বাংলাদেশ আন্দোলন সম্পর্কিত বিবিধ প্রতিবেদন
এপ্রিল – ডিসেম্বর, ১৯৭১
বিবিসি, লন্ডন
1. AID TO PAKISTAN
24 Hours’
Yesterday the principals of the British Relief Organisation War on Want met to discuss the need for aid in East Pakistan. Ian McDonal the Coordinator between the agencies which comprise War on Want, including Christian Aid and Oxfam, was interviewed on BBC television. He said “We have got in the worst hit cyclone areas one and half million people who are depending on a regular supply of food grains coming in to the area to be able to feed them throughout this year while they put in another crop. Secondly they could only get that crop in provided they could be supplied with seeds, provided they could be provided with, on the mechanization side, fuel and tractors. The war in East Pakistan is going to interrupt these supplies and prevent this cultivation going on.” He went on to say that the people in the cyclone areas are not going to be able to get their crops in and they are not going to be able to get their food. He then said we then look at the rest of East Pakistan and find that they are dependent on imported foods because of the lack of food grains from the cyclone hit areas which were destroyed by the cyclone, and the food grain has stuck at Chittagong and no more has been coming in for a month. When asked what was the result of the meeting of the combined charities Mr. McDonald said “What we are attempting to do now is to stir up enough preparation so that before the situation gets out of hand completely we have personnel and materials ready to go in. We cannot persuade the’ Pakistan Government to let us in against their will but we can ask the British Government to lead a World Food Programme, to enable a steady flow of supplies to get into this area.
2. MICHAEL STEWART ON PAKISTAN
10th April, 1971
Edited by Evan Charlton
Mr. Michael Stewart, Foreign Secretary in Britain’s last Socialist Government has given views on the current situation in Pakistan.
Mr. Michael Stewart was interviewed on the BBC TV current affairs programme Twenty-Four Hours by Kenneth Allsop.
Mr. Stewart was asked if he saw any direct comparison between the Biafran situation and the events in East Pakistan. He said that the political situation is very different. But of course in both cases we’re faced with a terrible human tragedy. He hoped that the British Government and indeed all Commonwealth Governments will do whatever they can to get relief going, will be prepared to give and to help organise it If there are difficulties between the Red Cross and Relief Organizations and the Pakistan Government, the British Government may be able to help to sort them out as they did once when there were difficulties between the Red Cross and the Nigerian Government.
Mr. Stewart was asked if the British Government could realistically take this kind of action. He replied that it could in the relief field. It was important that they should lay chief emphasis on the fact that they simply want to help to avoid human suffering rather then attempt to dictate a political answer to Pakistan’s troubles.
Mr. Stewart accepted that there might be a risk of being accused of intervening, interfering in another country’s internal affairs and said it was prudent to take account of this. One did not want by an ill-judged action or statement to embitter feeling and possibly make relief work more difficult. But he thought that the British Government could make it quite clear that what it is concerned with is to and suffering and try to do so through an all-Commonwealth framework, so that it would not be the British Government trying to tell Pakistan how it ought to run its affairs but the Commonwealth, as friends of all the people of Pakistan, offering their good offices and goodwill.
Mr. Stewart said that he feared that the chances of reconciliation between East and West Pakistan seem terribly small. But wondered if widening the horizon a little, the peoples and Governments of Pakistan, East and west, and of India, despite all the difficulties could not look at the common needs of the whole sub-continent. Mr. Stewart wondered whether, taking into consideration the danger of great power involvement and the natural catastrophe of the recent cyclone and the human catastrophe of civil war, they could not see how great their need is to try to act together.
Asked if he thought secession was inevitable, Mr. Stewart did not like to use that word but did find it difficult to see how there could be reconciliation, ne was asked to what extent British and Western interests were threatened by the civil war situation and the threat of a split Pakistan. He replied that the split would be a great tragedy because it would weaken the power of the Government to cope with what are the real problems of Pakistan: poverty and the attempt to raise the standards of life. Interfered with this makes the task of coping with these problems more difficult. Britain’s overwhelming interest lies in a prosperous Pakistan.
