বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্রঃ ত্রয়োদশ খণ্ড
Most were Hindus, from the Khulna and Barisal districts south of Dacca-on the fringe of the area affected by last fall's cyclone.
The very young and very old were exhausted from many days and nights in flight-usually on foot. Many were in a visible state of shock, sitting aimlessly by the roadside or wandering aimlessly toward an unknown fate. They told stories of atrocities, of slaughter, of looting and burning, of harassment and abuse by West Pakistan soldiers and collaborators. Many children were dying along the way, their parents pleading and begging for help. Monsoon rains were drenching the countryside, adding to the depression and despair on their faces. To those of us who went out that day. the rains meant no more than a change of clothes, but to these people it meant still another night without rest, food, or shelter.
It is difficult to erase from your mind the look on the face of a child paralyzed from the waist down, never to walk again; or a child quivering in fear on a mat in a small tent still in shock from seeing his parents, his brothers and his sisters executed before his eyes; or the anxiety of a 10-year-old girl out foraging for something to cover the body of her baby brother who had died of cholera a few moments before our arrival. When I asked one refugee camp director what he would describe as his greatest need, his answer was “a crematorium". He was in charge of one of the largest refugee camps in the world. It was originally designed to provide low income and middle income housing, and has now become the home for 170,000 refugees.
The tragedy of East Bengal is not only a tragedy for Pakistan. It is not only a tragedy for India. It is a tragedy for the entire world community, and it is the responsibility of that community to act together to ease the crisis.
Simple humanity demands that America and the United Nations must accept the truth that this heavy burden should be borne by the entire international community, and not by India alone,
MOTHER TERESA
(Mother Teresa is the founder of “The Missionaries of Charity" Last year she received the Pope's Prize. She has been working amongst the dying and destitute in Calcutta since 1948. Her Order is one of the few Catholic Orders with no shortage of novitiates. She has 700 nuns and postulants. They live in the slums, sworn to total poverty, eating the same food as the poor.)
We are trying to make the problem of Indian the problem of the world.
India has been wonderful in accepting and taking care of the millions of Pakistan refugees and India will continue to take care of them. In opening the door to them, the Indian Prime Minister, Mrs. Gandhi, has done a wonderful, a Christ-like thing.
Let us remember this: the people of Pakistan, the people of India, the people of Vietnam, all people wherever they may be, are the children of God, all created by the same hand. Today, the Pakistan people belong especially to us. They are part of the family of God in all the world.
