goods, to iron and stell, will have to be imported.
A skeleton central administration has been set up Dacca with a dozen experienced civil servants under Mr. Ruhul Quddus. He was accused of treason, with Sheikh Mujib, in the “Agartala conspiracy” in 1968 and was arrested with him. After his release he was barred from rejoining the civil service.
During the past eight months the collective leadership of the government in exile has worked well, and the acting Prime Minister, Mr. Tajuddin Ahmed, has emerged with the reputation of a man who kept the various factions together. There are now demands for a national coalition Government.
NEWS IN BRIEF
Bangladesh Prime Minister Tajuddin Ahmed in a radio broadcast appealed to the nation not to take revenge on non-Bengali citizens. The Prime Minister warned the citizens “to avoid the temptation of taking the law into their own hands”. He said, “if a single citizen of Bangladesh is harmed or hurt because of his language or race it would be a betrayal of the ideals of the founder of the nation and the flag of free Bangladesh”.
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U.S. Congressman Paul N. McCloskey and Henry Helstoski, in two separate resclutions introduced on Decemeber 9, have urged the United States Government to extend full diplomatic recognition to the Republic of Bangladesh as a “free and independent nation” by following American “anti-colonial heritage”.
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Bangladesh Government has banned four political parties in Bangladesh. These parties are : the Muslim League, the Jamat-e-Islami, the Nizam-e-Islam, and the the People’s Democratic Party. No political party based on religion will be allowed in the secular Bangladesh.
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At a press conference in Washington, D.C. the Ambassador from Bangladesh, M.R. Siddiqui, appealed to the U.S. and other nations to extend recognition to Bangladesh, “a step forward in restoring peace, stability and normalcy in the strife-torn region”. We hope that even those countries which could not support our cause in the past will look to the future and read just their policies to the realities of the situation”.
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Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s wife and two daughters were rescued in Dacca from Pakistan troops. Sheikh Mujib’s wife said that they had been kept under arrest without proper food and without money. They were not permitted to meet anybody nor had they been permitted to go out. They had been kept under house arrest since March 25.
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DACCA DIARY II (Wall Street Journal, December 20) : Friday, December 17—Chat with the hotel (Intercontinental) laundry bookkeeper who has emerged as a Mukti police inspector. Turns out he had been Mukti cell leader for Intercontinental Hotel staff during past nine months. He had devised an under-clothing code. If meant four terrorist acts had been successfully completed. Two under-shirts meant two successes and four under-shirts menat only one terrorist success. Nothing seems incredible here any more.
Saturday, December 18 : …Dacca appears to be calming down gradually. Some men are taking their wives and children for the first stroll in Bangladesh. One Bengali says his three-year old son, Aupoo, hasn’t been taken out in public for months. The reason is that last March, during the brief period before the Pakistani army cracked down and imposed a reign of terror on the East, the child learned to shout “Joi Bangla”. But for the past nine months the parents feared that the child might shout “Joi Bangla” in public and thus get the family killed. Today both father and son are on the streets, yelling “Joi Bangla!”
oooo
Ellen Connett, 28, an American volunteer of Operation Omega, who returned home after two months captivity in Pakistani prison said that the Bengali population has gone through “terror beyond imagination” during the army occupation. Mrs. Connett and a British friend, Gordon Slaven, 20, were relieased from prison when Bengali guerrillas and Indian army forces entered the border town of Jessore. They had been imprisoned on October 9 after being captured by Pakistani soldiers in the town of Simulia.
NEWS FROM LACAL GROUPS
Bangladesh Association of Michigan State University contacted various news media to give adequate coverage to the root cause of the crisis in South Asia. Rabiul Islam Tarafdar, President of the association, along with some Americans sympathetic to the Bangladesh cause appeared in an hour-long radio discussion to present the war in the subcontinent in proper perspective. A general meeting of the students and faculty members of the University condemned the partisan policy of the Nixon administration and appealed for a realistic policy in the South Asia.
Tallahassee, Florida :
Joyotpaul Chaudhuri reports : Last summer we formed a Bangladesh Relief Committee in Tallahassee and this fall we formed a Bangladesh Relief Committee of Florida State University. Members of the two organizations have worked very hard in the following areas :
1. Summer petitions to U.S. Congressmen regarding military supplies to Pakistan.
2. An intense fund drive on campus of Florida State University.
3. Contacting churches and service organizations and urging them on to have their own drives fro OXFAM or CARE.
4. Urging high school groups to have their drives at local shopping centers.
Issued by
BANGLADESH DEFENSE LEAGUE
5245 South Kenwood Avenue,
Chicago, Illinois. 60615
Editorial Office : 500 Paragon Mills #B-7, Nashville, TN 37211 Phone : (615) 833-2064