Asked what the long term possibilities of the situation were, he said that the worst might be the enforcement of united Pakistan but with no goodwill and constant bitterness and friction. Nevertheless he ended the interview on a note of hope, saying that human beings sometimes do rise to the occasion when they are faced with the worst possible consequences. It was possible that a measure of better understanding, not only between East and West Pakistan but between Pakistan and India might arise.
3. 16th April, 1971
MR. ZAKARIA CHOWDHURY ON 24 HOURS’
Viewers of the BBC television current affairs programme 24 Hours last night watched an interview with Mr. Zakaria Choudhury who describes himself as the official emissary of the Provisional Government of Bangladesh.
Mr Choudhury was asked what his reaction was to the news reports that resistance to the West Pakistan army in East Bengal is collapsing. He denied that this was the case, and claimed that the countryside in three quarters of East Bengal was under the control of the resistance forces. He said that though the army was in control of most of the towns, in the rural areas they would be operating in very difficult terrain, and he predicted that with the coming of the monsoon the West Pakistan troops would be waterlogged in their cantonments.
On the question of recognition for the Provisional Government Mr. Chaudhury said that he hoped that governments would gradually come to believe in their cause. He said that they had no choice but to fight whether or not they were supplied with arms from outside. The interviewer asked him how he could justify continued fighting when it would cause so much suffering, and he said that the East Pakistanis had not wanted Pakistan to break up but the war had been forced on them.
4. 17th April, 1971
PAKISTAN IN THE WEEKLIES
by Mark Tully
The leftwing weekly, the New Statesman, has a front page article about East Pakistan. The New Statesman says that the people of East Pakistan made their wishes known by voting so solidly for the Awami League in the recent elections. Nevertheless the New Statesman does not hold out any hope of international support rallying to the people of East Pakistan. The New Statesman thinks that economically East Pakistan would be more viable as an independent unit and that in the end it will become independent because the federation of Pakistan is, in the New Statesman’s view an artificial structure.
The lead Article in the Spectator which represents a more rightwing view than the New Statesman is also about East Pakistan. The Spectator also believes that Pakistan is not a natural unified state. It feels that West Pakistan’s quarrel with India has exacerbated the strains between the two wings, and that under President Ayub Khan the West wing neglected East Pakistan. The Spectator thinks that the army will establish some form of control over East Pakistan but it fears that this control might degenerate into tyranny. In the end the Spectator says the army will leave East Bengal and East and west Bengal will unite. In the meantime the Spectator would like Britain to declare its outrage at the army’s actions and stop all aid until the army starts relief operations. The Spectator fears that Britain will not take this stand.
In the Economist there is a long article about the role of the big powers in Asia. The Economist points out the reasons for Russian and Chinese interest in Asia, and says that the conflict between the interests are partly responsible for the unrest in many Asian countries. The Economist thinks that the Western Powers should take a greater interest in Asia and should do more to support those countries where democratic rule of one sort or another is still maintained.
There is also an article in the Economist specifically about Pakistan. The Economist thinks that the resistance movement has lost the struggle for the towns. It says that other countries are unlikely to recognize the provisional government of Bangladesh which is reported to have been set up because it is not firmly in control of any territory. The Economist fears that border incident would lead to a flare up between India and Pakistan. The only way to bring pressure on President Yahya Khan, the Economist says, is by refusing his current requests for aid until he stop the military action. The Economist ends by warning that shortage of food, the large number of casualties and even possibly more floods could lead to a terrible tragedy unless some form of normalcy returns to East Pakistan quickly.
