পাতা:বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্র (দ্বাদশ খণ্ড).pdf/৪৮০

8& 8 বাংরাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্রঃ দ্বাদশ খন্ড Pakistan troops fired on their small boat as they attempted to cross the river into India. 3) Ahmed Ali, a cultivator, aged 25, his right leg and left plaster cases, said that troops entered his village and rounded up all the able bodied young men they could find. "They asked us whether we were Bengali's or non-Bengal and told us to lie down on the ground. They surrounded us and stared shooting bullet hit me in the arm and I lay still. And they left, they, bayoneted me in the groin and crushed and stamped and stamped on my legs". Peter HaZelhurst The Times' London Conscience and Bangladesh In just a few months since early April the civil war in east Bengal gas driven nearly 8 million men, Women and children into India to escape Conditions in their homeland. Unnumbered thousands of others have been slaughtered in the strife or displaced within their country. Millions mare in East Bengal faces continued terror, disease and starvation, unless they receive immediate relief. This stark tragedy is not yet understood by the world. I can tell you that not until you see it first hand can you begin to understand its immensity. Listened to scores of refugees, their faces and their stories etc. a sage of shame which should overwhelm the moral sensitivities of people throughout the world. Conditions in refuge camps defy description. You see infants with their tiny bones- lacking the strength even to their heads. You See children with legs and feet swollen with edema and malnutrition. You see in the eyes of their parents the despair of ever having their children well again. And most difficult of all, you see the corpse of the child who died just the the night before. The Indian Government has made Herculean efforts to assist accommodate the refugees- efforts which history will record and remember. The tragedy of East Bengal is not only a tragedy for Pakistan. It is not only a tragedy for India. It is a tragedy for the entire world community and it is the responsibility of that community to act together to ease the crisis. -Edward Kennedy (Speech before the National press club, Washington, on August 26 1971.)