Archive for June 2015

Asad's Shirt - Shamsur Rahman

Like bunches of blood-red Oleander, Like flaming clouds at sunset Asad's shirt flutters In the gusty wind, in the limitless bl...

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* The Times, June 4, 1971 
 
SECRET CATALOG OF GUILT AND DISASTER OVER EAST PAKISTAN 
 
Within the space of a few short weeks both East and West Bengal have suddenly become international trouble sports. Millions of people have been uprooted by civil war, thousands have been killed, famine and disease are already beginning to stalk the countryside and a full scale war between India and Pakistan threatens to break out at any moment. 
 * The Sunday Times, June 6, 1971 
 
THE ROAD FROM BANGLADESH 
 
The life of the refugee produces its own particular kind of hopelessness. Isolated in a foreign country, physically weak, surrounded by strangers, these Bengalis swiftly find themselves victims of increasing lethargy, silently awaiting any new blow from an almost universally hostile world. The old men, who in their own country had great dignity, are now reduced to queuing like children for food. If they are ill, like the half-crippled man with his stick and umbrella, they merely sit and wait for someone to help them. No one does. If they are your, or part of a united family, they can at least scavenge for food and fuel to recreate a vagabond imitation of their former life in Pakistan. 
 
* International Herald Tribune, June 8, 1971 
 
TALK HEARD IN INDIA OF WAR WITH PAKISTAN ON REFUGEES 
 
Calcutta, June 7 (WP)- Talk of a war with Pakistan has increased here as a result of the continuing flow of refuges into India, which confronts this country with an enormous, unwanted burden. 
 
* International Herald Tribune, June 14, 1971 
 
WEST PAKISTAN NEWSMAN SAYS ARMY SLAUGHTERED EASTERNERS 
 
London, June 13 (NYT)- A West Pakistani journalist who accompanied the Pakistani journalist when it crushed the independence movement in East Pakistan alleged yesterday that the government troops “deliberately massacred” people in East Bengal. 
 
Mr. Mascarenhas writes that the Pakistani government has suppressed “the second and worse horror which followed when its own army took over the killing”. He says that officials in West Pakistan privately estimate that 250,000 persons have been killed by both sides in the fighting–not including those who have died from hunger or disease. 
 
* International Herald Tribune, June 14, 1971 
 
PAKISTAN ARMY SCORCHES BORDER: BENGAL GUERRILLAS TRAIN IN INDIA 
 
Shikarpur, India, June 13 (AP)- The Pakistan army had launched a scorched-earth operation along the frontier between East Pakistan and India, according to Indian military and civilian authorities on the spot. 
 
President Yahya Khan’s troops are burning frontier villages, destroying jute and sugar-cane plantations and ordering those inhabitants who have not already fled to India to pull back at least five miles from the border, the Indians report. 
 
The operation seems designed as a defensive measure against guerrilla attacks by East Pakistani secessionist forces-the Mukhti Fauj-building up their strength in the safety of Indian territory. 
 
* The Sunday Times, June 20, 1971 
 
EAST PAKISTAN : THE SILENT VOICE OF U THANT 
 
As world opinion becomes increasingly increased at the West Pakistani army’s brutal region of terror in East Bengal, and at the pitiful sight of the ever-growing millions of refugees fleeing form that terror, one voice remains conspicuously silent. It is the voice of the Secretary General of the United States Nations, U Thant. 
 
* International Herald Tribune, June 22, 1971 
 
INDIA AND PAKISTAN 
 
India’s suggestion that international aid to Pakistan be suspended “until a political solution acceptable to the people of East Bengal is found” is offensive in its reference to East Pakistan as “East Bengal”, but otherwise apt. It is unthinkable that donors would want to underwrite a minority military government’s cruel war against its own citizens, thousands of whom it has murdered, millions of whom it has forced into flight. Moreover, strictly from the technical standard of whether Pakistan in its disrupted condition can spent aid funds efficiently, it hardly can qualify. 
 
* International Herald Tribune, June 28, 1971 
 
THREE MONTH LATER, FEAR STILL REIGNS IN DACCA 
 
Dacca (NYT)- People talk with foreigners in a whisper and keep looking behind them to see if anyone is listening. Soldiers and special police-brought from West Pakistan, more than, 1,000 miles away stop and search cars and buses and persons carrying bundles. 
 
Arrests are made and denied. When families ask the martial law authorities what has happened to a son or father, the army replies that he was released after questioning and that if he has not returned home, then maybe he has fled to India. 
 
Many persons listen to the clandestine Bangladesh (Bengal Nation) Radio every day, although the penalties are severe. 
 
This is the nervous and unhappy flavor of Dacca, capital of East Pakistan, three months after the army launched its offensive to try to crush the Bengali autonomy movement throughout the province. 
 
The army is clearly in control of this city, but “normality”- the word the government uses to describe conditions here- does not exist. 
 
