পাতা:বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্র (সপ্তম খণ্ড).pdf/১৯৮

এই পাতাটির মুদ্রণ সংশোধন করা হয়েছে, কিন্তু বৈধকরণ করা হয়নি।
বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্র : সপ্তম খণ্ড
164

minority's demand. Since, I repeat, the people of East Pakistan are not a minority or a small ethnic group within Pakistan, it follows that the secessionists among them do not represent the people at large. Being secessionists, they are a self-confessed minority. Their position proclaims their isolation from the people. Such isolation can be due cither to a total failure of statesmanship, or to collusion with a foreign power, which wishes the disintegration of the State. In the secessionists in East Pakistan, it was due to both.

 The relationship between the upheaval in East Pakistan and India's actions is immediate. For months Indian war material had been steadily passing into East Pakistan from across a border ich, traversing river, hills, forests swamps, could not be fully guarded by the limited number of Pakistani troops. When the crisis approached, India sundered the air communications between East and West Pakistan by banning the over flights of Pakistani aircraft across Indian territory. It did so in reprisal against the hijacking of an Indian plane to Pakistan. But, as has been judicially established, this hijacking was engineered by Indian intelligence itself, wanting to create a pretext for India to ban the over flights. The ban is illegal and contrary to India's international obligations. Yet, even now, despite international efforts at conciliation. India refuses to lift it. When the crisis mounted and Pakistan was passing through its severest test, India massed its troops along our borders, in East and West Pakistan.

 Faced with this threat from outside combined with an insurgency in the country. the Government of Pakistan had no choice but to use all means to save the country from anarchy, dismemberment, and inevitable Indian domination. I ask the distinguished Representatives assembled in this hall, faces with similar circumstances, what would any other legal Government do?

 Conflicts of the kind which we have suffered in East Pakistan are a supreme tragedy. But world opinion is not yet fully aware of how it has been caused and intensified by foreign interference. Had India's concern with the plight of the displaced persons been purely humanitarian, it would have followed a different line of policy. It would have done its utmost to convey the appeal of the Government of Pakistan to the displaced persons to return to their homes. It would have co-operated with us and with the United Nations in a common effort to accomplish this objective. It would have entered into a neighbor dialogue with Pakistan. IIere was a situation where, if no power politics was involved, the interest of both India and Pakistan demand that the displace persons be enabled to return to their homes.

 It therefore causes us the profoundest regret that, both by its incessant propaganda and its action, India is inhibiting the return of the refugees. By engineering border conflicts, mortar-fire and shelling, India makes it impossible for our nationals to cross the border. It uses their presence within its borders for recruiting from aiming them the so-called volunteers for secessionist forces.

 It is this policy of the Government of India which has so far defeated our efforts to bring back to refugees. The declaration of a general amnesty the repeated appeals of the President of Pakistan, the acceptance of the assistance of the United Nations High Commissioner of Refugees and of the presence of his Representatives in East Pakistan.