Bangladesh Newsletter
No. 11
October 25, 1971
Editorial
UNITED NATIONS AND BANGLADESH FAMINE
Repeatedly attention has been drawn from diverse directions to the use of U.N. relief supplies of political ends by the occupation army of Pakistan. Recently British correspondent Clare Hollingworth reported in a dispatch from Dacca : “Many foreigners are deeply disturbed by the refusal of the Pakistan military authority in East Bengal to allow food to be distributed by foreign voluntary organizations working under the United Nations. They insist that this powerful political weapon remains firmly in the hands of the West Pakistan administration.”
Also recently the unit of Food and Argiculture Organization (FAO) of the U.N. working in Dacca has accused the West Pakistan Government of diverting boats and vehicles, which are intended for carrying relief materials, to military use. It has been reported that the FAO has informed the U.N. Secretary-General U. Thant that West Pakistan administration is deliberately withholding relief supplies meant for the people in order to sustain the Pakistan troops in the occupation areas.
U.N’s total dependence on the Yahya regime to bring international relief to the distressed is nothing but extending international code of behavior to ultimate absurdity. U.N. Secretary-General, we are afraid, has pushed his reasoning beyond the limits. As a result he finds himself asking Yahya and his boys to carry food and cloth for those they are so eager to kill.
Trapped in its own logical quagmire the U.N. in the name of saving the Bengali lives is enthusiastically engaged in keeping the murderers in business. With a friend like the U.N. who will over need an enemy?
It has been suggested many times so far that only way to avort the worst famine in human history is to take into confidence the representatives of Bangladesh. We urge all nations contributing to the U.N. relief fund to refrain from dong so until Bangladesh representatives are included in the relief operations. If the U.N. fails to do so immediately, we request all nations to take the relief materials directly to Bangladesh where they can be distributed through Bengali channels.
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Keep sending letters and telegrams to your Senators. Foreign Assistance Bill will soon be on the Senate Floor. Make sure your Senators are supporting the Saxbe-Church Amendment S 1567 No. 159.
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FORTY MILLION FACE STARVATION
(The following article by William Shawcross appeared in the Sunday Times of London on Oct. 10, 1971.)
The hunger in East Bengal has been a guessinggame. Numbers have fluctuated by the million. Accurate figures are now available from an unpublished United Nations report. Seventeen million Bengalis are at the moment facing critical shortages of food. Unless a mammoth relief operation is finally mounted (and little has yet been achieved) another 23 million will be starving by Christmas.
The report is invaluable because it is the only analysis that has yet been made of the precise extent of starvation and food supplies throughout East Bengal since the civil war began last spring. It was prepared for Paul Marc Henri, the head of the United Nations Relief Operation in Dacca, by U.S. Aid officials in East Bengal. Its conclusions will be discussed at a meeting of the U.N’s Inter-Agency Group after Henri has flown to Geneva next Wednesday.
East Bengal has a normal grain deficit of two million tons and many observers consider that this year that may well double. Such a shortage can in theory be met : there are already large stores of what from the surplus granaries of the West stockpiled in Chittagong. But, as the report makes clear the difficulty is in distributing them : if there is famine in East Bengal this winter it will be because the infrastructure of the country has totally collapsed, not because no food is near at hand.
The report divides the country into 59 areas, averaging about 1.2 million people and 1,000 square miles in each. They found that 14 of there areas were likely to face critical food shortages during the autumn, 19 could well yet become critical, and 26 should, with luck, be adequately supplied.
One of the difficulties that all the relief operations are facing is that in theory the Government will allow them to work only on post-cyclone relief projects that were begun before that spring civil war. Officiallay they are not allowed to give relief to those affected by the war rather than by the floods. In the North there was no flooding and it is there, as a result, that starvation is likely to increase—beacause so far the Pakistan Government has forbidden access, except to the permanent missionary bodies.
Victor Powell, the Chairman of the Consortium of British relief charities, who just returned from Dacca, consisders that one of the other major problems is that there simply is not enough money for people to buy rice. He reckons that only 20-30% of the country’s industry is now functioning, and a whole new class of unemployed is living off its last savings, unable to buy what food there is. The normal commercial network of food distribution has therefore broken down : there is no incentive for merchants or indeed for peasant proprietors ; both are nor hoarding their crops. Powell thinks that the most effective way of overcoming food shortages would be just to restore the normal commercial incentives. Food vouchers should be distributed in starvation areas, he says.
Instead the report recommends various contingency transport plans, hopefully designed to fit the specific requirements of various areas. For example in Comilla Sadar, a region which has traditional food deficit, the first two crops were very small this year and the usual access routes are badly disrupted. The food deficit is normally made up by merchants importing supplies to the area ; this year that has not happened and prices are now up to 43 rupees a maund, which is not as high in some areas (Faridpur 50 rupees) but is about 30% more expensive than usual. The U.N. investigators reckon that the area needs about 4,000 tons of grain a month and recommend various combinations of road river transport to deliver them.
Nevertheless as a plan action rather than as an analysis of the present crisis, the report is seriously limited and those British aid officials who have seen it are shocked by the vagueness of its recommendations. “If we had their resources, we should have been able to put forward far more concrete proposals” says one. It is further limited by its own assumptions, the most basic of which is that “none of the participants in the current civil strife will actively pursue a policy of preventing the transportation and distribution of food to the people”. As the writers admit, “without that assumption, the report is virtually meaningless”.
