Pak atrocities shown on American TV
NEW DELHI Aug. 1.–Millions of Americans watched on television on Thursday a programme on Pakistan’s brutal campaign of terror in Bangladesh, reports UNI.
The programme was captioned a Question of Consience and was shown at prime time following the evening news broadcast.
Billed as an editorial it opened with the narrator flashing pictures of Bangladesh refugees huddled together in rows of prefabricated pipes on the Indian side of the border.
The editorial was punctuated with quotations from the world Press as well as the World Bank report.
The programme said the campaign of terror in Bangladesh could be termed genocide by the Pakistani army to crush a movement for political independence.
It then proceeded to quote a News week correspondent writing: “I have seen babies shot, men with their backs whipped raw. I have seen people literally struck dumb by the horror of seeing their children murdered or their daughters dragged off into sexual slavery.”
The words of a New York Times reporter were: “On orders…… (the army) has killed students, intellectuals, professors, engineers, doctors, whether they were directly involved in the nationalist movement or not.”
Over the programme, a World Bank Official describes thus a town he visited: “The population was down from 40,000 to 5,000. Eighty percent of the houses, shops, banks and buildings were totally destroyed. It was like the morning after a nuclear attack.”
“Officials claim we have suspended military aid to Pakistan. The facts are, however, that millions of dollars worth of arms orders, purchased before the insurrection, are right now being filled in this country. And even more incredible, the Nixon Administration is asking the same amount of foreign aid for Pakistan that it requested before the present horror design.”
AP adds: The Washington Post said in an editorial yesterday in Pakistan, the world is witnessing a holocaust unmatched since Hitler.
“Witnessing” is the operative word, the paper said. While hundreds of thousands have died and millions have fled, the world has done little but look on in paralysed horror, sighing for the victims and offering the survivor among them alms but taking no effective measures to ameliorate even the incontrovertibly international aspect of the tragedy, that forced flight of terrorised East Bengalis to India.
It said after the catastrophe of the Nigerian civil war, one might have hoped the international community would have been prepared-in mental outlook, any way—to prevent a repetition of it. But no. The great nations with an interest in the sub-continent have been unwilling to halt their separate routine quests for national advantage merely for the sake of reducing the toll of human misery.
The Post criticised the major powers, particularly those who did not hesitate to grant aids to Pakistan even after the genocide.
The Soviet Union “is perhaps least to blame.” it said, “for the Russian did not have an important position in Pakistan and they have used East Bengal’s agony only to consolidate their position in India.”
The Chinese, on the other hand, “have adopted a policy of total craven expediency.” It said. “They have rejected the Bengalis cause of popular Government and fight against tyranny and they have encouraged the wrath of the martial law regime against the freedom seeking East Bengalis, and have gone even to the point of offering to defend Pakistan against outside (meaning Indian) intervention.”
Reference: Hindustan Standard 02.08.1971