Edward Kennedy, Bangladesh, 1971
Edward Kennedy Time Magazine
[Naeem Mohaiemen, Accelerated Media & 1971, Economic & Political Weekly, 26/01/2008]
CNN: Kennedy revered in Bangladesh
Crisis in South Asia
Report to US Senate, 1971
Senator Edward Kennedy
“A traveler today in eastern India cannot help but see, smell, and feel this misery. It is etched in the faces and lives of refugees in countless ways. It is the malnourished child hanging limply in its mother’s arms – one child out of a half million who, in a matter of hours or days, can easily die from the lack of protein and adequate medical care. It is a young girl, quivering in a refugee camp in Tripura, still in a shock after seeing her mother and father slaughtered by Pakistani troops. It is a 14-year-old boy in Jalpaiguri hospital, whose face is contorted from the pain and anguish that he has experienced since he saw his family shot before his eyes and since he received a bullet wound in his spine which has paralyzed him for life. And it is the expression of hundreds of thousands of refugees living in sewer pipes on the outskirts of Calcutta, while overworked relief officials struggle to provide some food and shelter and hope for a needy and hopeless people.
To drive the roads of West Bengal is to tour a huge refugee camp. For miles along the old Jessore road north of Calcutta toward the border of East Bengal, literally millions of people sit huddled together waithing for food, or line up in endless queues for refugee registration cards, or simply encamp on the roadside under hastily constructed lean-tos. And each day their number continues to grow.
A. THE REFUGEE FLOW
The continuing flow of refugees into India is without parallel in modern history. In less than 200 days-from April 1 to mid-October-more people have found it necessary to flee their homes and lands in East Bengal than the total ! number of refugees generated by the IndoChina war, or the millions displaced by the natural disasters which have struck East Bengal over the past decade. In this short period, 9,544,012 refugees have been officially recorded as having crossed into India, and additional hundreds of thousands have been uprooted and victimized within East Bengal.
Since March 25th a constant stream-sometimes a flood-of refugees has crossed each day into India. The average daily influx of new refugees, according to official reports, has been 48,000-with peak periods in May and June exceeding well over 100,000 new arrivals each day. In May alone, for example, a total of 2,820,922 new refugees were registered by Indian officials.” (5)
…
“Reflecting the communal representation of the refugees generally, an approximate grouping in many camps, however, is 80 percent Hindu, 15 percent Muslim, and 5 percent Christian and other.” (19)
“Most of the refugees, however, are poorly educated villagers – the people who make up the bulk of the population in East Bengal. We talked to with dozens of such people on the Boyra-Bongaon Road north of Calcutta, on a day when at least 7,000 new refugees had crossed the border. Nearly all were farmers. Most were Hindus, from districts south of Dacca, on the fringe of the area affected by last fall’s cyclone. Many of these people are still in visible stages of shock, sitting listlessly by the roadside or wandering aimlessly. They told stories of atrocities, of slaughter, of looting and burning, of harrassment and abuse by Pakistani soldiers and their collaborators. Monsoon rains were drenching the area, making it difficult for the refugees to walk and adding to the despair on their faces. To those of us who went out that day to visit refugee areas, the rains meant no more than a change of clothes. But to those refugees it meant still another night without rest, food, or shelter.
It is difficult to erase from our minds the look on the face of a child paralyzed from the waist down, never to walk again; or a child quivering in fear on a mat in a small tent still in shock from seeing his parents, his brothers, and his sisters executed before his eyes; or the anxiety of a 10-year old girl out foraging for something to cover the body of her baby brother who had died of cholera a few moments before our arrival. When I asked one refugee camp director what he would describe as his greatest need, his answer was “a crematorium.” He was in charge of one of the largest refugee camps in the world. A camp which was originally designed to provide low-income and middle-income housing for Indians, but has now become the home for some 170,000 refugees.” (VII)
…
“The disposal of dead bodies has posed a serious sanitation problem. In the Hindu community it is customary for the dead to be cremated, but under the circumstances-including a lack of fuel and crematoriums-this has been almost impossible. In some camps local health authorities regularly remove bodies. In others, however, the disposing of bodies is left in the hands of the families involved…bodies are simply left to decompose in a ditch along the road or at the edges of the camps.” (17)
…
“The next village where we stopped was Mirakati in Barisal district. Our guide, a Hindu, showed us his house, a mound of burned out rubbish from which nothing could be saved. Everything had been burnt to the ground. Every other house in the village was burned out. When we arrived in this village there were no signs of life. However, after a time our guide made signals to a very frightened women who then emerged. She told us that she had seen her husband and child killed and that she is now left alone with one remaining child. Eight days ago the army had came aking her for 100 rupees as payment so that they would leave her alone and unharrassed.