Not a new would therefore say that the report does indeed render itself quite menaingless. There are still reports from East Bengal of how the Government and army commander food trucks and boats and use hunger as a political weapon.
So far United Nations action has been quite inadequate and 10,000 refugees are not only entering India every week, they are also now fleeing to Burma. The report speaks of UNICEF plans for child feeding programmes in six districts. In fact these have begun in only two areas : Dacca and Chittagong . Indeed, independent charities seem to have been more marginally successful to date. The Consortium of British charities (War on Want, Oxfam, Christian Aid) have a team with 38 tractors in the Noakhali area, and Save the Children last week began a mother-child care program.
However in the past two weeks, the U.N. operation has received 100 five ton trucks from Japan and 200 more are now no their way from the U.S. army in Germany. It will be a proof of the report’s basic assumption that everyone, but everyone, wants the food to be distributed and eaten by the hungry if the bridges are now rebuilt.
The new Republic, Oct 16, 1971
WHAT PAKISTAN WANTS
The war in Bangladesh is six months old, and Washington is walking a tightrope, skittish as it might well be of entrapment in the politics of either side—or in another Asian war. Meanwhile, regular units of the Mukti Bahini (liberation foreces) strike at will. West Pakistani convoys are ambushed, troop carriers sunk, communications interdicted, posts neutralized, collaborators eliminated. Trained guerrillas infiltrate the towns and countryside. Bombing in Dacca, the regional capital, began about three months ago, and guerrilla formations have begun operating there with machine guns attacking army ports and encapments. Villagers shelter and feed guerrillas and act as their eyes and ears. Nine million refugees have already converted this conflict from a confrontation between 75 million Bengalis and Pakistanis into a domestic problem for India. And if Pakistan could manage it India would be blamed for the whole tragedy.
Faced with a progessively deteriorating situation the Pakistani government continues to claim that normalcy is round the corner. It is not. Officer deaths have topped 400, four times the loss in the Indo-Pakistani war of 1965. The Pakistani economy remains at low ebb. Development activity is limited to aided projects where the foreign aid still continures to flow. It is reckoned, howver, that by about December the pipeline will begin to run dry.
Faced with the unwillingness last June of the Pakistan Aid Consortium to bail it out, Pakistan has reverted to bilateralism, pressing the U.S. to negotiate agreements for the $80 million in commodity assistance that has been carried over from last year and remains frozen by AID. Encouraged by the continuation of previously-committed U.S. arms shipments and the belief that its role as messenger boy in the Chou-Kissinger talks entitles it to favors, Pakistan has been putting pressere on the Nixon administration to release the $80 million, plus another $118 million forthefirst half of the next financial year. In addition, the government is trying to secure a further moratorium on its debt liabilities. On April 30, it declared a moratorium, defaulting on $80 million it owes ; that moratorium terminates Octorber 31, so the Pakistan’s are seeking further relief on another $220 million falling due over the next year.
A genuine returen to civilian rule in Bangladesh would require pulling the Pakistani army out of the counrtryside, which is impossible because the district civil administration would be the first to declare its allegiance to the rebel states. All Pakistan can do is provide the trappings of civilian rule, simultaneously burning villages in retaliation for guerrilla action.
U.N. famine-relief teams improve the Pakistani army’s logistical position. Jeeps, trucks and rivercraft belonging to UNICEF, the United Nations Development Program and a US-aided cholera reaserch project
have all been pressed into service by the army, which concedes the prospect of famine but stresses the need for improved communications if the food is to get from the ports to the people. The Pakistan’s claim there is a serious bottleneck in the distribution system due to a shortage of river craft, and so there is, created by the army when it commandeered all commercial and foreign-donated vessels for its own use. The U.N. has asked Pakistan for two helicopters and coastal and river craft of 10,000-ton capacity, to be chartered at a coast of $15 million, plus 10 tugs and 400 trucks. The United States has provided $4 million for leasing 26 coast al vessels. It remains to be seen whether U.N. and U.S. representatives on the spot will be able to keep these vessels out of army hands. Washington says that its chartered boats will be operated by non-Pakistani crews, but this is already being diluted to mixed crews moving under Pakistani military escort. Bangladesh leaders fear that military supplies will be camouflaged as relief.
The U.N. has assigned 38 people to supervise relief operations, but they are confined to Dacca, are only permitted outside during the day under escort, and there are 62,000 villages in Bangladesh—ill—served by communications in normal times and now virtual islands as a result of the insurrection, How 38 or even 138 U.N. personnel, ignorant of the language, social milieu and political of the area and not permitted to set up bases outside Dacca can ensure that their grain is distributed to the starving and not black-marketed in the rural areas defise imagination. The prospects are that the army and the towns will be fed and some grain may filter to the villages.
SENATE FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEE FAVORS AID CUT-OFF
Senate Foreign Relations Committee has adopted and amendment to the Foreign Assistance Bill similar to the Gallagher amendment which was passed by the House before the summer recess. Senate amendment in the present economic aid to Pakistan, including the aid commitments already in the pipe-line, effective from the day of enactment of the bill. This additional requirement of the stoppage of pipe-line deliveries has been proposed in the Saxbe-Church amendment.
