পাতা:বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্র (ষষ্ঠ খণ্ড).pdf/৬০০

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564 বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্রঃ ষষ্ঠ খণ্ড Relief Fund The League of Red Cross Societies in Geneva, the Federation of National Red Cross groups, has postponed indefinitely its long-term programme of civil rehabilitation in the wake of the autumn cyclone. The League has up to £2 millions lying idle. In Britain the Disasters Emergency Committee, comprising the British Red Cross, Oxfam, Save the Children, War on Want and Christian Aid, having spent about £800,000 on specific projects, has another £700,000 which it is unable to spend because of the fighting, lack of information, and lack of access. Michael Lake of the Guardian commenting on this situation on 15 April said: "The situation can be summed up simply, if brutally: the East Bengal economy, always in crisis, has broken down. The political, social and distributing infrastructureranging from local councils to bridges--is in the last stages of destruction. The main port of Chittagong is paralyzed while 26 ships with relief supplies lie at anchor outside. Pre-monsoon rains are hampering what movement is possible. The monsoon, due next month, is almost certain to rot what relief food is landed and left unhandled in the docks in addition to bringing the usual six-monthly cyclone with its trail of death and further waste. The Government of President Yahya Khan is determined to crush resistance in East Bengal, an operation necessarily entailing widespread ruin since virtually the entire population seems united behind the vision of an independent Bangladesh. "Why the hell are we so silent?" "Why the hell are we all so silent,' asked Woodrow Wyatt in a front page article in mass-circulation, Daily Mirror of 23 April, and added: "I feel deeply ashamed I have not written or said one word of protest at the mass slaughters in East Pakistan. And why the hell are we all so silent? WHERE are those who clamored vociferously against the British and Nigerian governments over Biafra? Where are those who used to march from Aldermaston to demand that we give up nuclear weapons? What is happening in East Pakistan is far worse than any of these things, Starvation in Biafra was horrifying. But it was Colonel Ojukwa of Biafra who started the unnecessary civil war without provocation. East Pakistan is quite unlike that. The area is divided from West Pakistan by a thousand miles of territory. The murder of defenseless, peaceful, poverty stricken Bengalis began. Hundreds of students, political leaders were butchered at Dacca University by West Pakistan soldiers. Thousands upon thousands of ordinary, harmless Bengalis have been killed by bombs, shells and the firing squad. The party that won the elections was outlawed and its officials massacred.