At this village there was a brick and cement school that was still standing but everything inside had been burned out. There are supposedly a hundred survivors from this village who are hiding out in the surrounding villages and who are afraid to come out lest they be caught, or shot, or suffer other reprisals.
Village after village we passed was totally in ruins. Sometimes a frame of a house could be seen and at other times every thing was burned to the ground. One of the villages that we passsed was known by the name of Jagadishpur. One of our mission had visited this village previously just after the army’s reign of terror. In one of the tanks of ponds he counted about 100 heads of persons who had been killed and whose bodies were thrown into the tank.
…
A palpable fear has gripped East Bengal since the devastating night of March 25th. The World Bank Mission, after spending several days traveling throughout East Bengal in early June, was forced to conclude: “Perhaps most important of all, people fear to venture forth and, as a result, commerce has virtually ceased and economic activity generally is at a very low ebb. Clearly, despite improvements in some areas and taking the Province as a whole, widespread fear among the population has persisted beyond the initial phase of heavy fighting. It appears that this is not just a concommitant of the Army extending its control into the countryside and the villages off the main highways, although at this stage the mere appearance of military units often suffices to engineer fear. However, there is also no question that punitive measures by the military are continuing; even if directed at particular elements (such as known or suspected Awami Leaguers, students, or Hindus), these have the effect of fostering fear among the population at large. At the same time, insurgent activity is continuing. This is not only disruptive in itself, but also often leads to massive Army retaliation. In short, the general atmosphere reamins very tense and incompatible with the resumption of normal activities in the Province as a whole.”
Report after Report over the summer months echoed the findings of the World Bank Report-as did hundreds of interviews with refugees in India, including new arrivals, by members of the Subcommittee’s field team. The emergence of Be! ngali guerilla units, known as Mukti Bahini (Liberation Forces), have brought an added dimension to the violence and chaos and fear throughout East Bengal. A dispatch from Faridpur district, published in The New York Times on September 23, describes the continued violence as follows:
*** Nira Pada Saha, a jute trader in Faridpur District told of a reprisal against a village near his that had sheltered and fed the guerillas. Just before he fled five days ago, he related, the army struck the village, first shelling it then burning the huts. “Some of the villagers didnt run away fast enoght,” he said.”The soldiers caught them, tied their hands and feet and threw them into the flames.”
There were about 5,000 people in the village, mostly Hindus, Mr. Saha said, and not a hut is left. According to the refugees, the army leaves much of the “dirty work,” to its civilian collaborators-the razakars, or home guards-it has armed and to the supporters of right-wing religio! us political parties such as the Moslem League and Jamaat-i-Islami, which have usually backed the military regime.
The collaborators act as as intelligence agents and enforcers for the army, the refugees say, by pointing out homes and villages and people who have helped the guerrillas. Often, the refugees added, the collaborators make arrests at random and for no reason. “The razakars and the others come into a village and pick just any house,” said Dipak Kumar Biswas, a radio repairman from Barisal District. “Then they arrest whatever able-bodied young man is in that house and hand him over to the army. We don’t know what the army does to them. They never come back.” (47-49)
In his conclusion, Kennedy states:
“Nothing is more clear, or more easily documented, than the systematic campaign of terror-and its genocidal consequences-launched by the Pakistani army on the night of March 25th. Field reports to the U.S government, countless eye-witness journalistic accounts, reports from international agencies such as the World Bank, and additional information available to the Subcommitte document the continuing reign of terror which grips East Bengal. Hardest hit have been members of the Hindu community who have been robbed of their lands and shops, systematically slaughtered, and, in some places, painted with yellow patches marked “H”. All of this has been officially sanctioned, ordered and implemented under martial law from Islamabad. America’s heavy support of Islamabad is nothing short of complicity in the human and political tragedy of East Bengal.” (66)
Ted Kennedy was a great friend of ours. He stood by our side in 1971 while the US administration was against the independence of Bangladesh.
For a ‘LION’ Senator like I think he was too young to die! He should have lived at least for a century to serve as an American conscience in a world ravaged by conflicts and problems.
RIP.
[Reply]
what a timely and illuminating post. thank you.
[Reply]
Every Bangladeshi immigant in US should be grateful to EMK for passionately supporting the 1965 Immigration Act, which allowed visas for countries of the Eastern Hemisphere, and abolished any numerical limits on the number of relatives who could be naturalized in the US. Previous to the passage of this act, it was illegal for Asians to immigrate to the US.
