পাতা:বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্র (ত্রয়োদশ খণ্ড).pdf/৫৫৮

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530 ংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্রঃ ত্রয়োদশ খন্ড শিরোনাম সূত্র তারিখ বাংলাদেশকে সমর্থনদানের কারণ ব্যাখ্যা : | বাংলাদেশ ইনফরমেশন সেন্টার সেপ্টেম্বর, ১৯৭১ বাংলাদেশ ইনফরমেশন সেন্টার কর্তৃক প্রকাশিত প্রতিবেদন SEVEN REASONS FOR SUPPORTING BANGLADESH The gruesome terrorism which the West Pakistani Army has been practicing against the mass of the East Pakistan population since March is now fairly well known According to the U. N. High Commissioner for Refugees, the number of Chose who have fled East Pakistan for India has reached nine million. Whether we believe the number of Bengalis killed so far to be 50.000 or 2 million, the holocaust is of a scale which calls for comparisons with Vietnam and with the Indonesian massacres of 1965-66. Public figures here and abroad have coodemned the West Pakistanis, many have demanded that they exercise restraint henceforth, and some that they should create conditions which would make it possible for the refugees to return. The World Bank team which visited East Pakistan in early June reported that the situation there would not return to normal "until there is a drastic reduction in the visibility and preferably even the presence" of the West Pakistan Army. But the ease for an independent state of Bangladesh has hardly been considered. As I see it, there are seven major reasons why the cause of an independent Bangladesh deserves support. Firstly, and of central importance is that continuing attempts to suppress the Bangladesh movement are likely to be as futile as they are Woody. T1 * men who lead this movement were shown to have overwhelming support in East Pakistan last December when the Awami League obtained 160 of the area's 162 seals in a free and fully contested election. And the attempt to break the back of the movement by what was hopefully intended as a short sharp crackdown has signally failed, with the Bengali units in the armed forces mutinying almost to a man. Since then Yahya Khan has repeatedly incited elected M. Ps of the banned Awami League to associate themselves with his regime by agreeing to take up their seats in the Pakistan Parliament, but only 22 of the 160 have accepted his offer. The reports of the few independent observers who have been allowed into East Bengal in the last few months agree that the military rulers of the area are continuing to find it necessary to act with the greatest harshness. In the words of Sydney Schanberg of the New York Times, who was in Fast Pakistan at the end of last month, they arc trying to make their occupation stick "in spite of the region's crippled economy, the collapse of the Government administration, intensifying guerilla activity by Bengali separatists, mounting Army casualties and an alienated sullen population." In these circumstances