পাতা:বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্র (ত্রয়োদশ খণ্ড).pdf/৫৩৪

এই পাতাটির মুদ্রণ সংশোধন করা প্রয়োজন।

506 বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্রঃ ত্রয়োদশ খন্ড শিরোনাম সূত্র তারিখ কিছুসংখ্যক মার্কিন নাগরিক কর্তৃক পাকিস্তানকে | রিচার্ড টেইলর, দি প্রগ্রেসিভ | জুলাই, ১৯৭১ সামরিক সাহায্যবাহী জাহাজ অবরোধের উপর প্রতিবেদন BLOCKADING FOR BANGLADESH Richard Taylor "What can I do?" Expresses the common lament of countless citizens who recoil from the magnitude or bad news but feel helpless to "do something." In this article Richard Taylor tells how he and a few likeminded citizens fought non-violently and defeated official armed forces that towered above them in an episode of world significance. Mr. Taylor is a former member of the national staff of the Southern Cristian Leadership Conference and is now working with the Movement for a New Society. He is co-author of a forthcoming book, "Revolution: A Quaker Prescription for a Sick Society." —The Editors For most Americans the India-Pakistan conflict is 12,000 miles away, but for a small group of us it was as close as a canoe bobbing in the Baltimore harbor, a sewer pipe refugees camp across from the White House, and the Niami convention of the International Longshoremen's Association. Before last summer, we hardly knew where Pakistan was, much less what was happening there. But July 14 found us spending a warm evening carrying No ARMS TO PAKISTAN signs and paddling a fleet of canoes and kyacks through the murky waters of Baltimore's harbor. Our goal: to try to block the docking of the Padma, a Pakistani ship which had been thwarted in picking up jet fighter parts in Montreal, and which was now bearing down on us led by police and Coast Guard cutters. "For your own safety, we're ordering you to get out of the way," shouted a police sergeant, leaning over the rail of a large police boat named Intrepid. "The wakes of these freighters are enormous-you can be flipped over and chopped up by their propellers." "You have to do what you have to do," we shouted back, paddling toward the docking pier, "but we're here to block the Padma, We're concerned about the lives of twenty million Pakistanis who may die if we don't do something," we yelled, paddling ahead doggedly and making the Intrepid gun its engine and come about. Looking beyond the police boat and over the harbor waters, we could see silhouetters of freighters, docks, and cranes against the far shore and, just to their left, the smaller outline of the Padma and its escort steaming up the channel. Across the oil slicks in the other direction stroked the determined bunch who made up the fleet we had dubbed "The Francis Scott Key Armada," in honor of the Star Spangled Banner's author, who panned