Another important provision of the Senate Committee amendment pertains to the outstanding and future debt repayments of the Government of Pakistan. It prohibits the administration from allowing any rescheduling of the repayment schedule through deferment or moartorim. It may be recalled that the Government of Pakistan failed to repay the previous installment of the repayment and declared a unilateral moratorim until the end of October, 1971. Presently, Yahya regime has been lobbying in Washington to get at least a partial deferment for extended period. The passage of the amendment by the Senate will bar any such concession to the Military rules of Pakistan by the Nixon Administration.
To ensure the passage of this amendment by the Senate we urge our readers to contact their senators immediately and request their support to the bill in the present form. The bill may be scheduled for flood action some time in the last week of this month.
BANGLADESH RELIEF ORGANIZATION : ‘HELP BANGLADESH’
A relief organization, called “Help Bangladesh”, to help the people of Bangladesh has recently been formed with the approval of the Government of Bangladesh, HELP is scheduled to begin its operation in Tetulia, a liberated area in the Northwest of Bangladesh. Two persons have already been dispatched to all sectors along the border to make a procliminary survery of the famine situation and logistics of infiltrating relief into Bangladesh.
‘Help Bangladesh’ plans have been wideley acclaimed as feasible ; particularly welcomed by the Mukti Bahini Sector Commandors and the Commandor-in Chief.
Due to the total break-down of the transportation system and administrative network in the occupied Bangladesh there is very little chance that any relief effort through the occupation army will be of any avail. ‘Help Bangladesh’ sponsors believe that the best way to avert disaster is to infiltrial into Bangladesh from the Indian border. The organization has at its disposal the existing and presently functioning communication system of India. Also at its disposal there is a large reservoir of trained personnel from Bangladesh.
‘Help Bangladesh’ operations will be in three phases. Phase One will deal mainly with the setting up of the organizational headquarters and undertaking relief operations on a limited scale. Phase two will encompass an enlarged relief operation extending at least 20 miles inside the border. In Phase Three the operation will cover most of Bangladesh, focusing on areas of chronic food deficit and famine conditions engendered by the army activities.
Operation area of the ‘Help Bangladesh’ will be divided into primary blocks of 15 sq, miles (5×3). In the occupied areas each primary block will be covered by a team of five young workers whose main task will be to carry and deliver HELP foodgrains to reliable persons within the occupied territory. Foodgrains will be transported into the blocks in large quantities by bullock carts or boasts. In case where this is not feasible foodgrains may be rebagged in 20 to 25 1b. sacks and manually transported.
HELP officials estimate that by the mid-November, k 1971 Phase One of the operation can be completed and Phase Two can be initiated. ‘Help Bangladesh’ has opened its London office at 209 Archway Road, London N. 6.
UNIVERSITY PROFESSORS ARRESTED, DISMISSED
The true face of Yahya’s ‘general amnesty’ is emerging from under the sheep’s skin with its unmistakably familiar features. A so-called screening procedure has been imposed on the faculty mambers of the Dacca University. After the preliminary screening the following faculty members have recently been arrested :
1. Prof. Ahsanul Huq
Department of English
Secretary of the Dacca Univ. Teacher’s Association
2. Prof. K. M. Saaduddin
Department of Sociology
Secretary, Dacca University Club
3. Prof. Rafiqul Islam
Department of Bengali
4. Prof. Shahidullah
Department of Mathmematics
5. Prof. Abul Khair
Departement of History
The following faculty members have been dismissed :
1. Prof. A.B.M. Habibullah
Head of the Dept. of Islamic History
2. Prof. Enamul Huq
Professor Emeritus
3. Prof. M. Moniruzzaman
Dept. of Bengali
The following faculty members have been served with warning notices :
1. Prof. Munir Chowdhury
Head of the Dept. of Bengali
2. Prof. Nilima Ebrahim
Dept. of Bengali
3. Prof. Serajul Islam Chowdhury
Dept. of English
OMEGA WORKERS SENTENCED TO TWO YEARS PRISON TERMS
Two more members of the British relief organization Operation Omega have been arrested in occupied Bangladesh while trying to distribute clothes to the inhabitants.
They are Mrs. Ellen Connett, an American aged 27, who had been living in London and was one of the founders of Omega, and Mr. Gordon Slaven from Hampstead, aged 20.
The two relief workers were areested on October 4, ten miles inside the occupied Bangladesh while transporting a load of saris by boat. The main object of their trip was to assess what relief was needed in the area. They have been sentenced to two years rigogous imprisonment.
An Omega spokesma in London said : “They were going into an area where the people are believed not to have received any relief since the Pakistani invasion on March 25. This was also an area intermittently patrolled by the army. We assume that the army was either waiting for them or came up in order to arrest them”.
Their trip was the sixth Omega mission to the occupied Bangladesh since August. Twelve Omega workers previously arrested have been held for short periods before being expelled or deported.
WORLD BANK ARCHITECT REFUSES TO WORK FOR PAKISTANI REGIME
Stanley Tigerman, 40, a Chicago architect assigned by the World Bank to work on its projects in East Bengal declared on September 28 that he could no longer work under “fascist military rulers” of Pakistan. Full text of the architect’s statement at a press conference is given below :
I am an architect. I am not a political person.
