567 বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিল : চতুর্থ খন্ড বাংলাদেশ পরিস্থিতির উপর বাংলাদেশ বাংলাদেশ শিক্ষক সমিতি * * * * * * * শিক্ষক সমিতির প্রতিবেদন Տի, Գ Տ REPORT ON BANGLADESH The whole world was startled and shocked at the news of the large scale destruction and massacre carried out by the mercenary thugs of Yahya Khan, the military dictator of Pakistan, in Bangladesh, formerly known as East Pakistan. On the night of the 25" March, the reactionary ruling clique of Pakistan, with the help of its army, trained and equipped by the imperialists, unleashed terror of a magnitude unparalleled in recent history; and it is still continuing unabated. During the last three months, the 75 million Bengalis have been subjected to inhuman repression, several hundred thousand people have been killed, and over six; million people have been driven out of the country only to suffer privations and face death from starvation and disease. Almost all the cities and towns and more than thirty thousand villages of Bangladesh have been ravaged. It is now perfectly clear that the murderous Yahya gang is trying to physically annihilate the Bengali nation. Why This Genocide? The roots of this heinous crimes committed by Yahya lies deep in the past. It is in fact the culmination of a deep-rooted conspiracy hatched by the imperialists and the local reactionaries of the then Indian subcontinent even before Pakistan came into existence. Pakistan was created out of the British Indian subcontinent by incorporating some Muslim majority areas and it consisted of two regions separated by more than one thousand miles of Indian territory. Although Pakistan was created on the basis of the supposed idea that the Muslims of India constituted a single nation, actually five distinct nations with distinct languages and cultures, namely, the Bengalis in the Eastern wing and the Sindhis, Beluchis, Pathans and Punjabis in the Western wing, as well as many tribal peoples inhabited the state of Pakistan. This fact asserted itself again and found expression in national movements now of the Bengalis, now of the Pathans, now of the Sindhis and now of Beluchis. During the last twenty-four years, people have made headway to progress, whereas the ruling clique has lapsed into greater reaction, and it is this contradiction that has finally led to the present crisis manifested in genocide by the ruling clique on the one hand and the freedom struggle by the popular forces on the other. Repressive Policy of the Government From the very beginning the extremely reactionary, ruling clique of Pakistan, which consisted of a handful of bourgeoisie and feudalists, persued a policy of total suppression of all individual, national and democratic rights, because that was the only possible way to prolong and preserve their class rule. In their attempt to preserve their narrow class