5. 17th April, 1971
OUTSIDE INTERESTS IN PAKISTAN
Nicholas Carroll (OC)
The Pakistan press and the Pakistan Government have alleged that recent events in East Pakistan have been misreported and other countries have been interfering with the internal affairs of East Pakistan. Nicholas Carroll of the Sunday Times’ discusses these allegations:
From the moment the Government of Pakistan decided to use its army to restore its control over East Pakistan, a rigorous press censorship was imposed throughout Pakistan. East and West. And so journalists of all nations, and especially Indian and British, had to use their initiative to find out as best as they could what was going on. As it happened, the Pakistani authorities were not able to impose a total border control along the international frontier between West and East Bengal; and because of this many reporters managed to get into East Bengal.
In consequence the world did get some kind of an independent picture of events. It was a distressing picture, and on the basis of it there has been an outcry of protest against the Pakistan military regime in newspaper editorials everywhere, and no more so than in Indian and British newspapers.
There is probably nothing more sensitive to criticism than a dictatorial leadership using armed force in a violent and secretive way to impose order on a rebellious part of its population. To judge from the Pakistani press, as well as from official spokesmen’s statements, foreign criticisms have been going home. One sign of this has been some of the unrealistic accusations that have appeared of foreign governmental intervention in Pakistan’s internal affairs, with the main charges being directed at India.
Now if there is one thing the Indian central government does not want, it is to get involved directly in the tragedy of East Bengal. Mrs. Gandhi’s new government has too many problems of its own to need to look for additional ones on the other side of India’s frontiers. Of course a distinct line must be drawn here between official Government policy on the one hand, and on the other, natural human sympathy for widespread human sufferings by people of their own kind on their doorstep.
Even members of the central government, Mrs. Gandhi herself, and particularly Mr. Swaran Singh, the External Affairs Minister, have spoken out strongly. But that is a very different matter from actually intervening in Pakistani actions. It should be obvious to anyone that Indian’s best interests lie in a peaceful Pakistan, with its two wings co-operating normally.
This goes, too. for the Western powers. The British government’s reaction has been very muted so far. The Foreign Secretary has leant over backwards in the House of Commons to make it plain. Britain accepts that the present tragedy is essentially an internal affair of Pakistan while expressing hopes of reconciliation. In any case to intervene in any way on behalf of East Bengali nationalism would not make sense. How could it possibly help the Bengalis? How could Britain benefit from it?
In elementary humanitarian terms, in economic terms, in any way conceivable, it is obvious that a peaceful united Pakistan is in Britain’s as well as the world’s interest.
The time for recriminations is over. Britain, like the Indian Government, wants to see an end of the military action and the resumption of some kind of dialogue between Pakistan’s military rulers and the representatives of the people of East Ban gal, whoever they may in the end turn out to be.
6. 11th May 1971
HOME ON PAKISTAN
by Andrew Walker
The British Foreign Secretary, Sir Alec Douglas Home, has expressed the hope that the Pakistan government will allow a team of international experts to see what relief is needed in East Pakistan. Here is Andrew Walker, BBC Commonwealth Correspondent.
Sir Alec was speaking in Parliament, and the questions which followed his statement showed the concern felt by members of all parties over what one of them called a human tragedy which has few precedents in recent history. He said he and the American Secretary of State, Mr. Rogers, had sent a joint message to the United Nations Secretary General U Thant suggesting that he should renew his offer of international aid. U Thant was in touch with the Pakistan government and (Sir Alec went on) I hope they will be ready to allow a team of experts to make an objective appraisal of what is needed and that they will be prepared to accept assistance, if that is judged to be needed, on an international basis. He repeated that Britain was prepared to take part in any international relief effort which it would be best to organise through the United Nation.
The Foreign Secretary’s argument was that because of the disruption of communications there might well be food shortages in East Pakistan later this year. But in addition there was the problem of the refugees who had poured across the border into India. The latest estimate is that the influx is now at the rate of thirty thousand people a day. British relief organizations are flying supplies out to them, and Sir Alec announced a cash grant to help with the transport of these supplies.
