পাতা:বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্র (ত্রয়োদশ খণ্ড).pdf/৮১৮

790 ংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্রঃ ত্রয়োদশ খন্ড provide any effective cure. Volume of reports from impartial international observers which explain the causes exists, but we do not have time to discuss all the details; chiefly, the basic cause of this unprecedented movement of people is to be found in the massive, systematic and continued violation of the most fundamental human rights, including the right of life itself. It amounts to a genocidal punishment to 75 million people. Seldom before, and certainly never after the U.N. Charter was promulgated, have human rights and fundamental freedoms been violated on such a vast scale and with so many brutalities and with such cynicism as has taken place this year in East Pakistan. This latter half of the 20th century, when man is striving to conquer space and time we have had the misfortune to see a gigantic operation of medieval leutchery. There has been an attempt to crush and humiliate a people simply in an attempt to suppress their freely and democratically expressed will. I do not wish to recount the events that led to this grim drama staged in East Pakistan since the midnight of March 25; although we can easily and readily place before this committee unassailable facts of the entire situation as it unfolded from day to day. But we must emphasize that no solution to the problem of East Pakistan refugees in India can be found without discussing the nature and extent of massive violation of human rights in East Pakistan. Ever since the tragedy started, there have been attempts to mislead and confuse the basic and root cause of this unprecedented movement of population. We understand these attempts by desperate and unwise men. and we cannot and will not sympathies with them. At first, all was sought to be hidden and protested by citing domestic jurisdiction and internal affairs. Subsequently, persistent efforts have been made to present the problem inside East Pakistan as an India-Pakistan dispute. Yet another argument is that India is preventing the return of the refugees, as if India could afford, under any circumstances, to feed or look after nearly ten million refugees for any length of time, and now established facts are perversely challenged in the hope that impact of public condemnation will be diffused, and so, reduced. But truth is hard to conceal; Pakistan's propaganda figures for refugees have been contradicted by President Yahya Khan himself who the other day, when discussing the question, said: "two or three million, there may even be four million." The President is obviously in doubt and is aware of the canard whose only purpose is to involve India in a process which has never been followed in any refugee problem, and yet his delegation continues to give figures as if they are based on anything except political imagination. It would indeed be a remarkable feat to count absent people. It is also noteworthy that Pakistan's figure of 200,000 refugees having returned to their homes has remained unchanged over the last three months. And then the figure is nicely divided and rounded up to 140,000 Muslims and 60,000 Hindus, at the same time as the High Commissioner has been informed that 640,001 passed through reception centers and 136,000 came back on their own. Here again is another instance of counting people who, no one knows, how they came; but then people, who first described all the refugees as "criminals", who define all free voters as "anti-state" elements, who call all freedom-fighters as "miscreants" or now "Indian infiltrators", cannot be expected to be too scrupulous about facts. To discuss the mechanics of repatriation before creating the basic conditions for making repatriation possible and practicable, is unrealistic and inaffective for facilitating