YAHYA CONCEDES ‘SLIPS’ IN RELIEF
By SYDNEY H. SCHANBERG
NOV. 28, 1970
DACCA, Pakistan, Nov. 22— President Agha Mohammad Khan conceded tonight that his martial‐law Government had made “slips” and “mistakes” in its relief effort for the cyclone victims of East Pakistan, but he insisted that “everything was done within the limits of the Government.”
Defending himself and his Government against charges by the Bengali population of East Pakistan that the relief effort had been laggard and had shown indifference and even callousness, President Yahya said at a news conference:
“The efforts were not ideal. There have been odd slips, there have been odd mistakes. But I would like to know country or government which consists of angels. My Government is not made up of angels.”
He said there had been “lack of appreciation” of the magnitude of the cyclone and tidal wave that struck the Ganges delta area on Nov. 13. The official death toll is more than 175,000 and may rise far beyond that.
“There Have Been Delays”
“There have been mistakes, there have been delays,” the President said. “But by and large I'm very satisfied that everything is being done and will be done.”
The news conference, held in the ceremonial room of Governor's House here, clearly had been called to try to answer the charges of Government neglect and to defuse the potentially explosive political situation they have created.
The Bengalis have always felt that the central Government, which is run from West Pakistan and is dominated by the Punjabis of that region, has treated them as poor relations. The disaster has heightened this grievance and turned it into an issue in the national elections, scheduled for Dec. 7.
President Yahya tonight denied rumors that he would postpone the elections because of the disaster. The Bengalis would have regarded as a thin excuse for continuing the martial law declared in March 1969 and with it the western domination of East Pakistan.
“The election will take place,” the 53‐year‐old commander of the army said firmly. He added that in the eight or nine districts devastated by the cyclone and tidal wave the vote would probably be postponed “for a few weeks.”
President Yahya opened the conference with a long explanation of his own actions—including his decision not to remain in Dacca to direct relief operations after a brief aerial tour immediately following the storm.
He said he had left behind “clear instructions to get on with it full steam” before he returned to the capital of Islamabad in west Pakistan “to organize many things.”
Asked if his Government had been “late in starting on relief,” he replied angrily: “My Government was not late in starting on any relief! In a disaster of this magnitude, it takes time to mount such an operation and do it constructively, not running around like madmen.”
Consulate Lists Relief Needs
The Consulate General of Pakistan, 12 East 65th Street, issued yesterday a list of “immediate requirements for relief of East Pakistan cyclone victims.”
The list included precooked food, powdered, or evaporated milk, aluminum or plastic utensils and water containers, 22,000 tents, 10 portable wire less radio sets, 30 portable water purification plants, a million blankets, light warm clothing and medicines, including antibiotics, water purification tablets and vitamins.
Also urgently needed, the announcement said, were $32 million for reconstruction, 500,000 tons of cereals, 10,000 tons of food oils, 100 boats with outboard motors, jeep type vehicles and 10 mobile and floating dispensaries.
Cash and checks made out to President's East Pakistan Relief Fund” may be sent to the Consul General's office here or to the Pakistan Em bassy, 2315 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20008.
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Pakistan: People Still Dying Because of Inadequate Relief Job
— SYDNEY H. SCHANBERG
NOV. 29, 1970
DACCA, Pakistan — When a foreign relief official was asked last week if the cyclone rescue effort in East Pakistan was as massive as it looked, he shook his head wearily and said, “Heavens, no. It's only just be gun!,
Although supplies by the planeload pour in at Dacca's airport — blankets, tents, high protein foods, medicines, flat bottomed motorboats, clothes and water ‐ purification equipment — getting them to the still‐dazed survivors of the cyclone and huge waves that crushed vast coastal areas of East Pakistan two weeks ago is quite another matter.
Washed‐out roads are slowly being repaired, and some boats are beginning to move in the still‐dangerous channels of the Ganges delta, but the only way to get help to some of the isolated survivors is by air‐drop. American, British, French and Pakistani helicopters are using every available daylight hour to scour the mud‐smothered flats of the delta for the sick and hungry victims and push out the supplies at extremely low altitudes.
Yet, this is only scratching the surface. Virtually the entire water supply of the stricken region was polluted—either by the massive saline waves or by the decomposing bodies of the dead, many of which still lie unburied under the cruel sun.
Some officials here are estimating that maybe I million persons died in the terrifying storm; the total population in the devastated region is about 2½ million.