The Labor Party’s spokesman on foreign affairs, Mr. Dennis Healey expressed concern that there should be a political settlement in Pakistan well, Sir Alec replied, we are in constant touch with the President of Pakistan. But this must be for the people of the country. Nobody can dictate it from outside.
7. BURMESE SECTION
6th June, 1971
PAKISTAN PRESS ROUNDUP
by Basil Clarke (S)
Today in Britain the Sunday newspapers present vivid evidence of the increasing concern that is being felt about the refugees from East Pakistan. Three of the leading Sunday newspapers all headline the plight of the refugees. The Observer calls it the ‘Agony of Bengal’ the Sunday Times says that the refugees ‘may die in millions’; while the Sunday Telegraph headlines the action being taken by Mr. Gandhi to create a ‘huge dispersal plan’.
The evidence of British public concern about the situation is also reflected in the editorials.
The Sunday Times splits the problem of the refugees into two parts. First how to ensure adequate supplies to meet their immediate needs and second how to bring about conditions in East Pakistan which will make it possible for the refugees to return there safely. To meet the needs of the refugees the Sunday Times says there must be an international relief effort. It suggests that the UN High Commission for Refugees should co-ordinate and administer relief.
But what of the wider problem? How are the refugees to be sent home safely? The Sunday Times says there is an argument for withholding foreign economic assistance from Pakistan until the Pakistan Government is willing to withdraw the West Pakistan Army from East Pakistan and give a measure of autonomy to the Eastern province. The paper admits that this is using aid for political purposes.
The solutions proposed by the editorial in the Observer bear some similarity to those put forward by the Sunday Times but ascribe a bigger role to the United Nations. The Observer says that two complementary courses of action are possible. First Pakistan should be warned that her foreign aid might be suspended until it is agreed by a United Nations Observer that it is safe for the refugees to return home. Second the paper proposes that the Security Council should adopt a resolution allowing a UN mission to move between Pakistan, India and Bangladesh to negotiate between them as the Jarring Mission has done in the Middle East. The Observer stresses that its solution is not intended to solve the question of East Bengal’s political future but only ‘to get the four million refugees back and to defuse the India Pakistan tension’.
8. 16th July, 1971
THE WEEKLIES ON PAKISTAN
Edited by William Crawley
The New Statesmen this week prints an article by Mr. Reg Prentice, who was a member of the four-man British Parliamentary delegation which recently visited both Pakistan and India to study the present crisis. Mr. Prentice said that the delegation had an assurance from President Yahya Khan that they could go where they liked, and that nowhere had been refused them. However they found that they were mostly listening to the official point of view and they found their informants reluctant to answer questions. They had seen the symptoms of a country in the grip of fear. The reason for this fear, Mr. Prentice says, was apparent from the number of confidential statements made to members of the delegation by a wide variety of people. Such confidences showed, Mr. Prentice writes, that the army had committed widespread violence and killing in March and April, and that it still continued. The economic and social life of the country is at a very low ebb, writes Mr. Prentice. Most of the workers, who have fled to the villages, are not yet going back to the towns.
The delegation were originally told by the Pakistan authorities that no refugees had fled to India, but during their visit the authorities admitted that there were some. The Pakistani authorities claimed that the maximum number of refugees was 1.2 million, and said that they were being prevented from returning home by the Indians. However Mr. Prentice said that they could not accept the Pakistani version when they saw the reality of the refugee situation on the Indian side of the border. They had spent two days visiting the refugee camps and had questioned the refugees at random. The refugees had said that they wanted to return but only when it was safe to do so. Mr. Prentice writes of the enormous problem of providing for the refugees, and asks how long it will be before serious tensions develop between the refugees and the local population. Mr. Prentice says that further tragedy for both India and Pakistan can only be prevented by a political settlement acceptable to the people of East Bengal.
