পাতা:বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্র (ত্রয়োদশ খণ্ড).pdf/৪৯৯

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বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্রঃ ত্রয়োদশ খণ্ড
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 The ICUE's steering committee which issued today's statement is composed of the following professors: Francois Bourricaud, Paris; Richard Lowthal, Berlin; Donald MacRae. London; Giovanni Sartori Florence; Charles Frankcl, New York; Seymour Martin Lipset, Cambridge, Mass; Paul Seabury, Berkeley; and Edward Shiis, Chicago. The full test of today's ICUE statement follows:

The Massacre of Scholars at Dacca

Statement by the Steering Committee of the

International Committee on the University Emergency

 We speak as representatives of the community of scholars* who came together last fall to defend academic freedom and maintain the integrity of scholarship in our ten countries on four continents.

 Having organized to defend the life of scholarship, we cannot remain silent when the very lives and minds of scholars are shattered in bloody massacre, and their distinctive culture threatened with obliteration.

 A professor of the University of Dacca in East Pakistan who last week fled in terror has described to us the systematic extermination of scholars on March 25—26 by units of the Pakistani military force. According to this eyewitness, the army attacked on the night of March 25th. By one o'clock the next morning the university was blaze. Shooting continued for 36 hours. This professor made his way into the streets when the curfew was briefly lifted on the 27th. Screaming people were all about. The University looked like a graveyard with thousands of dead bodies in view. Freshly dug graves pockmarked the campus.

 It was obvious that the university had been a major target. A premeditated massacre appears to have been conducted from a master list of victims prepared possibly as early as last fall. That list presumably contained the names and addresses of leading teachers and students as well as artists, musicians and writers associated with Bengali literature and culture.

 The mass murder apparently proceeded on schedule; senior professors were brought out in the open and shot. Their families, including women and children, were also killed. The sudden attack obviously sought the extermination of the intellectual class, particularly the bearers of Bengali culture and a large part of its audience.

 Shot and killed were the chairmen of the following departments: Philosophy, G, C. Deb; statistics, Dr. Mamiruzzaman; history. Dr. M. Kabir; English, Dr. GuhaThakurta; political science, Muzaffar Hussain; and the head of the Bengali Academy, Kabir Chaudhri. Many more senior professors, dorm proctors, lecturers and others were either killed or left injured in the campus area. Members of their families were not spared.

 The eyewitness estimates that a high proportion of the Bengalis among the faculty and students and nearly all the senior professors were either killed or injured.

 We do not presume to judge any aspect of the Bengali secession issue.