Some areas and offshore islands still have no fresh water, and very little has yet been brought in. No water is being air‐dropped, apparently because of the lack of proper containers, and only small amounts have been brought in by boat.
On the other hand, the country is now glutted with cholera vaccine. Officials at first feared a severe cholera epidemic — it is still possible—but East Pakistan itself produces more than enough vaccine for its own needs.
Nevertheless, in the chaos, unpreparedness and virtual absence of coordination in the Pakistani relief effort, foreign countries were not told of the vaccine surplus, and shipments continue to arrive. Three nights ago, the first planeload of Communist Chinese supplies reached Dacca—the bulk of it 500,000 doses of cholera vaccine.
“People may live forever without vaccination,” said a cholera expert here, “but they ‘cannot live without water.”
On Manpura Island, one of the worst‐ravaged areas, only two wells are still usable and no fresh water is being brought in.
The Pakistani Government now seems to be making every effort to help the survivors, but at the beginning—whether out of indifference, lethargy or simple inefficiency—the Government seemed to watch as the foreign relief teams and supplies went to work at a desperate pace.
Bureaucratic confusion and sometimes stubbornness still hamper the relief program. There is no Control Room to coordinate the myriad of activities and avoid waste and over lapping. Out of pride, and paranoia about military secrets, Pakistan has refused to let India, its usually hostile neighbor, bring in relief supplies by plane, thus forcing them to come across the border slowly in trucks.
All this has seriously fanned the flames of the bitter Bengali vs. Punjabi feud that has plagued Pakistan throughout its 23‐year history.
The Central Government, run from West Pakistan and dominated by the Punjabis of that wing, has always short‐changed the more populous Bengalis of East Pakistan in budget funds, development projects and good government jobs. For the Bengalis, the cyclone aftermath reinforced their feelings of being exploited by West Pakistan, which is separated from the eastern wing by 1,000 miles of Indian territory.
Many Bengalis feel that the West Pakistan's Punjabis were callous about the fate of the cyclone survivors. Some Bengali political leaders have charged the Government with “criminal negligence,” and headlines have even spoken of “deliberate murder,” a risky demonstration of freedom of the press in a nation under martial law.
Pakistan's first full and free national elections under a one‐ man, one‐vote election law are scheduled for Dec. 7, although the balloting is expected to be delayed in the cyclone areas.
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A WESTERN GROUP AIDED PAKISTANIS
By SYDNEY H. SCHANBERG
JAN. 3, 1971
DACCA, Pakistan—Amid the chaos of the relief effort after the Nov. 12 cyclone in East Pakistan, one fairly smooth operation stood out—spontaneously organized by a group of Westerners living in Pakistan, together with their Pakistani friends.
They called themselves H.E.L.P. (for Heartland Emergency Life‐Saving Project) and, until the army finally took over relief distribution on Dec. 3 on Manpura and Shakuchia, they were the only life ‐ sustaining presence on those islands.
Led by Dr. Jon Rohde, a 29 year‐old graduate of the Harvard Medical School (Bilal's note: a piece by Dr. Rohde appears below about the carnage of 25th March, 1971) who is now on the staff of the South east Asian Treaty Organization Cholera Hospital in Dacca, the group succeeded because it never allowed itself to be choked by the Government's red tape, wherever the members worked.
Some of the group's leaders, especially Dr. Rohde's wife, Cornelia, and F. H. Abed, treasurer of Pakistan Shell, (Bilal's note:
Fazle Hasan Abed founded
BRAC, one of the world's largest NGO's based in Bangladesh, post 1971) worked on the mainland in organizing and fund‐raising projects. Others, including three more doctors from the SEATO Hospital —George Curlin, Lincoln Chen and Richard Guerrant—worked on the islands, while the wives of two of them, Peggy Curlin and Martha Chen, assisted on the mainland.
This two ‐ pronged campaign allowed the organization to get goods to the places where they were needed in the shortest possible time.
Germans Lend Copters
Five West German Army helicopters had been assigned to the Chittagong airport for airdrop service, and once the Germans realized the efficiency of H.E.L.P., the craft were virtually handed over to it.
The workers, who were greatly admired by the villagers, tried to persuade them to organize cooperatives on the two islands. This program led by David Stockley, 42, a British farm specialist and a member of H.E.L.P., has already evoked the interest of the Ford Foundation and the United States Agency for International Development.
The transition to army control of relief distribution was a difficult one for the Bengali islanders. The atmosphere changed completely, since the army was inevitably more rigid and less personal than the civilian volunteers.
