46 বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্রঃ চতুর্দশ খন্ড শিরোনাম সূত্র তারিখ ২০। পাকিস্তান : একটি আদর্শের মৃত্যু নিউইয়র্ক উইক ১২ এপ্রিল, ১৯৭১ NEWSWEEK, APRIL 12, 1971 PAKISTAN: DEATH OF AN IDEAL They were long on defiance and short on firepower, a scraggly band of impoverish Bengali peasants armed mainly with picks, clubs and bamboo sticks. But they claimed that they had trapped a force of more than 1,000 government troops in a cantonment 2 miles north-west of the East Pakistani city of Jessore. And now, the Bengalis swore that they would continue to besiege the encircled federal garrison until the Punjabi soldiers from West Pakistan died from starvation. "We have the soldiers surrounded, and they cannot get out to get food," one rebel told, Newsweek's Tony Clifton excitedly. "Those bloody buggers are starving and, will surely die. They must die". That glimpse of the continuing fury and hatred that is racking East Pakistan came last week when Clifton slipped across the Indian border into. East Pakistan for a day's tour of some nearby villages. Otherwise, with East Pakistan clamped under tight censorship and with all foreign correspondents banned, the news blackout on Pakistan's civil war was almost totally effective. And a flood of conflicting and unconfirmed rumors poured into neighboring India to add to the communications confusion. From all indications, foreign governments were experiencing similar problems in obtaining solid information on the East Pakistan situation. In Washington Sen. Edward Kennedy said that reports received by his refugee subcommittee told of "indiscriminate killing, the execution of dissident' political leaders and students and thousands of civilians suffering and dying every hour of the day". While Kennedy did not identify his source. State Department spokesman Robert J. McCloskey promptly denied that the Nixon Administration was suppressing reports from Dacca and declared that it was "impossible to estimate a reliable set of facts regarding recent events and to assess their consequences". Nonetheless, at the end of the week, the U.S. arranged with Pakistan International Airlines to evacuate, dependents of American diplomatic officials in East Pakistan. Protest While the U.S. remained cautiously noncommittal on the events in Pakistan no such restraints were observed in India. There, Prime Minister Mrs. Indira Gandhi condemned the Pakistani army assault on East Bengal as "the systematic decimation of people which amounts to genocide". Day after day Indian newspapers splashed lurid headlines, across their front pages describing fierce battles and bloody atrocities in East Bengal in tern, tire Islamabad government in West Pakistan accused the Indian Government and press of spreading false and baseless news reports, And with officials of the two governments exchanging protest all last week, the long-standing enmity between India and Pakistan was in danger of moderating.
