পাতা:বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্র (ত্রয়োদশ খণ্ড).pdf/৩৪৫

এই পাতাটির মুদ্রণ সংশোধন করা হয়েছে, কিন্তু বৈধকরণ করা হয়নি।



বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্রঃ ত্রয়োদশ খণ্ড
317
 শিরোনাম  সূত্র   তারিখ
পাকিস্তানে অস্ত্র প্রেরণ অবশ্যই বন্ধ করতে হবেঃ সিনেটর চার্চ-এর বক্তৃতা সিনেটের কার্যবিবরণী ১৮ মে, ১৯৭১



S 7128
CONGRESSIONAL RECORD-SENATE
May 18, 1971

WE MUST STOP SENDING ARMS TO PAKISTAN
BLOODBATH IN EAST PAKISTAN

 Mr. CHURCH, Mr. President, I speak today in Support of Senate Concurrent Resolution 21. What has taken place in East Pakistan since the night of March 25, 1971, when a bloodletting of untold proportions began, is hard to comprehend. We know that the Pakistan army, equipped mostly with American arms and led by U. S. trained officers, let loose a massive burst of violence on fellow Muslims. After the first week of the civil strife, the normally calm France newspaper, Lc Monde, headlined events in Pakistan as “The Week of the Bloodbath." The Chicago Suntimes, after running a series of eye-witness descriptions, labeled the affair. “The Pakistan Pogrom." And Lt. Gen. Tikka Khan, the present martial law administrator of East Pakistan, admitted on May 6 that there had been “quite a lot of massacre" during the current conflict.


 On-the-spot accounts reaching Washington on a continuing basis from Americans, Europeans, and subcontinents have confirmed the charge that killings have been widespread and sadistic. Such an account came from Peggy Durdin in the New York Times. After an extensive stay in East Pakistan, she wrote on May 2 of the wholesale slaughter that had taken place in Dacca and other urban centers following the breakdown of talks between Pakistan President Yahya Khan and Sheik Mujibur Rahman, the duly elected leader of the Awami League. This Bengali political party had just won an overwhelming mandate: One hundred and sixty-seven out of a possible 100 seats assigned to East Pakistan in the 313-seat National Assembly, on a Platform advocating greater political autonomy for the East, Mrs. Durdin observed that


 The freedom the Bengalis were determined to achieve and the concealona he vested interests of the West and Pakistan's military dictator-president were prepared to give finally culminated in one of the bloodiest slaughters of modern times, as Pakistan's armed forces moved with total ruthlessness to reassert Islamabad's authority.

 As more and more facts are collected and analyzed, there is evidence to suggest not only that mass killings took place, but also that Bengali leadership groups may have been selected out by the central government for annihilation. Thousands of Bengali civilians-professors, elected leaders, businessmen, lawyers, engineers, politicians, civil servants, doctors, workers, students, farmers, women, children together with many of the men who made up the East Pakistan Rifles and the Pakistan Border Security Forces, plus local policemen, are said to have been exterminated. Reports T. J. S. George in the Far Eastern Economic Review: