CHOLERA EPIDEMIC ALONG INDO-PAK BORDER
India Cannot Face It Alone
Many thousands of disease-wracked men, women and children are threatened by a cholera epidemic raging along the eastern border states of India and Pakistan which has already caused 3,000 deaths.
One of the greatest human tragedies of modern times is taking its grim toll in the north eastern corner of the Indo-Pakistan sub-continent and India cannot face it alone.
A note of desperation has already emerged Health Minister Uma Shankar Dikshit told Parliament Friday “at the rate they are coming in, nothing, let alone medicines, can be supplied to them.”
Thousands can only stagger across the border, farmished and diseased- to fall down on foreign soil.
India is now bitter at what she regards as a lack of world care for suffering and the dying
“What is the use of talking about the problem if the international community is going to do so little,” a distraught Health Ministry spokesman said.
A top Indian Health official said “we just cannot measure the extent of the problem, and how it will escalate is anybody’s guess.”
The cholera has been indentified as the virulent and deadly Asiatic variety and make thousands will succumb as the southwest monsoon approaches from across the Bay of Bengal.
It is forecast that the rain sodden air mass will unleash violent over Bengal within the next week.
The monsoon wil flood many of the refugee camps on low lying ground and without international aid on a massive scale it is difficult to see how diseases borne by contaminated water-cholera, gastro-enteritis and hepatitis, can be contained.
Still pouring
The refugees in the 500 camps are packed tight under bamboo flames covered with tarpaulins and open at the side, Their plight will be bad. But the fate of the estimated two million living in the open defies imagination.
Even with a glant international effort there is little hope for thousands of children and nursing mothers vulnerable to disease hungers.
Refugees are still pouring into India at the rate of at least 100,000 a day, many with bulles and shrapnel wounds as the flow continues since the Pakistani Army’s crackdown in March against East Pakistani secessionists led by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
Many never finish the trip. Men, women and especially young children drop by the roadside and are left to die of hunger and exhaustion as the hordes move miserably on.
Swaran Singh makes six nation tour
Foreign Minister Swaran Singh left New Delhi Saturday on a six-nation tour to tell the world that India can not cope alone with the influx of four million East Pakistanis fleeing across it borders since the Pakistan Army clampdown in March.
Many of the refugees are suffering from starvation and face the threat of succumbing to a cholera epidemic.
Singh is scheduled to meet Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin, French President Georges Pompidou, United States President Richard Nixon, Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Turdeau, British Prime Minister Edward Heath and West German Chancellor Willy Brandt.
He will explain to them India’s fears that the influx of four million East Pakistanis into India within the last two months is threatening Peace in the Indo-Pakistan subcontinent.
Singh arrived in Moscow on June 6, due in Bonn on June 9, Paris June 10, Ottawa June 11, Washington June 15 and London June 8.
Disappointed
India has been disapponted with what it sees as the lack of awareness by the bigpowers of the magnitude of the problem the refugees are posing India.
Besides bringing pressure on Pakistan to thrash out an early political settlement in East Bengal, India would like the international community to share the financial responsibility of caring for the refugees.
India wants the big powers to undertake a twofold duty :
To bring pressure on the Pakistani Government for a political solution of the East Pakistan crisis which would enable the refugees to return safely to their homes within six months.
To channel massive sid to the refugees on Indian soil.
Humphrey blames Washington’s policy
In Washington Senator Hubert Humparey said Friday the Nixon Administration was following a policy of “sitting things out” while up to 30 million people in East Pakistan faced starvation.
The Minnesota Democrat urged President Nixon to take immediate action to provide relief for East Pakistanis.
The current lull in the fighting between Government forces and the scecesionists in East Pakistan had produced a bull in the US Congress and in Government, he told the Senate.
“Pakistan has become an other razor’s edge,” the former Vice-President said. “My concern throughout this entire tragic development has been to try to pressure the Administration to dull the edge by assuming a position of non-interference and by implementing immediate humanitarian rellef programmes.”
Saying he welomed U.S. relief efforts for Pakistani refugees in Indian border states, Senator Humphrey declared : “What I am suggesting today is that this approach should also be applied in East Pakistan.”
“I regret to say that I an not encouraged by the Administration’s tactic of sitting things out.”
Between 10 and 30 million people in East Pakistan face starvation, he said, “Sure this kind of crisis require immediate attention.
Press comments
In London, the Guardian said editorially Saturday that it must be made clear to President Yahya Khan of Pakistan that no one was prepared to provide a subsidy for him to continue his repression of East Pakistan.
The paper pointed out that Pakistan’s economy was in bad shape and “devaluation believed imminent.”
“The United States and Britain must take the lead in ensuring that, at last, Yahya Khan does not receive the standby credits he is asking for,” the editorial said.
“The tragedy is that while these political pressures are being applied, as they must be, more refugees will flee and more die from hunger.”
The Daily Telegraph said it was a relief to hear that the Indian Government had promised West Bengal it will bear full responsibility for dealing with the cholera epidemic in West Bengal.
“Nevertheless,” the Telegraph editorial said, “there is a limit to what New Delhi can do in a country of appalling and almost universal poverty, where such desirable thing as medical supplies are, by definition, scarce.
“The West’s efforts to help in such situations- for instance in Biafra and Pakistan in the past should not deter Britain from offering whatever she can : her despatch of anti-cholera vaccine will help.”
In Manila, the English language Manila Daily Bulletin Saturday called on the Philippine Government to extend aid to millions of Pakistani refugees who have fled East Pakistan for the Indian province of West Bengal.
“our own disasters should convince us of the value of immediate relief,” the widely circulated newspaper said in an editorial.
“Already millions have fled East Pakistan. Not only disease but also starvations threatens these displaced persons.
“So far not enough aid has been sent by other nations in the meantime, the Phillippines should respond to the appeal for help on behalf of the refugeess.
Reference : The Djakarta Times, 08.08.1971