Five years ago, in 1966, the Government of Pakistan in cooperation with the World Bank commissioned me to design five polytechnic institutes at Barisal, Bogra, Pabna, Rangpur and Sylhet in waht was then East Pakistan. In order to rationally establish design criteria (which was not available at that time) my firm developed an extensive master plan organising data on climatology, sociology, mete orolory, seismology. Natural resources, construction methods, building codes and standards, labor and meterial rates, etc. Thus I came to know the country very well. Over these five years, in conjunction with my work, I made sixteen trips to Dacca and other parts of the country, developing many lasting friendships with the people of the country.
As of March, 1971 all five projects were substantially under contruction. The events of March 25th and subsequentl to that time caused me to have personal doubts as to my continued involvement with the work. I conveyed these doubts to the World Bank. However, I wished to witness, first hand, the condintions to properly assess whether or not I could continue. Since I felt it necessary, I went to Dacca Sept. 18th and spent one week reviewing the conditions and attendant problems to the Development of the polytechnics. Dacca is not the same city I knew it to be. There is a level of fear that makes it difficult to discuss even the most mundane technical problems. The martial law authorities have created an atmosphere through threats, searches and check points, that, in combination with the presence everywhere of police and the army, is tantamount to a “police state”.
The polytechnic projects are very dear to me. Nonetheless, it seems to me that some level of moral judgement must be exercised with respect to offering my professional services to a government that forces people to work by threatening them that they will be an enemy of the government, with its attemdant implications, if they do not work. This is not my idea of “normalcy”.
I have, this day, cabled the government of Pakistan and two the world Bank that, under the terms of my contract, I am exercising the termination clause therein. I do not wish, nor have I the right to ask people to supervise and engage in the construction of buildings I am responsible for and risk their physical well being, indeed their very lives in the process.
I have no intention of working for a military government with its attached implications. Moreover, I will never again travel to East Pakistan. Lastly, when the country is free and self-determing I would wish to visit and hopefully work in Bangladesh for I have come to love these people and their country very much. I am an architect. I am also a human being.
TEN DAYS IN PIPE-CITY
Lafayette Park in Washington D.C. has got an opportunity to experience a mock-up of the greates misery of our century. A miniature refugee city has sprung up in the Park to offer the citizens of Washington a closer view of the refugee camps in India. Organized by the Philadelphia Friends of East Bengal and supported by a number of Bangladesh groups in the region, a series of drain-pipe shelters have been set up for a period of ten-days beginning from October 14. This dramatization of the refugee situation has attracted the attention of the public and the press in Washington. Scores of volunteers from New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Boston have arrived in Washington to join the participants in this ten day program.
The program includes a march to the Pakistan Embassy on Saturday (October 16), a religious memorial service on Sunday and a mass lobbying in the Senate on Monday.
This ten-day “refugee camp” is run by “camp director” Dick Taylor who organized the “naval blocka de”
of the arms carrying Pakistani ship PADMA. Dick Taylor is assisted by David Hartsough and Bill Moyer.
MORE DIPLOMATS DECALRE ALLEGIANCE TO BANGLADESH
By the end of the second week of October a total of 114 diplomats all over the world have severed their relationship with the Yahya regime and declared allegiance to the Government of Bangladesh. Among the diplomats who recently joined the liberation struggle of Bangladesh are : Pakistani ambassador to Argentina Mr. Abdul Momin, Political Counsellor to the Pakistani High Commissioner to the U.K. Mr. M.M. Rezaul Karim, Minister-Councellor in the Pakistan High Commissioner in New Delhi Mr. Humayun Rasheed Choudhury, Mr. Latif in Beirut, Mr. Abdul Karim Mondal in Madrid, Mr. Nayebul Huda in Belgium and Mr. Mustafizur Rahman, First Secretary of the Pakistan Embassy in Nepal.
BANGLADESH NEWS DIGEST
September 30 :
Wash Post (Geneva)
The World Health Organization said that cholera had claimed 5805 refugee lives. There have been 46,469 cholera cases among the refugees. WHO said both the number of cholera cases and deaths are probably higher because not all are reported.
London Times (Editorial)
The paper underscores Sir Alec Douglas-Hume’s point at the U.N. that the danger of war between India and Pakistan “could only certainly be avoided if and when there was a return to civilian government in East Pakistan…A government in which the people of East Pakistan, Muslim or Hindu, have confidence is an absolute necessary, whether Pakistan’s two wings are to remain united or whether they are to be separated, or whether some new compromise is to be arrived at…what hope can there be of the great majority of refugees who are Hindus returning, when not only their homes or their land but the very society they once inhabited has been dismantled?…The shadows of a civil government that have so far been offered in Dacca are no more than a pretence, scarcely even a promise of what is really needed…They only hope, and the only hope to bring a decent life to these millions of suffering people, must be negotiations with the Awami League…Sheikh Mujib must be associated in freedom with such negotiations…the question of the future relations of East and West Pakistan cannot be evaded. Sooner or later the realists in Islamabad will have to face the only possible path to peace.
October 2 :
London Times (Delhi)
President Podgorny of USSR warned India and Pakistan tonight against going to war over East Bengal. He said that “the tension should be removed by means of an equitable political settlement with due account for the legitimate rights and interest of the people in that region”.
