June 13, 1971

Bangladesh Prime Minister Tajuddin Ahmad said today that the refugees now in India were keen on coming back home. In a broadcast over the Swadhin Bangla Betar Kendra, Tajuddin Ahmad said the refugees were actively trying to hasten the day of their return by joining the liberation forces of Bangladesh in great numbers.

He expressed his gratitude to the government of India for what the country had been doing to relieve the distress of these people. But regretted that even after the appeal of the UN secretary general, the offer of help from the other countries was not commensurate with the magnitude of the problem.

He appealed to the big power not to aggravate the monumental wrong done to a peace- and freedom-loving democratic people by interfering in favour of the blood-thirsty military dictatorship of West Pakistan. The Bangladesh prime minister was more outspoken when he charged the big powers of having a large share in the "vast evil being enacted in Bangladesh today." The big power, he said, had assisted the rise of dictatorship and a capitalist-bureaucratic-military oligarchy in Pakistan by giving it arms and economic aid.

"I urge them not to try to prop up the crumbling economic base of the Islamabad government either directly or through the World Bank and IMF unless it withdrew its occupation army of Bangladesh. Let there be no doubt that aid given to Islamabad now will be sucked in cynical and devious ways into the war machine and used to hold down the people of Bangladesh," said Tajuddin Ahmad.

Tajuddin Ahmad further said that the war of liberation was now in its 11th week and the valiant freedom fighters had put despair into Yahya's heart. The staggering casualty figures of the West Pakistani Army testified to the success of the defensive operations. The twin methods of massive terror and murder had not succeeded in breaking the will of a nation determined to fulfil its destiny to freedom.

In a special word to those Muslim and Arab countries, who had not yet found it possible to condemn the mass slaughter in Bangladesh, the prime minister said, "Their silence condones colonialism and barbarism, their support to Islamabad put them on the side of dictatorship and its well-documented crimes of arson, loot, rape and murder."

Tajuddin Ahmad wound up his speech by congratulating the people of Bangladesh on their brave struggle and asking them to make sure that no exportable merchandise could fall into the hands of the enemy, to seek out collaborators and quislings and punish them, to maintain solidarity with the freedom fighters, and finally to have faith in the justness and invincibility of their cause. "Our victory is assured," he said.

BRITISH MP'S TEAM CONFERS WITH YAHYA

The three-member British parliamentary delegation conferred with Pakistan President Yahya Khan in Rawalpindi. The delegation would also visit Bangladesh to make a study of the conditions prevailing there. It would later acquaint the British government with the situation there to chalk out the type and quantum of relief aid to be given to Bangladesh.

Shamsuddoza Sajen is a journalist and researcher. He can be contacted at sajen1986@gmail.com