পাতা:বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্র (অষ্টম খণ্ড).pdf/৫৮১

○○8 বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্র : অষ্টম খন্ড Army and police poured into the East and undertook a campaign of unparalleled fury against the Bengali people. it appears that some 200,000 people were killed. As the extent and gravity of the refugee crisis emerged, the International Rescue Committee sent a mission of five volunteer leaders to India, headed by IRC’s former President, Angier Biddle Duke. Its other members were I. Morton Hamburg, an IRC Vive President. IRC Board members, Mrs. Lawrence Copley Thaw and Thomas W. Phipps, and Dr. Daniel L. Weiner of the Einstein Medical School. The mandate of the mission was to obtain a first-hand picture of the refugee situation, and to initiate an emergency programme for East Bengali refugees, the professionals in particular. The IRC Board of Directors felt that it should focus on a segment of the overall problem not exceeding the capabilities of a voluntary agency. Moreover, the survival of Bengali teachers, doctors, writers, artists, scientists, academicians, and cultural leaders is essential for the – survival of their nation. The following pages describe the Mission’s findings, recommendations and the outline of a programme the International Rescue Committee has undertaken to implement. 1. The Scope of the Problem The near-apathy with which the world has reacted to a refugee emergency, the magnitude of which beggars anything we have witnessed since World War II and its aftermath, can perhaps be explained-though not excused-by the helplessness with which most of us react to what appears as an elemental disaster of unmanageable Scope. The mass terror unleashed by the West Pakistan Army and police had a selective thrust. As the New York Times put it. “People have killed each other because of animosities of race, politics, and religion; no community is entirely free of guilt. But the principal agent of death and hatred has been the Pakistan Army. And its killings have been selective. According to reliable report from inside East Pakistan, the Army’s particular targets have been intellectuals and leaders of opinion-doctors, professors, students, writers”. (Anthony Lewis, “Measuring the Tragedy’. The New York Times, June 7, 1971). IRC’s Mission to India was able to verify through interviews with refugees that this was actually what happened. People were taken out of their houses and machinegunned in the streets. Men, women and children were bayonetted to death. Women were raped. About 200,000 people were reported to have been killed. Millions of people began their escape into India. At that stage, they consisted mostly of Muslims identified with the Awami League and the political opposition to the West Pakistan regime. Later the terror of the Pakistani Army was turned against the Hindu minority who constituted about one-tenth of East Pakistan’s population. To quote The New York Times report from Faridpur, East Pakistan;