The Economist correspondent in India examines the pressures that are building up in the Indian Prime Minister Mrs. Gandhi to take action in East Pakistan. The Bangladesh self styled government in exile complains it is not getting enough arms from India. Those Indians who are demanding the recognition of Bangladesh are not satisfied with the present scale of aid to the guerrillas, says the Economist correspondent. He says that political parties have been cooperative in moderating their statements, and there has so far been no communal trouble except in Assam, but there is serious danger of communal rioting arising out of the smallest incident. There is also wild talk, the correspondent says, of a war being cheaper than feeding millions of refugees. The Indian government has not taken part in such talk, but seems undecided as to what they should do. The Economist says that even the policy of giving more help to the guerrillas could jeopardize the goodwill India has earned by taking on the refugee problem.
9. THE PRESS ON THE INDO-PAKISTAN WAR
5th December 1971
by Mark Tully
The fighting between India and Pakistan is very widely in all today’s papers. There are on the spot reports, analyses, features and editorials. In its editorial, the Sunday Times says that there is not much point in trying to identify who to blame for the war. The paper fears that the most likely outcome of the war is disintegration, chaos and enormous suffering. The best hope the Sunday Times thinks, would be for Pakistan to evolve with Sheikh Mujib, a system of autonomy in East Pakistan which would allow the refugees start returning. This, the pepar says would mean that president Yahya Khan would have to hand over the presidency to someone else. But the fighting must be stopped first. The Sunday Times welcomes the fact that the security Council is discussing the conflict.
The Observer in its editorial calls the war infinitely sad. Even sadder, it says is the way in which the rest of the world has just watched the madness develop. The movement towards war started, according to The Observer, with the Pakistan Government’s attempt to impose a military solution on East Pakistan. The open involvement of the Indian Army in the fighting in East Pakistan started the change from a civil war into an international
The most sensible aim for international action, the Observer says, would be negotiations to restore the Federal unity of both halves of Pakistan with real homerule in the East. If this is not possible, then an East Pakistan independent of both India and Pakistan would be the next best. The paper suggests that as well as discussion at the Security Council about stopping the fighting, the international community should make a bigger contribution to support the refugees.
The Sunday Telegraph also feels that the best solution to the crisis would be a political compromise whereby East Pakistan became independent in fact, though not in name and it wonders whether the Great Powers in secret contact with each other might not be able to devise such a compromise. If diplomacy can do nothing, the Telegraph thinks the best solution would be a quick Indian victory in the East and a completely new start in the Gangetic Delta. But emphasizes that a diplomatic solution would be much more satisfactory. If the Great Powers cannot devise a diplomatic solution, the Telegraph believes that they should keep out of the contact and that they should not supply arms to either side.
Among the popular papers, the Sunday Mirror deplores the due fact that the rich countries have done so little to avert this crisis. But the paper says, the rich countries are powerless and quite unable to stop the war. Nevertheless the Sunday Mirror hopes that a quick solution can be found either through the United Nations or by China putting pressure on Pakistan to stop fighting. The News of the World and the Sunday Express both think that the British Government should offer to mediate because both India and Pakistan are members of the Common wealth.
In the Observer, there is also a long analysis of the background to the present fighting, by Cyril Dunn, who is the paper’s chief reporter on India and Pakistan. Dunn sees the rests of the trouble in the original partition of the sub-continent.
But Dunn does think, that if Kashmir had succeeded to Pakistan the two countries might have been able to live together in peace. He feels that it is difficult not to look somewhat sceptically at statements of intention by the Indian Government when fighting breaks out between India and Pakistan, but he agrees that the people of East Pakistan have good reasons for wanting to leave Pakistan. What Dunn fears is that if the present fighting continues and a new Muslim state is a eventually born, the Hindu refugees will not return and Bangladesh will not remain independent for long.
