পাতা:বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্র (ত্রয়োদশ খণ্ড).pdf/৯৮

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70 ংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্রঃ ত্রয়োদশ খন্ড It is not only a matter of the presence of international observers to see what is happening now but, in the name of the integrity of the military regime in Pakistan, there ought to be a full and speedy international inquiry into the earlier events of March, because the accusations are so serious and far reaching that I am certain that the regime would not wish to see them going uninvestigated. The stories of deliberate intimadation and slaughter of a wide cross-section of the community must be examined so that the world can be re-assured and the name of Pakistan rehabilitated. We have been concentrating on the immediate situation. What makes matters worse, as the Hon. Member for Essex, South-East (Mr. Braine) said, is to look at the situation in the context of the on-going social, economic and political history of East Pakistan. I had the good fortune to be with the Hon. Gentleman in both West and Fast Pakistan when I was a member of the sub-committee of the Select Committee on Overseas Aid about 18 months ago. As we saw East Pakistan, it was a sorry story-a land area of 55,000 square miles, with 70 million people, with a 31/z per cent, per annum population rise. The population will be about 100 million by 1980 and possibly 140 million by 1990. It is a country in which disease is widespread. We saw evidence of smallpox, dysentery, typhoid, tuberculosis, blindness and cholera. In East Pakistan the average per capita income 18 months ago, before the latest crisis, was only about 60 United States dollars per year. This was about 50 per cent, below the average per capita income in West Pakistan. I do not know whether I would carry the Hon. Member for Essex, South-East with me in this, but I was disconcerted at the evidence of a totally disproportionate use of resources provided for aid in West Pakistan when compared with East Pakistan. It was distressing to be shown by the Pakistan Government, with great pride on their part, Sophisticated railway electrification schemes and massive prestige dam projects, and then to compare those with the abject poverty of people in East Pakistan. It seems unfortunate that in the work of the aid consortium, priorities were not more balanced in the years before the latest disaster. There is also the problem of military expenditure. This has been estimated as in excess of 60 per cent, of the Pakistan budget. One of the justifications advanced for this is the tension with India and the problems of Kashmir problems and tensions which, at the time of our visit, were causing a good deal of fairly overt irritation and criticism in East Pakistan because the people there saw how these resources could be used. They also saw in East Pakistan that, as a result of the tension, they were being denied their more obvious trading relationships with India. They were, for example, having to import coal from China instead of from 30 miles across the Indian frontier, which would have made much more economic sense. The other point which has come out in the debate and which needs a little more emphasis before the debate concludes is the whole issue of intervention and non-intervention in the internal affairs of a sovereign State. I am underlining some of the arguments which have already been adduced when I say that it is not an argument about intervention or non-intervention. It is an argument about the form of intervention.