Save Bangladesh evacuees UK newspapers demand
LONDON, JUNE 6. Newspapers here today united in demanding that Britain and the rest of the world act promptly to save the East Bengal refugees in India, says Reuter.
“The World has been slow to recognise the magnitude of the disaster taking shape in West Bengal”, the conservative “Sunday Telegraph Stated, “An epidemic of cholera has now been superimposed upon a situation in which millions of refugees were already enduring conditions of extreme distress and the conscience of the luckier nations in stirring at last.”
The newspaper went on “it is no longer acceptable for a civilized government merely to allot a sum of money for aid and then leave the work to the traditional relief agencies admirable as they are….. the time has come for the British Government to declare in powerful language this Country’s determination to do all in its power to mitigate the disaster.
PTI adds: The liberal “Guardian” in an editorial yesterday appealed to the United States and Britain “to ensure that president Yahya Khan does not get the stand-by credit he is asking for”.
The paper complained that the international response to India’s appeal for help came far too little and too late. “The problem now”, it says, is to ensure that those who need help must get it as soon as possible. The immediate problem is to fight the bureaucratic barriers holding up international aid”.
The paper also wanted the two governments to make it clear to President Yahya Khan that no one was prepared to pay subsidy for him to continue repression of the East.
AP adds: the British newspaper “Times” today called for withholding of foreign economic assistance from Pakistan until the military rulers see reason.
In an editorial today, the paper said: “On the longer term prospect of enabling the refugees to return home – which means in practice withdrawal of the West Pakistan Army from East Pakistan and a large measure of autonomy for the eastern province there is a strong argument for withholding foreign economic assistance from Pakistan until the military rules in the Western Wing see reason. This is the only substantial lever available against President Yahya khan and his misguided advisers. It is one which, at the moment when the Pakistan economy is reeling under the impact of civil war, could really be made to bite.”
The liberal Newspaper “The Observer” writing on the refugee crisis facing India, says: “two complementary courses of action are possible: first, to warn Pakistan that here foreign aid, on which she is absolutely dependent, might be suspended until such time as it is agreed by a United Nations observer that the refugees can return to their homes voluntarily and safely, Second – to get the security council to adopt a resolution allowing a U.N. mission to move between Pakistan, India and Bangladesh to negotiate between them as the Jarring mission has done in the West Asia.
“The purpose of the intervention should not be 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 frontiers. But doing even this must involve confining Pakistani troops to their barracks in East Bengal.
“There can surely be no convincing argument for going on doing nothing at all at a time when the world is busy acquiring a new danger to peace and when thousands of the homeless people perish miserably in the monsoon mud.
Reference: Hindustan Standard, 07.06.1971