Then, too, almost none of the soldiers were Bengalis. The 80 who went to Manpura, for example, were tall Pathans from West Pakistan's Frontier Force Regiment who spoke Urdu but no Bengali.
No More Cozy Chats
In the mornings the islanders had warm, relaxed chats with the H.E.L.P. volunteers, most of whom spoke passable Bengali. Now the peasants sat warily around the relief center, watching the soldiers polish their boots and belts and line up for their shaves by the unit barber. Gone were the pep talks, about rebuilding bridges and repairing wells, so important to a community whose morale was shattered.
“Our job,” said a young lieutenant, “is to keep law and order and distribute these relief goods fairly—nothing more.”
The civilian workers tried to overcome the uneasiness about the soldiers, but it was difficult.
“The army does not care for us,” a farmer said. “Where were they in our time of need? Now they come — after 21 days.”
As a Westerner was about to depart a villager whispered: “Please don't leave us alone with the army.”
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FREEDOM IN THE OFFING
Recent events in East Pakistan
Here we publish a letter from Dr. Jon E. Rohde, a physician evacuated from East Pakistan, to Senator William B. Saxbe. Senator Saxbe presented it in his speech in the U.S. Senate on April 29,1971.
Jon E. Rohde, M.D.
Hon. William B. Saxbe, New Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C.
Dear Senator Saxbe: Two days ago my wife and I were evacuated from Dacca, East Pakistan, where I have been posted for the past three years as a physician under USAID. I am certain that you are aware of the political events preceding the army crackdown on March 25th. As a result of complete censorship and the expulsion of journalists, banning of the major political party in Pakistan, and repressed information about the military campaign against the civilians of East Pakistan, it must have been difficult to obtain a clear picture of events since that date. From the outset of the army action, the American Consul General and his staff in Dacca, have continued to send detailed factual accounts enumerating first-hand reports of the situation. These reports have been carefully collected and verified before transmission to the State Department. Publicly the State Department claims they do not have enough facts; but I have seen the factual reports sent daily from Dacca. The American Consul in Karachi stated to me that they only recently began to receive the accounts about the situation in East Pakistan, when the Consulate in Dacca has been transmitting information from the very start of the action.
Although Consul Blood's reports contain a more detailed account of the current situation, I wish to bring to your attention the observations I have made in the past weeks in Dacca. My wife and I watched from our roof the night of March 25th as tanks rolled out of the Cantonment illuminated by the flares and the red glow of fires as the city was shelled by artillery, and mortars were fired into crowded slums and bazaars. After two days of loud explosions and the continual chatter of machine-guns, we took advantage of a break in the curfew to drive through the city. Driving past streams of refugees, we saw burned out shacks of families living by the railroad tracks, coming from Gulshan to Mohakhali crossing. A Bengali friend living close by had watched the army set fire to the hovels, and as the families ran out, he saw them shot down "like dogs". He accepted our offer to take him and his family of twelve into our home. In the old city we walked through the remains of Nayer Bazaar, where Moslem and Hindu wood cutters had worked, now only a tangle of iron, and sheet and smouldering ruins. The Hindu shopkeepers and craftsmen still alive in the bombed ruins of Shankari Bazaar begged me to help them only hours after the army had moved in with the intention to kill all inhabitants. One man had been shot in the abdomen and killed only one half hour before we arrived. Others were lying in the streets rotting. The day before we were evacuated, I saw Moslem names in Urdu, on the remains of houses in Shankari Bazaar previously a totally Hindu area. On the 29th we stood at Ramna Kali Bari, an ancient Hindu village of about two hundred fifty people in the center of Dacca Ramna Race Course, and witnessed the stacks of machine-gunned, burning remains of men, women and children butchered in the early morning hours of March 29. I photographed the scene hours later.
Sadarghat, Shakaripatti, Rayer Bazaar, Nayer Bazaar, Pailpara and Thatari Bazaar are a few of the places where the homes of the thousands are razed to the grounds.
In the university area on the 29th, we walked through Jagannath Hall and Iqbal Hall, two of the student dormitories at Dacca University shelled by army tanks. All inmates were slaughtered. We saw the breach in the wall where the tank broke through, the tank tracks and the mass grave in front of the hall. A man who was forced to drag the bodies outside, counted one hundred three of the Hindu students buried there. Outside were the massive holes in the walls of the dormitory, while inside were the smoking remains of the rooms and the heavily blood-stained floors. We also saw evidence of tank attack at Iqbal Hall where bodies were still unburied.
