THE BANGKOK POST, MAY 24, 1971
Editorial THE WORLD HANGS BACK
“If we can comprehend a situation in which every citizen of Bangkok and Thonburi was without food, a home, a job, and in desperate need of medical attention, we will have some idea of conditions applying to 2.6 million East Pakistanis turned into refugees by bitter fighting in their homeland. That figure is the number of East Pakistanis generally agreed to have crossed into India in the last seven weeks to escape the fighting. How- many other homeless people have chosen to stay in East Pakistan is something that can only be guessed at. And despite President Yahya Khan’s statement last Friday that conditions in East Pakistan have returned to normal and all refugees in India could now return, it is obvious that there is an urgent need for massive worldwide aid.
“Mrs. Gandhi complained bitterly last week that ‘no prosperous country’ has come to the aid of these refugees and that the task of caring for them has dangerously strained India is already taut resources. Even after her words are denuded of their political content it is obvious that there is considerable Justification for what she says. There has been no coordinated mobilization of aid for these refugees; it seems almost that the world has become so irritated, confused and apathetic about political and social upheavals on the Indian subcontinent that it no longer cares to listen or to help.
“There has been no spontaneous provision of aid such as we saw last year when a terrible cyclone devastated so much of East Pakistan. Hardship then was mitigated by an almost embarrassing overflow of outside assistance. But no Royal Marines have landed in the Bay of Bengal this time; no U.S. helicopters hover over the ground, dispensing sacks of rice. The world has stood back almost as if to say “let them fix it themselves this time”. But we cannot let this happen; in the name of humanity, we cannot allow cruelty of civil war to be compounded by international apathy, when there is so much good the world can do in East Pakistan now. Last week U.N. Secretary General U. Thant Shat made a plea for funds to help the refugees. His words should not have been necessary; that they were, shows how dangerously close we have come to forsaking the principle of helping our fellowmen. Thailand is not a rich country nor is it altogether poor. Surely we can start the ball rolling and certainly we have enough rice to spare right now. If we truly want to help the cause of peace in our troubled part of toe world, then feeding the hungry, tending the sick and housing the homeless of East Pakistan would be a fine way to start. If we can how ourselves to be above messy politics that for so long have hindered regional co-operation, then we will have done a service both for the Pakistani civilians and ourselves. At least, it behaves us to try”.