758 ংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্রঃ ত্রয়োদশ খন্ড শিরোনাম সূত্র তারিখ ভারত সরকার কর্তৃক জাতিসংঘ মহাসচিবের ত্রাণ | জাতিসংঘ ডকুমেন্টস ২ আগষ্ট, ১৯৭১ সংক্রান্ত স্মারকের জবাব INDIA’S REPLY TO U.N. SECRETARY-GENERAL’S AIDE MEMOIRE, DELIVERED ON AUGUST 2,1971 Government of India share the view of the Secretary-General that the repatriation of the refugees from East Pakistan, now in India, is a matter of utmost concern and urgency. Of even greater concern and urgency is the need to stop military atrocities in East Pakistan and the consequent daily flow of refugees into India at the rate of 40,000 to 50,000 a day. The refugees already in India are unlikely to return as long as this further exodus continues. Government of India have noted with infinite dismay and grave concern that far from encouraging return of refugees or stopping or reducing the further flow of refugees from East Pakistan to India, their number has increased by nearly four million since President Yahya Khan made his statement on the 25" May that he would agree to allow the Pakistani citizens to return to their own country. 2. The root cause of the inflow of over seven million refugees into India and the daily exodus that still continues can only be explained by the total absence of such conditions in East Pakistan as would encourage or enable the refugees return to their homes. The chaos and the systematic military repression and the decimation of the Bengali-speaking people in East Pakistan continue unabated, as indeed is clear to any objective reader of the international Press. This has been further corroborated by the recent reports of the World Bank and the public statements made by independent foreign observers who have visited East Pakistan and heard the tales of woe from refugees themselves in their camps in India. 3. The burden on the Government of India in looking after millions of refugees, whose number is still increasing every day, has been recognized by all. It has equally been recognized that in Pakistan efforts to cope with the results of two successive disasters, one of them natural and the other man-made, are increasingly hampered by the lack of substantial progress towards political reconciliation and consequent effect on law and order and public administration in East Pakistan. An improved political atmosphere in East Pakistan is an indispensable pre-requisite for the return of the refugees from India. The conflict between the principles of territorial integrity of States and self-determination is particularly relevant in the situation prevailing in East Pakistan where the majority of the population is being suppressed by a minority military regime which has refused to recognize the results of the elections held by them only in December last year and had launched a campaign of massacre, genocide and cultural suppression of an ethnic group, comprising 75 million people. Unless this basic cause for the influx of refugees into India is removed, all attempts to solve this problem by unrealistic experiments are bound to fail. Not only will they fall but they will tend to divert attention from the main issue and so encourage the continuation of military repression undertaken in so wide and horrifying a manner as in East Bengal.