The two ensuing weeks have documented the planned killing of much of the intellectual community, including the majority of professors of Dacca University. These include: Professor G. C. Dev, Head of the Philosophy Department; Professor Maniruzzaman, Head of the Department of Statistics; Professor Jotirmoy Guhathakurta, Head of the English Department; Dr. Naqvi and Dr. Ali, Head of the Department of History; Professor Innas Ali, Head of the Physics Department and Professor Dr. M. N. Huda, Head of the Economics Department, former Governor and Finance Minister, were shot in their quarters, injured and left for dead. Many families of these professors were shot as well. Full documentation of the people is difficult due to the army's thorough search leaving Dacca. Complete censorship was facilitated when three prominent mass circulation dailies were burned: The People, The Ittefaq and the Sangbad.
Military action continued after the attack of the first two days. We listened as the early morning of April first was wracked for two hours by artillery pounding Jinjira, a town across the Buriganga from Dacca, that had swollen in size with an estimated one hundred thousands civilians fleeing terrorized Dacca. Radio Pakistan continued to broadcast that life in Dacca had returned to normal but we witnessed a nearly deserted city.
In Gulshan, one of the suburban areas of Dacca, where we lived, we witnessed the disarming of the East Pakistan Rifles, stationed in the Children's Park across the street, the army looting the food supplies from the market nearby, and finally the execution of several EPR as they were forced by Punjabi soldiers onto a truck to be "taken away". The mass execution of several thousands of Bengali policemen and East Pakistan Rifles is already documented. We also witnessed from a neighbour's house, army personnel fire three shots across Gulshan Lake at several little boys who were swimming. Nearly every night there was sporadic gunfire near our home adding to the fear of twenty-six refugees staying with us. During the day Pakistan planes flew overhead to their bombing missions.
It would be possible for me to chronicle many specific atrocities, but we have left close friends behind whose lives might be more endangered. It is clear that the law of the jungle prevails in East Pakistan where the mass killing of unarmed civilians, the systematic elimination of the intelligentsia, and the annihilation of the Hindu population is in progress.
The reports of Consul Blood, available to you as a Congressman, contain a more detailed and complete account of the situation. In addition, he has submitted concrete proposals for constructive moves our government can make. While in no way suggesting that we interfere with Pakistan's internal affairs, he asserts, and we support him, that the United States must not continue to condone the military action with official silence. We also urge you to read the Dacca official community's open cable to the State Department. It is for unlimited distribution and states the facts about the situation in East Pakistan.
By not making a statement, the State Department appears to support the clearly immoral action of the West Pakistani army, navy, and air force against the Bengali people.
We were evacuated by Pakistan's commercial airline. We were loaded on planes that had just disembarked full loads of Pakistani troops and military supplies. American AID dollars are providing support of military action. In Teheran, due to local support of Pakistan, I was unable to wire you the information I am writing.
Fully recognizing the inability of our government to oppose actively or intervene in this desperate oppression of the Bengalis, I urge you to seek and support a condemnation by Congress and the President of the United States of the inhuman treatment being accorded the seventy-five million people of East Pakistan.
No political consideration can outweigh the importance of a humanitarian stand, reiterating the American belief in the value of individual lives and a democratic process of government. The action of President Yahya banning the democratically elected majority party, who had ninety-eight percent of the East Wings electorate backing them, ought to arouse a country which prides itself on the democratic process.
We urge you to speak out actively against the tragic massacre of civilians in East Pakistan.
Sincerely yours,
Jon E. Rohde, M.D.
(Bilal's note: Post 1971, Dr. Rohde headed up the I
CDDRB - International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh, which is an international health research organisation located in Dhaka, Bangladesh. This organization has since inception dedicated itself to saving lives through research and treatment of some of the most critical health concerns facing the world today, ranging from improving neonatal survival to HIV/AIDS. Though initially focused on waterborne diseases like cholera and dysentery, its research activities span far wider. His compatriot and friend,
Sir Fazle Hasan Abed, KCMG is a Bangladeshi social worker, the founder and chairman of
BRAC, the world's largest non-governmental organization (NGO) with over 120,000 employees. For his contributions to social improvement, he has received the Ramon Magsaysay Award, the UNDP Mahbub Ul Haq Award, the inaugural Clinton Global Citizen Award and the inaugural WISE Prize for Education. In 2015, he received World Food Prize for his "unparalleled" work on reducing poverty in Bangladesh and 10 other countries.)
