পাতা:বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্র (চতুর্দশ খণ্ড).pdf/৪৪৫

413 বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্রঃ চতুর্দশ খন্ড শিরোনাম সূত্র তারিখ ১৬৩। বাংলাদেশকে স্বাধীন করতেই নিউ ষ্টেটসম্যান ১০ সেপ্টেম্বর, ১৯৭১ হবে NEW STATESMAN, SEPTEMBER / O. 1971 BANGLADESH MUST BE FREED By Peter Shore who has just returned from a visit to India which included a tour of Bangladesh refugee camps. At the heart of the great crisis in Bengal is the break-up of the state of Pakistan. What Jinnah created with his fanatical resolve in 1947 has now been irrevocably destroyed by the stupidity of Yahya Khan and the ferocity of his generals. Of course, at no stage in the 24 years of its existence as a single state could it have been easy by to hold together and weld into one political community, the 50 million people of West Pakistan and the 75 million people in far away East Bengal. But whatever the chances were, the successors of Jinnah have thrown them away. Ironically, last year's election, with its overwhelming victory for the Bengalbased Awami League and the subsequent negotiation for far-reaching autonomy between Sheikh Mujib and the Pakistan President, offered the last chance for a single Pakistan. It was destroyed not by the declaration of independence by the Sheikh, but by the President's prior command to his troops to destroy the Awami League and to teach the Bengalis a lesson they would never forget. Try as he may to disguise it, the situation is no longer in the President's hands. The fury of Tikka Khan's soldiers has released forces that will sooner or later destroy not only them but Pakistan. The key question for the world now is, not whether Pakistan can continue but how, without provoking conflict with other powers and without inflicting insupportable further misery on Bengal itself, its rule in Bengal can be brought to an end There is indeed great danger. Vicious repression of the inconvenient results of a democratic election are not unknown in human affairs, if the March repression had been limited to the elected representatives and key supporters of the Awami League, world opinion might have been brought reluctantly to accept it, but repression carried out as brutally and for so long that people have fled, not just from their homes but from their country at the incredible rate of I and a half million a month for the past 5 months-and still with no sign of abatement-indicates a near lunacy in the misuse of oppressive power. No wonder, then, that there is a growing tension far beyond the borders of Pakistan. No wonder that India in particular, waits and watches with strained intensity and feels obliged to sign a mutual security pact with the Soviet Union. It would of course, be a desperate throw if Pakistan's rulers were now to launch a military attack on India. But India is right to take the threat seriously. For the one slender hope that the Pakistan junta has of holding East Bengal is to seek to transform their own internal conflict with democracy and Bengali nationalism into a communal clash between Muslim and Hindu, and into an external confrontation with India.