Daily Mirror

I feel really ashamed. I have not written or said one word of protest at the mass slaughters in East Pakistan. And why the hell are we all so silent? Where are those who so frequently throw stones at the American embassy in protest at the Vietnam war? Where are those who clamoured vociferously against the British and Nigerian Governments over Biafra? Where are those who used to march from Aldermaston to demand that we give up nuclear weapons?

WEAPONS

What is happening in East Pakistan is far worse than any of these things. Nuclear weapons are horrible - when used. But their possession by Russia and the West has scared both sides into permanently preventing a third world war, lest everyone is blown to bits.

* The Vietnam war is appalling. But the American could claim they were trying to save the South Vietnamese from having Communism forced on them. And now President Nixon is doing his damnedest to get out.

* Starvation in Biafra was horrifying. But it was Colonel Ojukwu of Biafra who started the unnecessary civil war without provocation.


East Pakistan is quite unlike that. The area is divided from West Pakistan by a thousand miles of territory.

The 75 million Bengalis of East Pakistan are different in race, language and outlook from the 50 million West Pakistanis. The only link is that the ancestors of the West Pakistanis, who control the central government and man the army, centuries ago forcibly converted the ancestors of the Bengalis to the same Moslem religion.

Last December, for the first time since the British left in 1947, Pakistan had a proper general election. Almost to a man the East Pakistanis voted basically to run their own show, apart from defence and foreign affairs. Not only that all the other parties put together in both East and West Pakistan.

* General Yahya Khan, President and military dictator of Pakistan, who had decreed the election, did not like the result. He feared Pakistan would break up.

In January Yahya had talks with Mujib about Mujib’s plans for the future of the army and the Pakistan economy. Publicly Yahya said he was satisfied. But still he did not convene the new Parliament for the whole of Pakistan in which Mujib had a majority. Instead, Yahya steadily reinforced the powerful West Pakistan army stationed in East Pakistan.

SHELLS

On March 25 they struck. Sheikh Mujib was arrested.

* The murder of the defenceless, peaceful, poverty stricken Bengalis began. Hundreds of students, potential leaders were butchered at Dacca University.

Thousands upon thousands of ordinary, harmless Bengalis have been killed by bombs, shells and the firing squad. The party that won the elections was outlawed and its officials massacred. No press, TV reporters or impartial observers are allowed in. General Yahya is determined to stop the world learning the extent of horrors which have not been seen since Hitler and Stalin.

What are we doing about it? We are still supplying aid to General Yahya.

And on Tuesday Mr. Heath said in the Commons that he would appreciate it if Mr. Wilson “did not press me on the details of the exchanges I have had with the President of Pakistan.”

MARVELLOUS. BLOODY MARVELLOUS PEOPLE

Crushing a whole people is not just an internal matter to be discussed on a friendly basis. If the Commonwealth can get steamed up about our selling a few naval vessels to South Africa, why can’t it get steamed up about this? Why don’t we take the affair to the United Nations? We were quick to recognize General Amin when he seized power in Uganda without being voted for anybody.

Don’t we recognize the votes of 75 million people? Or are they too poor, to far away, too unimportant for us to bother about it?

Dare not our Government even express a moral condemnation? Or is that confined to teachers masturbating in disagreeable sex education film? When the Turks massacred the Armenian Christians in the last century, Gladstone thundered out against them. Today, alas, we are governed by mini-men.

Yet General Yahyas economic plight is so great that even the slightest pressure could force him to end the holocaust and be reasonable.