Wash Post (Key Biscayne)
President Nixon said the situation resulting from the civil war and last year’s devastating cyclone if unchecked “could drift toward greater disaster in the form of famine or even war”. Mr. Nixon declared : “It is a primary objective of the administration to relieve suffering and help avert such a situation”. He asked Congress to authorize an extra $150 million to add to the $100 million that the House has authorized for relief under international auspices. Mr. Ziegler told a press conference that $100 million would be for “humanitarian aid in East Pakistan” and $150 million for the refugees in India.
M Guardian
Correspondent Martin Woolllacott describes in detail an operation of a Mukti Bahini unit which he accompained. Captain Najmul Huda’s company claimed to have killed 125 Pakistani soldiers including two officers in the four months it has been in existence. Their best effort so far was an action in late July when they ambushed a column, killing or wouding a claimed 50 soldiers and capturing two radio sets, which they now use themselves. They set ambushes using American M-16 mines as “cutoffs” in front of and behind an enemy party on the road and then sweeping the trapped men with Bren fire. Captain Huda, who commands not only his regular coampany but a nearby guerriall training camp, claimed that about 100 guerrilla parties have gone into thepart of East Bengal which is his responsibility-Jessore Distrtict and parts of Faridpur District. They go in with ammunition sufficient for two or three weeks and their supplies are replenished by other groups going in later.
October 3 :
L A Times (N Delhi)
Diplomatic observers here see nothing new in the Russian stand that would point to an early solution of the refugee problem. Mrs. Gangdhi was unable to obtain anything more thana strong verbal stand from the Russian exging the Pakistan generals to find a political solution in East Bengal.
L’Express
Nearly 70 years old, Andre Malraux announced his dicision to fight for the independance of Bengal. “The drama of Bengal isn’t an accident it’s a corpse-filled chapter in contemporary history. And Bengal, astride two countries, is a reservoir of poor that destiny will not leave idle. The center of the world is oscillating like the little ball on a roulette wheel. And Malraux would not be surprised if it falls on Asia”.
October 4 :
St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Brussels)
A man depicting himself as a modern-day Robin Hood has demanaded $4 million for East Bengal refugees in return for a missing Vermeer painting. The Dutch State Museum valued the painting at $3 million.
(Dacca)
At least 400 persons have died in East Bengal from cholera in the past six weeks. The epidemic broke out after recent monsoon floods.
Christain Science Monitor (New Delhi)
There is strong speculation here that the USSR is making moves to mediate between the two embittered wings of Pakistan and to arrange for talks between Islamabad and New Delhi for a solution to the East Bengal refugee problem. Most newspapers presume the USSR is in agreement with the U.S. in the desire that Pakistan should not be broken up.
N.Y. Times (Rome)
Issuing an appeal for aid to the “800,000 exhausted, sick and starving children” from East Bengal in refugee camps, Pope Paul invited the churches of the world to join him in making next Sunday a day fasting and prayer in the children’s behalf.
October 5 :
N.Y. Times (Washington)
Amongst top U.S. government officials the Pakistani leaders are generally discussed in sympathetic terms and President Yahya Khan is though ot have been sincere in his desire to transform a military regime into a constitutional government. And his help this year in smoothing President Nixon;s path to Peking is
warmly appreciated. Officials here refuse to denounce Yahya’s repression in East Bengal and have refused to cancel shipments of military equipment. With India’s cooperation, U.S. planners contend they could probably help to negotiate a fair degree of autonomy for East Bengal and over the years this might even evolve into independence.
(Washington)
Sen. Edward Kennedy today exhibited documents that he described as indicating that the Defense Departement was offering military material to Pakistan as recently as July 20 despite State Dept testimony to Congress June 28 that such offers ended March 25. Mr. Maurice Williams, Deputy Admn. AID, and Christopher Van Hollen, Deputy Asst. Secretary of State, both appeared unable to explain the Pentagon’s dealings as late as September 15 with the Pakistan govt’s local procurement office here. Mr. Van Hollen repeated that heavy arms shipments planned under the October. 1970 “one-time” embargo exception had not been delivered since March 25. He acknowledged that the U.S. was receving and processing requests for military equipment by Pakistan but that no new licenses had been issued since March 25 by the State Dept office of Munitions Control.
Wash Post
State Department officials said the administration was “not aware the military services (Pentagon) were issuing letters of offer” to Pakistan after the embergo on new licenses after March 25. The State Dept said that upon learning of it, written instructions had been given on July 2 to stop the practice. The officials said that 10 contracts were signed between March 25 and “late June” totalling some $9.1 million including the two agreements Sen. Kennedy revealed. Copies of the 2 documents showed that one, for $9.7 million originated on April 12 with an offer of spare parts for U.S.—supplied air force planes.
Sources close to Kennedy’s committee claimed that documents unearthed by GAO showed U.S. commercial fims had received licenses to ship arms and ammunition purchased from the Soviet Union and several East European countries to Pakistan. All of these licenses were issued before March 25.
London Times (Paris)
A French Dominican priest, Father Jean-Yves Jolip, said after an after an eight-day visit to India and East Bengal, that he was convinced there could only be a military solution to the Bangladesh problem. According to his statements at the press conference, the Bangladesh liberation army had taken over two zones north-west of the Indian border, one of 844 sq. miles with a population of 85,000 and another of the sam size 40 miles to the west. He said that most East Bengalis supported the Bangladesh movement.
