ংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্রঃ ত্রয়োদশ খন্ড simple reason that one of our great problems in assessing the situation is the "iron curtain" which has descended over East Pakistan for the greater part of the past six weeks. We knew in detail the events which immediately preceded the seizure of power or the occupation of the various centers in East Bengal by the Pakistan army. We knew about events until then, and we knew, incidentally that it was not a situation in which the leading political figures in East Bengal had declared independence but was one in which they were still insisting upon a political programme which they had put to the people in their own country and, indeed, to all- Pakistan elections. Since then, however, and within a few days of the army's moves and attack in East Bengal, we have been deprived of systematic and continuing information. Correspondents were brought together and dispatched from the country at the earliest possible moment. Now, five or six weeks later, we are beginning to receive further reports as a number of correspondents, in tightly controlled conditions, have been allowed by the Pakistan army to see some part of what is happening. I turn for a moment to the report which appeared in the Financial Times of Wednesday, 12th May, sent from Dacca the previous day by Mr. Harvey Stockwin. He wrote: "All reliable and impartial sources are definite that the dead run into hundreds of thousands". and he reports that, "De-urbanization is continuing on a wide scale: the majority of workers continue to be absent from factories and peasants from their fields." In addition to these reports such as they are, from inside East Bengal, we know of the great flood of human beings who have been driven to cross the frontier into West Bengal and into India. Clearly, we are witnessing a catastrophe, and I have the unhappy feeling that the scale of it is much greater than we have yet begun to understand or believe. We have to ask ourselves, therefore, the difficult question-always difficult for a British Government in relation to what have previously been the affairs of not only a friendly country but a fellow member of the Commonwealth: what are our duties and obligations in respect of these events? I have never been one who would lightly urge that we should, as it were, as a first priority in order in some sense to satisfy our own inner anxieties, act in any way which did not objectively help the true situation. In this case, however, after hearing several statements from the Foreign Secretary, and knowing that he has made private representations to the Pakistan Government, though believing, unhappily, that those private representations have had very small effect, at best. I feel that we are right to speak out, and plainly, about what is happening. When I say "we", I mean virtually all Members of Parliament, and I hope, also, that the Government themselves, though perhaps not in quite such strong language, will see fit to express their views unmistakably, and in public.
