পাতা:বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্র (দ্বাদশ খণ্ড).pdf/১৭৫

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বাংরাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্রঃ দ্বাদশ খণ্ড
১৪৯

terror was let loose. Perhaps you have heard that the biggest concentration, the biggest attack, was on the University of Dacca, where a large number of faculty and students were killed on the very first night. The entire East Bengali population-the civilians, the para-military forces, the East Bengal Regiment and the East Pakistani Rifles-changed their allegiance, that is, they decided to fight that Pakistani Army. They are the base today of the fight of the people of East Bengal. They are the people who are training the guerrillas, the young people who are coming across.

 Now, we are asked the question why is India hesitating to allow United Nations observers? We are not really hesitating, because we have some observers already. We have United Nations observers on the Western frontier who have been there since many years and we have about ten people from the United Nations High Commission for Relief of Refugees on the eastern border. Ours is a very open societyanybody who comes, any of you, any of the diplomats who are there, the Press, parliamentary delegations from Europe, from Latin America, from Asia, from New Zealand, the Arab countries, the Scandinavian countries, all these people have been to our camps; they have been to the border an many of them have crossed over and been to East Bengal. Every one of them, without exception, has given one story, which is of the very great misery and the utterly chaotic conditions which exist there. Now, in these conditions we are told that there is an attempt to have a civilian government by declaring some scats vacant which are not vacant. The people who were legally, constitutionally, elected are still there, but their seats have been declared vacant and I am told that 55 people have been declared elected unopposed. Now in the present conditions they can have the whole Parliament declared unopposed, because it is surely not possible for anybody to vote.

 If United Nations observers go, what do they hope to achieve? If they go with the intention of really bringing about peace in East Bengal, they are very welcome on our side; on any side they want to go, we will facilitate their going there. But this is not what they want to do. They want to say, “what is happening in East Bengal is an internal problem of Pakistan-we will only want to see what is happening at the border”. What is happening at the border cannot be divorced from what is happening inside East Bengal. You cannot say, “we will go and try and prevent the guerillas, but not prevent the army killing the people”. I cannot even mention to your what is happening to some of the women there. The U.N. observers are not going to interfere with those things, but they do want to interfere with what the freedom fighters are doing.

 You may ask, “is India interfering in this by giving some support?” I can tell you that the people of East Bengal are not very happy with what we are doing for them. They think, and I agree with them, we are doing far too little. And what we are doing is something that we cannot help doing. We cannot stop people going across the border cither from the other side to our side or from our side across back to East Pakistan. Had we been able to do this, we would certainly have taken measures to stop these millions of refugees from coming. Initially the reaction was, “they are in great trouble, let us allow them in”. But very soon the problems for us grew really beyond our control and this are creating an extremely difficult situation.

 The people of America have shown generosity. As I came here, was given a cheque. I have been given cheques by children in different countries by poor people, all