(Dacca)
According to the Pakistan govt. by-elections for the national and provincial assembly seats declared vacant will take place in December and January.
(Delhi)
Indian newspapers reported Pakistan build up on the border between West Pakistan and India.
Daily Telegraph (Delhi)
The main feature of recent Pakistan preparations has been the digging of 2 long anti-tank ditches in the Lahore area, where India made its main thrust in the 1965 war. Crack units of the Pakistan Army have been moved into forward positions along the Punjab frontier. Neutral military observers see this as prudent defensive measures. Indian officials are well aware that a conflict would only create deeper problems. Mrs. Gandhi, on her recent trip to Moscow, found that there is no easy guarantee of Russian backing in a war with Pakistan.
October 6 :
Wash Post (Washington)
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee yesterday tentatively approved a cutoff of all U.S. economic and military aid to Pakistan until East Pakistani refugees now in India have been allowed “to the extent feasible” to return home and reclaim their properties. Identical to the House action on August 3, it gives the President discretion to restore aid. A tougher version proposed by Sen. Church was beaten on a 7-6 vote. The administration opposed both versions. The administration had asked for $220 m in economic aid and $5 m in miltitary aid.
N.Y. Times (Calcutta)
With a reported 30,000 East Bengal refugees coming into India daily to join the millions already here, tensions are building in the overcrowded refugee camps and between the refugees and the local people. Officials acknowledge that the situation is serious and could become explosive shortly if food shortages in East Bengal cause an even greater increase in refugees.
(Dacca)
Diplomatic sources reported today that guerrilla divers damaged a Greek tanker, Avlos, in Chittagong last Friday. There was speculation that the Av los had been selected partly for blocking the dock area. Since August 16 at least a dozen vessels in East Bengal ports have been damaged or sunk by divers. The danger posed by guerrilla frogmen is significant since East Bengal is highly dependent on water traffic. To circumvent the destroyed bridges the Pakistan Army is using ferries. In some parts of the country, civilians are banned from using the ferry and most if not all motor launches have been commandeered by the Army.
T Globe & Mail (Ottawa)
According to the Canadian External Affairs Minister, Mitchell Sharp, famine has been averted in East Bengal. He gave famine a narrow definition : “In a famine, there just isn’t any food and people die. Full stop”. He acknowledged that there may be food shortage in certain areas. This would mean death to old people and children. A senior officer of his ministry said that large quantities of cereals had been shipped and that repairs and replacements have been made to the transportation network in East Bengal. He gave statistics showing $6.3 m as contribution by various governments and volunteer organizations in Canada. The federal govt. has channelled all its food aid intended for Pakistan into East Bengal, totalling $7.5 m.
October 7 :
St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Washington)
U.S. food, blankets and medical supplies are being shipped to East Bengal and to refugee centers in India as part of an international relief effort by which statement hope to dampen tensions and prevent war. AID Deputy administrator Maurice Williams, speaking at a Senate subcommittee hearing on refugees emphasized that it was essential that food and other relief in East Bengal be “kept above the battle. There can be no mixed cargoes lest someone think that humanitarian grain is mixed with something else. Return trips of boats and trucks do not carry jute”.
October 8 :
S L Post-Dispatch (Editorial)
“The scandal of continuing U.S. military help to the oppressors in put in a most peculiar light by Nixon administration efforts to help the oppressed…It is mandatory that Washington expand every effort to feed the hungry, through the U.N. and unilaterally, and stop the flow of military supplies to West Pakistan”.
October 8 :
London Times (Brighton)
At the Labor Party conference, Mr. Bruce Douglas-Mann, MP, said that the economic pressure exerted to compel Yahya Khan to with draw his army from East Bengal was inadequate and ineffective. Mr. Mann expressed fears that it was likely to become the greatest tragedy the world had known. Economic and diplomatic pressure were vital but he felt the Labour Party could do more by recoginzing the Bangladesh government also recongnize it. At the same conference Mr. John Stonehouse, MP, pointed to the danger of mass famine in East Bengal killing upwards of 10 million within the next 3 or 4 months. He hoped the Labour movement would put its full force behind the great campaign to send in a U.N. Relief force with military support to ensure that food was distributed and to secure recognition of the democratic will of East Bengal. Mrs. Judith Hart, MP, stressed that the responsibitlity for the tragedy lay with Government of Pakistan and that words must not be minced when appointioning responsibility. She said that the British Government should take the initiative in damanding action on a world scale at the U.N. with a massive U.N. operation in East Bengal. The only long-term answer lay in the right political solution, and not a phony one to satisfy world opinion. (Brussels)
Mario Peter Roymans was arrested in connection with the theft of a Vermeer painting and the demand for $3 million as contribution to relief organization for East Bengal refugees as reansom.
C S Monitor (Geneva)
India told the U.N. that refugees from East Bengal now totalled 9 million and that if they continued to enter at the present rate they would number 12 million by the end of the year.
N. Y. Times (Dacca)
Retired Air Marshall Asghar Khan announced that his party would contest forthcoming by elections for NA seats in East Bengal in order to keep “Unscrupulous elements” from power. Asghar Khan called for maximum autonomy for the provinces within a united Pakistan and the end of “economic exploitation of East Pakistan.” Pakistan reporters at the press conference said they had originally been prohibited from attending but were later allowed to attend upon condition of submitting their copy for censorship. No remarks were allowed to be printed in the local press.