Dacca today can best be described as a city under the occupation of a military force that rules by strength, intimidation and terror, but which has been unable to revive an effective civil administration. 
 
* The Daily Telegraph, June 29, 1971 
 
REIGN OF TERROR STILL BY ARMY IN EAST BENGAL 
 
The British Parliamentary Delegation to East Bengal led by Mr. Arthur Bottomley, Labour MP for Middles borough East left Dacca for Calcutta yesterday in a frustrated and gloomy mood. 
 
He has spent some hours in a vain attempt to visit Boliadi, a village 15 miles north of Dacca, which was destroyed at dawn on Sunday morning by the West Pakistan Army. 
 
For reasons not yet explained six villages have recently been razed to the ground in this area, to the north of the small industrial town of Tongi, and firing can still be heard there. 
 
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<tr><th bgcolor="#add8e6" colspan="3" style="text-align: center;">June 1971</th>
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<td width="10%">6/9/1971</td>
<td width="25%">New York Times</td>
<td><a href="http://www.docstrangelove.com/uploads/1971/foreign/19710609_nyt_disease_hunger_and_death_stalk_refugees_along_indias_border.pdf" target="_blank">Disease, hunger and death stalk refugees along India’s border</a></td>
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<td width="10%">6/10/1971</td>
<td width="25%">Le Monde, France</td>
<td><a href="http://www.nybangla.com/Weekly%201971/June/2nd%20week/june2_lm.jpg" rel="lightbox[12]" target="_blank">Bengal corpses in the wake of a crusading army</a></td>
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<td width="10%">6/10/1971</td>
<td width="25%">Reuters</td>
<td><a href="http://www.nybangla.com/Weekly%201971/June/2nd%20week/june2_r.jpg" rel="lightbox[12]" target="_blank">Move to cut Aid to Pakistan</a></td>
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<td width="10%">6/10/1971</td>
<td width="25%">Washington Post</td>
<td><a href="http://www.nybangla.com/Weekly%201971/June/2nd%20week/june2_wp.jpg" rel="lightbox[12]" target="_blank">East Pakistan : A Wound Unhealed</a></td>
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<td width="10%">6/13/1971</td>
<td width="25%">The Sunday Times</td>
<td><a href="http://www.docstrangelove.com/uploads/1971/foreign/19710613_tst_editorial_stop_the_killing.pdf" target="_blank">EDITORIAL: Stop the killing</a></td>
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<td width="10%">6/13/1971</td>
<td width="25%">The Sunday Times</td>
<td><a href="http://www.docstrangelove.com/uploads/1971/foreign/19710613_tst_genocide_front_page.pdf" target="_blank">Genocide (Front Page story)</a></td>
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<td width="10%">6/13/1971</td>
<td width="25%">The Sunday Times</td>
<td><a href="http://www.docstrangelove.com/uploads/1971/foreign/19710613_tst_genocide_center_page.pdf" target="_blank">Genocide (Center Page story)</a></td>
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<td width="10%">6/13/1971</td>
<td width="25%">New York Times</td>
<td><a href="http://www.docstrangelove.com/uploads/1971/foreign/19710613_nyt_pakistani_charges_massacre_by_army.pdf" target="_blank">Pakistani charges massacre by army</a></td>
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<td width="10%">6/18/1971</td>
<td width="25%">LIFE</td>
<td><a href="http://www.nybangla.com/Weekly%201971/June/3rd%20Week/Life.htm" target="_blank">They are dying so fast that we can’t keep count</a></td>
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<td width="10%">6/20/1971</td>
<td width="25%">New York Times</td>
<td><a href="http://www.docstrangelove.com/uploads/1971/foreign/19710620_nyt_the_only_way_to_describe_it_is_hell.pdf" target="_blank">The only way to describe it is hell</a></td>
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<td width="10%">6/21/1971</td>
<td width="25%">New York Times</td>
<td><a href="http://www.docstrangelove.com/uploads/1971/foreign/19710621_nyt_east_pakistan_is_reopened_to_newsmen.pdf" target="_blank">East Pakistan is reopened to newsmen</a></td>
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<td width="10%">6/23/1971</td>
<td width="25%">New York Times</td>
<td><a href="http://www.docstrangelove.com/uploads/1971/foreign/19710623_nyt_editorial_abetting_repression.pdf" target="_blank">EDITORIAL: Abetting repression</a></td>
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<td width="10%">6/25/1971</td>
<td width="25%">Hong Kong Standard</td>
<td><a href="http://www.docstrangelove.com/uploads/1971/foreign/19710625_hks_editorial_another_genghis.pdf" target="_blank">EDITORIAL: Another Genghis</a></td>
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<td width="10%">6/28/1971</td>
<td width="25%">Newsweek (Page 43-44)</td>
<td><a href="http://www.genocidebangladesh.org/?p=212" target="_blank">The Terrible Blood Bath of Tikka Khan</a></td></tr>
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