239 বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্রঃ তৃতীয় পত্র শিরোনাম সূত্র তারিখ দেশবাসীর প্রতি প্রধানমন্ত্রী বাংলাদেশ সরকার ২৩ নভেম্বর, ১৯৭১ তাজউদ্দীন আহমদ-এর ভাষণ An address to the nation by Mr. Tajuddin Ahmad, Prime Minister of the People's Republic of Bangladesh, broadcast on Nov. 23, 1971. My dear countrymen and comrades, The freedom struggle in Bangladesh has achieved many success since I spoke to you in September. The volume and intensity of our resistance against the occupation army are to-day acknowledged by friends and foes alike. The Mukti Bahini can now strike at the enemy at any time and at any place and surprise him at the heart of his security. It has achieved spectacular successes on land, river and sea and has crippled shipping at the ports of Mangla and Chittagong. It has wiped out the vestiges of enemy presence from district after district in Bangladesh. As more and more areas are coming under the effective administrative control of the Government of the People's Republic of Bangladesh, the enemy's losses, in men, material and morale, are making him insane with frustration. The evil men of Islamabad are to-day bewildered by their reverses in the battlefield and the mounting international support for the cause of Bangladesh. They are now riddled with doubts and fears as to their survival. They have not only caused immeasurable suffering to the people of Bangladesh but brought West Pakistan to the brink of economic ruin and political disintegration. They are now seeking an international crisis in the form of a War with India. In this their aim is, on the one hand, to divert attention from the grim struggle for freedom in Bangladesh and to conceal their humiliations at the hands of the Mukti Bahini and, on the other, to create a situation for intervention by their patrons. But they are not likely to succeed in these aims which can only carry them from folly and crime and ruin to more folly and more crimes and to total self-destruction. Whatever plans the ruling junta might have for self-destruction or whatever arrangements in the sub-continent might suit some powers, the only arrangement that suits the people of Bangladesh is freedom. Our will to freedom and our ability to consolidate and perpetuate it, is daily being tested in one of the bitterest wars of history. Freedom conceived as destruction of the occupation troops or their withdrawal from Bangladesh, is our only objective. If history has any lesson for mankind, it is that a people's will cannot be trifled with, nor can a liberation struggle be suppressed by the fire power of even a global giant. When some western nations fail to show much sensibility to the need for democracy in Asia, where they worship the concept of stability more than men's dignity as man, it is bad enough. But when one of them makes the quite soulless suggestion that India should absorb the evacuees from Bangladesh in exchange for financial support, we are appalled and outraged. The suggestion accepts without comment the consequences of genocide, seeks to freeze a situation of revolting inequity, and invites, and abets in advance, future
