MUJIB DEPLORES APATHY TOWARDS CYCLONE VICTIMS
Statement issued at Press Conference held in
I have just returned after an extensive tour of the
calamity affected coastal areas spread
Today we estimate the number of dead to be almost a
million: some estimates exceed one million. The stench of death hangs heavily
over those areas, as thousands of corpses and carcasses still lie the unburied
over 9 days. I have moved through those areas-the Paikgacha area in
I cannot find words adequate to describe the
holocaust which the cyclone and tidal bore have left in their trail. Nor can I
adequately convey in words the suffering and the misery of those who have
survived. Whole areas have been totally depopulated. In many areas of
Patuakhali, Bhola and Noakhali barely 20% to 25% of the total population has
survived. The survivers have lost their homes, their crops, their cattle; in
fact they have lost all their worldly belongings.
They are without clothes, without shelter and in
many of the areas without any food or drinking water. The wounds on their
bodies are turning septic. They thus face death from starvation, exposure and
disease.
What is, however, utterly appalling is the total
failure of the Government to discharge its obligations at every stage. Despite
the advance information available through SUPARCO and the weather satellites,
almost two whole days before the cyclone struck, no proper or adequate warning
was given to the unwary inhabitants of the coastal areas, left alone any
attempts being made to evacuate at least some of them. After the cyclone, there
was hardly any attempt to make an accurate estimate of the death toll or the
damage. Absurdly low figures were put out by the Government. The initial Government
reports gave out the death figure as being around 50 !
A massive
resque and relief operation, if launched within 94 hours of the occurrence,
could have saved thousands of lives. Thousands of survivors could have been
saved from death due to starvation, exposure and lack of medical attention. Had
the Navy rushed into the area it could have rescued thousands who had been
swepi into the sea. The failure to launch such a relief and resque operation is
unforgiveable. But the criminal negligence does not end here.
I have been to areas where even ten days after the
occurrence of the cyclone, not an ounce of relief had reached to afflicted
people. They have had to subsist on the root of trees. They have been drinking
water, polluted by rotting corpses and carcasses, which has caused sores to
form in their mouths. Dysentery has broken out on a wide scale and a cholera
epidemic has begun to spread.
Private organisation, social workers and the scores
of Awami League and Students' League relief teams, which have gone into the
field, have been severely handicapped by the failure of the administration to
ensure a minimum availability of transport and communication facilities. This
acute shortage could easily have been overcome if the Government, specially a
Martial Law Government, had made timely use of its ample powers to requisition
launches and other river craft from other districts and to deploy these in
sufficient numbers in the affected areas. The so-called " inaccessible
" areas would then have no longer been so, since my own experience shows
that even a small, broken launch such as the one I used, could reach almost
every affected area, including those lying along the
Some activity
Today some activity is to be seen. Some helicopters
are visible. The airdropping, which previously only occurred on paper, seems
to have begun. All this has started only after loud and repeated public
protests were made throughout the province. Indeed even today the deficiencies
would be monumental but for the vast quantities of relief materials which have
poured in from all over the world. It is a sad reflection on our Government
that the ravaged people of Bangla Desh today expect to survive only due to the
generosity of the world community.
The world has sent us food, clothing, medicines and
vital transport equipment, essential for carrying these implements of survival
to our stricken brethren. The people of Bangla Desh will be eternally indebted
to those countries who have so generously come their rescue in their hour of
need. If whole-heartedly extend my thanks to the governments and people of all
those countries for their prompt and humane response to the urgent needs of our
people in the calamity-affected areas.
The generous assistance received from abroad only
underlines the tardiness and callousness of our own rulers. At a time, when
And where are those pillars of national integration,
those self-appointed apostles of Islam, Maulana Maudoodi, Khan Abdul Qayyum
Khan, Mian Mumtaz. Daulatana, Nawabzada Nasrullah Khan and other West Pakistani
leaders today'? They have not found the time to come even for a day to Bangla
Desh to extent sympathy and succour to the survivors.
Our present experience has only brought into sharp
focus and underlines the basic truth that every Bengali has felt in his bones,
that we have been treated so long as a colony and a market. We have been denied
our birth-rights as the free citizens of an independent State. All decisions of
consequence are made in
Full Regional Autonomy
We are confirmed today in our conviction that if we
are to save the people of Bangla Desh from the ravages of nature, as of their
fellowmen, we must attain full regional autonomy on the basis of the
6-point/11-point formula. We must have plenary powers to manage our economy. It
is only when we can wrest away power from the ruling coteril and attain full
regional autonomy on the basis of the 6-point/11-point formula that we can
expect to solve our urgent problems, be they those of economic development,
flood control or that of reconstructing the villages and rehabilitating the
people ravaged by the cyclone.
Immediate measures must be taken to provide food,
shelter, clothing, medicine and drinking water to every survivor in the coastal
areas. A delay of a few more days will result in there being no survivors left
to take relief to. A people's Government could have mobilised thousands of
volunteers to ensure rapid and effective distribution of relief materials to
those in need of it. Bureaucrats would not have dared to be as apathetic, as
indifferent and as callous as they have been, if they had had to account for
their actions to a people's Government.
If we are to save our people from the scourage of
another cyclone and tidal bore, a massive programme of reconstruction must be
undertaken. This will involve the construction of an extensive system of
coastal embankments, of an adequate network of cyclone-proof shelters, of
better warning and communication facilities. The survivors should be grouped
into co-operatives, through which they should be supplied with cattle and
power-tillers to replace the cattle that they have Iost. They should thus also
be provided with deep tubewells to produce winter crops, seeds and other
agricultural inputs necessary to enable them to start a new life.
But all this can only be done, if we can attain full
regional autonomy. We pledge today that what has happened to our brethren in
the coastal areas must not allowed ever to happen again. This historic disaster
has demonstrated to the world the tragic plight of the 70 million people of
Bangla Desh. The feeling now pervades not just in towns and amongst the
educated, but in every village home in every slum, in those islands amongst
their dead, that we must rule ourselves. We must make the decisions which
matter. We must decide how our resources arc utilised. We must decide where to
raise money. We must decide how our funds will be used. We will no longer
suffer the arbitrary rule of the bureaucrats, the capitalists and the feudal
interests of
Power must be won by the people, whether it be
through elections, or if elections are aborted, through the strength of an
awakened people. The people have already voted in their hearts and in their minds.
They have had enough of ‘strong centres’. They have had enough of the crimes
committed in the name of ' national integration'. The urge of the people of
Bangla Desh for autonomy cannot be denied. For those of the rulers who think
that the people's will can be ignored, let them be warned. Bangla Desh is now
awake. It will give its verdict at the polls, if the polls are not frustrated.
If the polls are frustrated, the people of Bangla Desh, will owe it to the
million who have died, to make the supreme sacrifice of another million lives,
if need be, so that we can live as a free people and so that Bangla Desh can be
the master of its own destiny.
(MORNING NEWS, Karachi and Dacca-November 27, 1970)
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