WASHINGTON DAILY NEWS-JUNE 30, 1971
HELPING TO KILL MOKE BENGALIS
The Administration’s decision to send more economic and military aid to the brutal, repressive regime in Pakistan is as shortsighted as it is inhumane.
The testimony before Congress, the State Department admitted its fear that shutting off the flow of arms to Pakistan would be resented “as sanctions and intrusion.”
What, we ask, is so bad about sanctions against mass murder and genocide? For that is exactly what the West Pakistan-dominated army committed against the helpless Bengalis of East Pakistan.
In its treacherous attack starting March 25, the Pakistani army slaughtered 200,000 Bengalis and sent six million refugees fleeing for their lives into India. It is morally unjustified to send more weapons to such a regime.
With its talent for justifying the unjustifiable, the State Department explains that halting economic aid would remove our “leverage” with Pakistan-although we have almost no leverage now.
Also, stopping our arms shipments would cause Pakistan to turn to other suppliers, like communist China. However, the department admits that China has never stopped furnishing weapons to Pakistan.
Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass, has called all this “doubletalk, incompetence, or both”-and he’s right.
Our partners in the International effort to prevent the Pakistani economy from collapsing are not as timid as the United States. The World Bank, Britain, Canada. Belgium and others favor withholding economic aid until the military regime reaches a political settlement with East Pakistan.
But not the United States.
Pakistan is. Of course, desperately poor and can use all the help it can get but the trouble with aid now is that it props up the government and helps it maintain the army of occupation in East Pakistan.
The Bengalis in the east voted overwhelmingly for home rule in the only, free election in Pakistan’s history. Instead they got the genocidal assault by the western army, which is still shamefully going on.
History suggested, however, that West Pakistan from 1,000 miles away cannot forever subjugate the Bengali people. What we are doing by sending arms to Pakistan is to make sure the Bengalis will remember that American weapons murdered them during the birth pangs of their beloved Bangladesh (Bengali nation).