পাতা:বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্র (চতুর্থ খণ্ড).pdf/১৬১

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বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিল : চতুর্থ খণ্ড
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 My last words were: “Even if the future is glorious, one world full of peace. happiness and justice, it would not serve the people in the East Pakistan, Biafra and Vietnam. They live only once and nobody can explain to them why they have to suffer like this:"

 This passage did not rouse the Ambassador's indignation, of course. He was displeased with the whole article; but to be honest, that was not my intention at all. It would have been a very bad article, if it had pleased him at all.

 His Excellency was particularly angry about what I wrote about the Pak President, General Yahya Khan. Quoting one's own words is a form of vanity, but I have a good excuse this time. I wrote: “Yahya is the man who ordered his army to suppress the East Pakistanis. We tend to consider him a villain, an unprincipled criminal who should be arrested, who should be imprisoned for the rest of his life, or at least placed in a lunatic asylum, for he might be mad, otherwise he would not do such idiotic things: a deliberate murderous assault at thousands or tens of thousands of his own countrymen, whom he as President is supposed to protect! Indeed, such a man must be mad or a criminal.”

 I also quoted a Sunday Times reporter, according to whom Yahya was honestly convinced that he had the duty to preserve Pak unity at all costs. I wrote: “He does not realize that he is guilty of a crime. Such a man is the top of the pyramid which moves him, which he cannot control.” And: “It is possible because the world is roaming about under circumstances of complete anarchy”.

 IN THE MEANTIME WE HAVE COME TO KNOW A LOT MORE ABOUT THE SITUATION IN EAST PAKISTAN. IT IS MUCII WORSE TIIAN 1 THOUGHT ON APRIL 22. THE NUMBER OF REFUGEES IS ESTIMATED AT EIGHT MILLION, OR TEN MILLION. HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE HAVE TESTIFIED WHAT THEY HAVE SEEN; THEY HAVE TOLD THE WORLD WHAT THE PAK PRESIDENT IIAS DONE TO IIIS EAST PAK SUBJECTS.

 The American weekly Newsweek has published a long story about the activities of the Pak President under the title: “Genocide in East Pakistan”. The cover showed an emaciated Fast Pak child, without parents, without food, without hope (why do we live, if we allow children to suffer?)-but IIis Excellency the Pak Ambassador does not care a straw. He wants the Dutch Government to take “appropriate measures”, not to relieve the suffering of the East Pak children, but to stop a journalist expressing the feelings of many people in this rotten world: anger and despair, because these are happening before our eyes without us being able to do anything about it.

 The only thing we can do is to help stimulate the world conscience, the consciences of 3 billion people, till the world conscience is so strong and irresistible that it puts a stop to the activities of incompetent politicians like Yahya Khan. But all the same: “those people live only once, and nobody can explain to then why they have to suffer like this”.

 If the Government of Pakistan, represented by its embassy at The Hague, want to prosecute me, they will have to prosecute Newsweek and (I give only an example) the New York Times, which wrote on August I about Yahya's “ruthless policy” and about the “systematic massacres, rapes and expulsion of I lindus to India”.