John Grigg writing in the Sunday Times says that it is most important to remember that the background to the fighting is the enormous burden the refugees have put on India. He believes that the financial cost of the refugees has been staggering and that the social tensions they have produced, almost unbearable. Grigg says that Mrs. Gandhi was most reluctant to make use of regular troops inside East Pakistan and that she only did so because she was convinced that the Great Powers could not or would not force President Yahya Khan to change his policies. He goes on to say that Mrs Ghandi now deserves the support of Britain.
There is also a long article in the Sunday Times by Anthony Mascarenhas who was until quite recently Visited India. Mascarenhas believes that India was reluctantly forced to the conclusion that war was the only solution to the refugee problem after the disappointing international support it received over the last eight months. India was, he thinks particularly disappointed by the failure of the American government to put pressure on President Yahya Khan. He quotes an Indian official as saying, “we went to America to ask for help and all we got were exhortations to patience and forbearance.” Mascarenhas says that one possibility the Indian government thought of was dispersing the Hindu refugees amongst other Indian states but the State governments were not willing to accept this because they did not feel that they could cope with this additional burden.
Mascarenhas says that India’s aims now are to establish an independent Bangladesh so that refugees can go back and to remove any chance of Pakistan over challenging India again.
Pakistan can only hope to gain territory in the West and use this as a bargaining counter. Mascarenhas says that although a war can only increase the economic problem of both countries, it is difficult to see how else the situation could have developed because of the Pakistan government’s determination to hold onto East Pakistan at any cost.
10. BRITISH PRESS REVIEW ON INDIA AND PAKISTAN
12th December, 1971
by Basil Clarke
In Britain today, the Sunday newspapers include four editorials about the war between India and Pakistan. The editorials are concerned with the future-what is going to happen now they all ask. Three of the newspapers, The Sunday Telegraph, The Sunday Times, and The people are concerned with the future in terms of how Bangladesh is to develop. While the Observer looks at the future in terms of the consequences of the war on the whole structure of foreign relations throughout the world.
The observer assumes that the Indian Army will soon complete the conquest of East Pakistan, and that when it has done so. it will install there a government of an independent Bangladesh. The only things that could prevent this, says The Observer, is the intervention of China or even more improbably, the United states and this the paper feels is very unlikely. The Observer says that however illegal India’s action in dismembering a state which is a fellow member of the United Nations, it has to be accepted that the starting point for any stable peace settlement must be self determination for the people of East Pakistan. This, the paper says, may bring a stable situation in the short term, but in the long term, its consequences for the rest of the world could be far reaching. The paper picks out three specific consequences. First the war has shown that the capacity of the great powers to influence events is severely limited. In fact, the war has highlighted the fact that Russia Chinese rivalry in Asia could emerge as the new cold war of the seventies. Secondly, says The Observer, India has shown like Israel did before, that it’s possible for a medium or small power to wage war successfully on its own, provided the great powers don’t interfere. Finally The Observer looks at the consequence of the war for the relationship between Russia and the United states.
The other three editorials are concerned with what is to happen in Bangladesh. Will Bangladesh become an Indian puppet state? asks the Sunday Times. How long will the Indian army have to stay there? What kind of political life can be reconstructed? The Sunday Times feels that all these questions must be answered, before there is any possibility of British recognition. But the answers to these questions will also raise new problems says The Sunday Times. For example if self determination was right for Bangladesh, then it is right for Kashmir as well. The Sunday Times also stresses the dangers of the situation for the relationship between America Russia and China. The paper says that although the liquidation of East Pakistan has rationalized geography, it will not be a stabilizing event, for the victory is not merely India’s but Russia’s. This means that even more than before, China is interested in the future of Bangladesh. Moreover the Americans will be anxious to recover from what the paper calls their pro- Pakistani declarations and maintain their influence in the area. Sunday Times concludes that although the great powers have kept their distances from the battlefield, the war has meant that a new area of great sensitivity has been exposed between Suez and Saigon.