পাতা:বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্র (তৃতীয় খণ্ড).pdf/৮৩০

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বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্রঃ তৃতীয় পত্র

  Sudan's daily EL SAHAFA also rejected the contention that the struggle in East Bengal was a separatist movement. It writes “the situation has now exploded for which General Yahya should be considered responsible. Mujibur Rahman is the true representative of the people of East Pakistan...............Mujibur Rahman's opinion is to be respected since he is the representative of true democracy."

 Senator Willian Saxbe in his speech in the United States Senate on May 11, said “I could remind my colleagues that during the negotiations preceding the military blitz of March 25, the demand of the East Bengalis was not independence but autonomy or self-rule in domestic matters, such as policy and para-military forces, trade and commerce, tax and economic investment and the like."

 Senator Prank Church in his statement made in the United States Senate on May 18, said, quoting THE NEW YORK TIMES referring to Awami League “this Bengali political party had just won an overwhelming mandate: 167 out of 169 seats assigned to East Pakistan in the 313-seat National Assembly, on a platform advocating greater political autonomy for the East."

 Once the election results were out the Pakistan army was reluctant to hand over power to the Bengalis, George Clark writes in KENSINGTON POST on June 11, 1971, “Yet Bangladesh in the past five months has faced disasters which are truly titanic simply because the military government of Pakistan refused to recognize the result of a democratic election. It is as if Sir Malby Crofton and the Conservatives lost control of the Borough Council and refused to acknowledge the result of the election and called in the Guards!"

 About the status of Pakistan Government vis-a-vis the legitimacy of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman the GUARDIAN in its editorial of June 14, 1971, writes,................"and even the Pakistan Government (by) overturning the verdict of the last elections is an usurper."

 John Pilger, International Correspondent of THE DAILY MIRROR London, writes on June 16, 1971, “the Bengalis have not seceded or rebelled. They are the majority in Pakistan and they took part in the country's first-ever elections and they overwhelmingly voted for Sheikh Mujib's Awami League, which won 167 of the 169 Bengali seats in the National Assembly. The Sheikh's short-lived government was as democratically founded as Mr. Heath's government." Pilger further writes “Bangladesh was declared only after the generals, in panic invaded Dacca and began their rule of terror. A Parliamentary movement was put down by troops flown in from a thousand miles away."

 Mr. Ted Leadbitter, Labour M. P. in a letter to Mr. Salman Ali, Pakistan High Commissioner in Britain, wrote, “every report, every television account and every version on the situation in Bangladesh is in conflict with your propaganda"........ “The blood-shed on your hands is there for everyone to see and no diplomatic nicety will prevent me from condemning the stupidity of your leaders, irresponsibility of your propaganda and the need to support a people who asked for nothing more than democracy.