At an early press conf. on September 26 Asghar Khan announced that the he favored amnesty for everyone not chareged with such crimes as murder and looting. It was understantood that he meant the amnesty to apply to Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. The govt. had censored this earlier press conference, too.
October 10 :
Boston Globe
Harvard Prof. John W. Thomas, who served as an economic advisor to the Pakistan government, analyses the situation in East Bengal. He writes : “The U.S, traditionally Pakistan’s largest aid donor is playing an important role in supporting the army’s operation in East Pakistan. There is disconcerting evidence that U.S. policy is not affected by Pakistan brutality to its own citizens and that we are prepared to make the financial commitments necessary for the present policy of military suppression to succeed. Such a policy requires the urgent attention of the American people…The U.S. has prompted and supported a U.N. relief operation in East Pakistan, although Pakistan would accept only 37 of the 157 observers initially agreed upon and although an important part of the relief supplies are trucks, boats and communications equipment of the type the army needs badly for its operations and has previously commandeered from U.N. agencies operating in East Pakistan. All parties to this program are well aware that among a starving populace, food in the hands of an occupying military force is a potent instrument of political control…
Is the again going to be involved in an Asian civil war, on the basis of executive initiative over the opposition of Congress?…to continue to support Pakistan’s martial law govt. and army and to help finance their operations is to promote a long-term guerrilla conflict which will have tragic economic and political
consequences for both East and West Pakistan and is not likely to be in the long-term interest of the U.S.”
Sunday Times (London)
Correspondent Anthony Mascarenhas refutes the Pakistani agents Dr. Sajjad Hossain and Dr. Mohar Ali’s contention that “there is no massacre of intellectuals” and some professors died by accident during the fighting around the Iqbal and Jagannath Halls.
The correspondent reports : “The army sought out these teachers on the basis of lists prepared earlist and according to their neighbors, “finished them off”. …Neither Iqbal Hall nor Jagannath Hall, despite the heavy firing, were “used by aremd members of the Awami League volunteer corps” as Dr. Hossain and Dr. Ali allege…The only evidence of “weapons” in the hotel were dummy rifles used on parade by the University Officers Training Corps”.
The advertisement in The Times on August 3 was ostensibly “sponsored by the Pakistan Solidarity Front”. In fact, it was paid for by a special subvention made through Mr. Qayyum, Press Counsellor of the Pakistan High Commission, London. The sum of 2,640 pounds sterling was made available to him on July 30.
The hand of government is clearly behind “individual” visits and “spontaneous” advertisements.
October 11 :
N.Y. Times (Rome)
Pope Paul VI led delegates to the Synod of Bishops in a day of fasting and prayer on behalf of the refugees of East Bengal. Churches in italy held special collections for the refugees and many delegates to the international Synod gave sermons on the situation.
(Editorial)
“The charge…that the Pakistan Government has unleashed a reign of terror in the rebellious Bengali province is substantially confirmed by the pathetic tales of refugees still pouring into India…The primary responsibility for initiating a political solution obviously lies with Pakistan. There can be no hope for peace while Pakistan soldiers continue to terrorize their Bengali countrymen or as long as the military regime in Islamabad refuses to deal with East Pakistan’s elected leaders…A special responsibility for the deteriorating situation in South Asia falls on Washington. The Nixon Administration’s continuing military and economic support’s for Islamabad has encouraged Pakistani intransigence and fed frustration in Bengal and India. It is time the Administration heeded Congressional demands for a reversal of this disastrous policy”.
October 13 :
C.S Monitor (Rawalpindi)
There is continuing resistance in Dacca, at the major ports of Chittagong and Chalna, and in the interior in Mymensingh and Munshiganj but only narrow areas are under actual control of the Mukti Bahini. The major test for both sides is approaching. The ground will harden next month for vehicles and troops to move easily. There is fear that scarcity of food will launch another exedus to India. Relief workers are accused of collaborating with the Army by the Mukti Bahini. Peace committee sources say at least 600 of their workers have been killed since April. Unofficial estimates say the Pakistan Army has taken a total of 8000 casualties. More and more it is giving over military duties to locally recruited militia and volunteers. Sources at the Pakistan Military Acamdemy in Kakul, West Pakistan, report 47 of the 147 members of the school’s last graduating class have been killed or wounded in East Bengal.
London Times (Karachi)
Addressing the nation, President Yahya Khan yesterday said : “I would like to address a word to my countrymen who are living abroad and who were misled by the horrifying tales born in theimagination of Indian propagandists and their foreign protagonists. I am glad that facts are now becoming known to them. I wish it were possible forthem to come home to see things for themselves…”
October 14 :
N.Y. Times (Dacca)
The chances of reversing the tide of millions of destitute refugees seems remote. Many governments, including the U.S, have pressed the Pakistan government for fundamental changes, among them : (1) the end of police and military terror (2) a reasonably representative government in Dacca; (3) a much more convincing effort by the government to relive the suffering due to the cyclone, flood and civil war.
The consensus among foreigners here is that there has been no real propress in these areas.
