such systematic brutality that millions of our countrymen wander without shelter and food within Bangladesh. According to our assessment, nearly five million citizens' of Bangladesh are in this tragic and heart-rending predicament with no succour or relief. This is apart from the ten million citizens of Bangladesh who have already gone to India and whose number is increasing every day. The aforesaid facts lead us to the unmistakable conclusion that the military regime of Pakistan has embarked on a pre meditated and planned extermination of our race.
4. The military regime of West Pakistan still refuses negotiations with Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and the Government of Bangladesh. This has resulted in the nation not only of the people of Bangladesh from the military regime of President Yahya Khan but also the people in other parts of Pakistan. The people of North-West Frontier Province and Baluchistan have expressed their dissatisfaction in a manner which has now compelled the Government of West Pakistan to ban the National Awami Party which had won a majority in the provincial elections in these two provinces of West Pakistan.
5. All this only confirms our original assessment that the people of West Pakistan were never a party to the conspiracy of military oppression undertaken by President Yahya Khan in conjunction with a small coterie of Generals. President Yahya Khan's pronouncements and activities over the last month gave a clear indication of his determination to suppress the democratic aspirations not only of the people of Bangladesh, but also of the people all over Pakistan.
6. As we had informed you in our letter of the 15th of October the operations of the Mukti Bahini have been gathering momentum. The Mukti Bahini, with the universal support of the people of Bangladesh, has achieved signal successes in regaining effective administrative control over large areas of our motherland against the military oppressor. We had informed you of our being in control of half the territory of Bangladesh in our letter of the 15th of October. We have great pleasure in informing you now that our effective jurisdiction extends to two-thirds of the total area of the country. We have not only liberated this area, but at so consolidated our authority and established increasingly effective civil administration in areas under our control. Even in the remaining areas, the freedom struggle with popular support has reached a stage that it has compelled the West Pakistani troops to confine themselves to a limited number of fortified positions. Our successes as well as the events in West Pakistan, with the passage of time, have convinced even the people of West Pakistan of the legitimacy of our cause. The intransigence of the military regime of West Pakistan and the pogroms being carried out by them against our people are indicative of the vain hope which President Yahya Khan entertains of retaining control over Bangladesh by coercive authority. This has only strengthened our determination to liberate our motherland completely and we are confident of achieving our objectives. We have become better organized and our armed forces are acting with discipline and determination. The ranks of the Mukti Bahini have swelled with thousands of patriotic young men, dedicated to remove the colonial bondage of the people of Bangladesh once and for all. It is our unalterable intention to remove the root cause of the tragedy which we have undergone-the oppression that we have suffered for nearly two decades, and culminating in the holocaust on March 25th and the events following it. This is a just struggle of an enslaved people against their exploiters.
