631 বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্রঃ চতুর্দশ খন্ড শিরোনাম সূত্র তারিখ ২২২ বিশ্ব শরনার্থীদের কথা ভুলে গেছে ওয়েস্টার্ন মেইল ২৪ সেপ্টেম্বর, ১৯৭১ THE WESTERN MAIL (CARDIFF), SEPTEMBER 24, 1971 WORLD HAS NOT KEPT FAITH WITH EAST BENGAL REFUGEES By Sunanda Dana Ray As the six-month period set by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi for the return of the East Bengal refugees draws to an end. India's harassed relief officials are battling desperately against world indifference and heavy monsoon floods. Five and a half million of the official total of nine million refugees have been cut off from all supplies of food medicines and clothes. Even the distribution of rapidly vanishing local stocks is becoming almost impossible in the waterlogged terrain. There is desperation in the stench that envelops the refugee camps in the helplessness of 8(X) young doctors and their 2,000 medical assistants who complain that dispensaries are running out of drugs for the two most prevalent diseases gastro-enteritis and scabies; and in the forced reduction of the rice dole from 500 grammes to 350 grammes. Thousands of skeletal shacks of bamboo are without tarpaulin or polythene covering. Famine is not an immediate danger but officials fear another outbreak of cholera which affected 60,000 people in May and June taking nearly 9,000 lives. The new danger arises less from insanitary camp conditions than from a fresh influx: Pakistani reprisals after attacks by the Mukti Bahini guerrilla fighting for the independence of East Bengal have brought an additional 16,000 refugees from the Svlhet district to the hills of India's Meghalaya state. Many of them arrived stricken with cholera-the incubation period is a week-but relief headquarters in Calcutta is unable to fly out a much needed cargo of vaccines to Gauhati in Assam which is the main dispersal point for the north-east. The traditional river route from Calcutta to Gauhati was closed by Pakistan during the 1965 war with India. The world has not kepi faith with the refugees. The actual aids received are less than a tenth of the amount promised by the nations of the world. Though the daily influx of the refugees dropped from 34,000 in August to 26.000 in September, planners who had earlier expected-somewhat optimistically as it turns out that the problem would disappear by the end of the month are now busy drawing up a budget and a programme of action for the next six months. That the relief effort has survived at all against such tremendous odds is a miracle. But there is a newfound hope in camps that is totally at variance with the squalid surroundings. Only wrinkled old men. womenfolk and the children remain: young men are leaving refugee camps in droves to join the Mukti Bahini. In a camp for 5,000 people I saw rows of neat little shops with pathetic little fish and lotus stalks-which the local people eat-laid out for sale. Young boys were busy weaving fishing nets and a bent old woman chased us insisting, with the true village hospitality, that we have a nibble of the malt-flavoured milk biscuit given her by Oxfam, the British charity.