A number of Bengali gynecologists are known to have been preforming many abortions on girls held at army installations and released. A persistent rumour is of about 600 women picked up by the army in March and April and held in military brothels not being released because they are pregnant beyond the point at which abortions are possible.
People, obscure and prominent, are also subject to arbitrary arrest despite the general amnesty proclaimed last month by Yahya Khan Diplomatic say that the amnesty was purely cosmetic and that not only no important prisoners have been released but the army has continued arresting politicians, professors, lawyers and others by the hundreds. According to a number of reports, some from foreign observers, a number of persons have been arrested and shot.
Members of Sheikh Mujib’s family, while not accused of any crime, are held as virtual prisoners here.
Retd. Air Marshal Asghar Khan announced that he was withdrawing from the forthcoming by elections because his political program has not been allowed to appear in the newspapers. Political repression is extended to any politician or group considered likely to embarass the military regime. Government approved candidates, most of them strongly righwing and fundamentalist Moslems are all heavily escorted by troops.
The guerrillas are taking an increasing toll of the occupation army and medical circles report growing numbers of bodies of soldiers. Local reports usually tell of heavy losses of life when the army burns hamlets to the ground in reprisal. Hindus have been particular targets of the soldiers. Hindus communities and shops burned out by the army stand deserted, their temples smashed. The Pakistan Government has made it plain that Hinduism will no longer be tolerated in East Pakistan.
Discussing the Pakistan Govrnment’s refugee reception centers, a foreign relief worker said : “we no longer bother to visit the 60 or so refugee reception centers. It’s obvious they aren’t coming back in more than a tiny trickle—none in some areas”. He added : “At one place we discovered the Government had a staff of professional refugees that they brought out whenever visitors come to show that something was going on. After hearing as many deceptions as we do, it quickly reaches the point at which we cannot take the Pakistan Government’s word for anything, however trivial”.
October 15 :
N.Y. Times (Washington)
The Pakistan freighter SIPSAH recently unloaded crates of North Korean small arms and ammunition at Karachi. North Korea is about to open a consulate in Dacca. Officials here suggested that the USSR might
be seeking to maintain friendly links with Pakistan by furnishing arms through North Korea. Other sources, however, suggest that China was a more likely source.
(Karachi)
Abdul Monem Khan, Governor of East Pakistan during Ayub Khan’s regime, has been assasinated. According to a Pakistan news agency, Mr. Monem Khan was regarded as the unofficial advisor of Dr. A. M. Malik, the present govern or of East Pakistan and “therefore he might have become a target” of Bengali separatists.
PLEASE NOTE
1. For bulk supplies of printed materials for campus distritbution (list of items will be supplied on request) contact :
Friends of East Bengal
Box 42, Sta B
Vanderbilt Univ
Nashville, TN 37203
2. A set of 25 slides on Bangladesh is available for supply ($12.00 per set). For campus speakers and slides contact :
Dr. J. K. Bhattacharjee
Dept. of Microbiology
Miami Univ, Oxford, Ohio 45056
Phone : (513)-4727)
3. Disc record of Bangladesh national anthem is available at the Defense League Office. Those who already oredered for copies will receive their records within a week. New Orders will be welcome ($2.00 each). The anthem has been recorded without any accompanying music. Another record, with music, will be produced by the later part of Novermber.
4. Write to your senators to support the Saxbe-Church Amendment. Come to Washington, if you can. Persuade your friends to write.
NEWS IN BRIEF
Michigan
A Large rally was held in front of the Ann Arbor City Hall in support of the Bangladesh Liberation struggle. Among the demonstrators more than one hundred participants carried placards demanding the complete embergo on U.S. arm shipment and economic aid.
A Teach-In was held in the University of Michigan on Bangladesh at the conclusion of the rally. Prof. Rhode Murphy, Director of the Chinese Study Center, Mayor Harris, Prof. R.C. Porter, Prof. Economics, Prof. Rod Huber, Mr. Mozammel Huq, Mr. Rashidur Reza Farooqui spoke in the Teach-In.
Governor Milikan of Michigan has declared a Bangladesh Day to be observed throughout the state of Michigan.
University of Michigan has invited Senator Kennedy to speak on Bangladesh situation.
A Faculty Committee has been formed in the University of Michigan under thepresidentship of Prof. Howard Schuman, Chairman of the Departement of Sociology, to provide assistance to the educators of Bangladesh who have been forced to take refugee in India.
MADISON MARCH FOR BANGLADESH
The secretary of the Bangladesh Defense League visited Madison, Wisc. on October 7 & 8 and addressed the local high school students in connection with the Walk for Development project that is scheduled to take place in Madison on Sunday, October 17, 1971. This year the group has taken Bangladesh as a foreign project and would contribute a part of the funds raised to the Bangladesh Emergency Welfare Appeal. Last year they raised around $5,000. This year the proceeds are estimated to be over $100,000.
An important aspect of the walk is the education of the local public on the different projects for which the walk is undertaken. In this connection talks are arranged in every high school, college and university of the area, week-long radio and TV shows are sponsored.
Issued by
BANGLADESH DEFENSE LEAGUE
5245 South Kenwood Avenue,
Chicago, Illinois. 60615
Editorial Office : 500 Paragon Mills #B-7, Nashville, TN 37211 (615)833-2064