641 বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিল : চতুর্থ খন্ড millions around the world. We believe that in the present crisis in Bengal, you are in a special position to do something. Before we put our specific proposals, we ought to give you some of the more serious reports and comments in the press pointing to the gravity of the situation : a. Mr. Reg Prentice M.P., was a member of the Parliamentary delegation which recently visited both Pakistan and India to study the present crisis. In the New Statesman of 16th July 1971, he wrote "...As we drove up the road...we drove past thousands of new refugees crowding the road on either side. They just kept coming, for mile after mile, people of all ages carrying their cooking pots and little bundles of possessions. Young children were carrying babies a few weeks old. Some people were lying helplessly in the ditches...and so it goes on-sometimes as many as 1,000,000 new refugees a day reaching India. b. Mother Theresa, 69, the missionary who runs a village in India for three hundred lepers, winner of the pope's Peace Prize earlier this year, said on arrival in London on 24th September "Reports from East Pakistan indicated that the shooting of refugees appears to have begun again". This means that the human trail is not ending, not yet. c. The Pope called an urgent meeting on 25th September of Roman Catholic relief officials to discuss the "steady worsening" in the living condition of civil war survivors in East Pakistan. The Pope's announcement came after the Catholic relief organization Caritas International said that East Pakistan faced a disastrous famine unless the world governments provide help within the next few weeks. d. Lincoln C. Chen and Jon E. Rhode of Harvard Medical School have written "The critical period lies immediately ahead. The similarities between the famine of 1943 with present trends in East Pakistan are striking. The malnourished state of the 7.5 million refugees (now 9 millions) who have fled into India attests the deteriorating situation within East Pakistan. Reliable estimates project that the current food shortage will affect approximately 25 million people: the landless laborer, the deficit fanner, craftsman, factory worker and urban poor. The number that will die of starvation is unknown." e. Mr. Peter Shore, M. P., a former Labor Cabinet Minister, has just returned from a visit to India-East Pakistan border. He wrote in the Sunday Times of 5th September "The prospects for famine are grim...No one can tell what the East Bengal gross food deficit amounts to... The urgency of all this cannot be over stressed... India has so far absorbed 8 million people from East Pakistan. They are not refugees from hunger. They the refugees from oppression and fear. If hunger takes an increasing grip in East