[Reply]
He fought to his last day for change in the world.
[Reply]
[...] Kennedy, after returning from India in August, told the senate: A traveler today in eastern India cannot help but see, smell, and feel this misery. It is etched [...]
Edward Kennedy, RIP.
[Reply]
In Bangladesh, Ted Kennedy revered
By Saeed Ahmed
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/08/27/bangladesh.kennedy.impact/index.html
(CNN) — The legacy of U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy, who died on Tuesday, spreads far and wide, and across the ocean to now-independent Bangladesh. There, he is still revered for calling attention to what many deemed an unfolding genocide.
It may have started as a politically prudent move by a Democratic senator eyeing the White House during a Republican regime. But Kennedy stood up to the Nixon administration in 1971 and alerted the world to the bloodshed that was engulfing then-East Pakistan.
“In 1971, there were very few leaders from the so-called free world who were paying any attention to what was going on in Bangladesh. And for Ted Kennedy to come forward and to personally visit, the impact was huge,” said Akku Chowdhury, founder and director of Bangladesh’s Liberation War Museum.
“And that’s one thing Bangladeshis have always remembered.”
At the time, the U.S. policy — directed by President Richard Nixon and his National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger — was to resolutely support Pakistan, from which Bangladesh was trying to secede.
The administration’s reasons: The Soviet Union and India had just signed a treaty of friendship, and Nixon was concerned about the expansion of Soviet influence in the region.
Thus, it made strategic sense for the United States to align itself with India’s neighbor, Pakistan.
The United States turned a blind eye to reports of atrocities committed by the Pakistani army to suppress the independence movement — even as U.S. diplomats urged the administration to speak up.
“Our government has failed to denounce the suppression of democracy. Our government has failed to denounce atrocities,” Consul General Archer Blood wrote in one of many telegrams from Dhaka to the U.S. State Department questioning American policy. “But we have chosen not to intervene, even morally, on the grounds that the … conflict, in which unfortunately the overworked term ‘genocide’ is applicable, is purely an internal matter of a sovereign state.”
The “Blood Telegram,” as it came to be known, was reclassified as secret, and Blood transferred out of Dhaka.
Soon after, Kennedy traveled to east India to gauge the plight of displaced Bangladeshis — more than 10 million of whom had sought refuge there.
On his return, he issued a scathing report to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Refugees. The report, “Crisis in South Asia,” spoke of “one of the most appalling tides of human misery in modern times.”
“Nothing is more clear, or more easily documented, than the systematic campaign of terror — and its genocidal consequences — launched by the Pakistani army on the night of March 25th,” he wrote.
“All of this has been officially sanctioned, ordered and implemented under martial law from Islamabad. America’s heavy support of Islamabad is nothing short of complicity in the human and political tragedy of East Bengal.”
The Nixon administration maintained its stance. But Kennedy’s focus on the mass killings came as everyday Americans began to share in the outrage. For instance, Beatle George Harrison’s Concert for Bangladesh, the first benefit event of its kind, was staged to further highlight the plight of Bangladeshi refugees.
Besieged, the U.S. Congress pushed through a bill to ban arms sales to Pakistan.
On December 16, 1971, Bangladesh gained independence after a 10-month struggle, in which 1 million to 3 million Bengalis were killed.
“When the fighting was over, there were vultures almost too fat to fly, and Bangladesh was a land with few of the sinews of nationhood left unsevered,” the National Geographic said in a piece about the birth of the country.
Two months later — in February 1972 — Kennedy flew to Bangladesh and delivered a speech at Dhaka University, where the killing rampage had begun a year earlier.
About 8,000 jubilant students crowded into the university courtyard and jammed lecture hall balconies and roofs, greeting him with chants of “Joi Kennedy” — a variation on the independence slogan of “Joi Bangla.”
In his speech, Kennedy drew parallels between the liberation of Bangladesh and the American Revolution. He said America had prospered despite predictions that it would collapse following independence, and so would Bangladesh.
“Even though the United States government does not recognize you, the people of the world do recognize you,” Kennedy told the crowd.
On the university campus stood a banyan tree where Bengalis student leaders had planted the seeds for the independence movement — and which the Pakistani army had destroyed as a symbolic gesture.
During his visit, Kennedy planted a new tree there.
It still stands today — a testament to a country that overcame long odds to survive and one man who helped champion it.
[Reply]
[...] Voices, a Bangladeshi human rights blog republishes Senator Edward Kennedy's report to the US Senate which articulates the plights of the [...]
[...] Voices, a Bangladeshi human rights blog republishes Senator Edward Kennedy’s report to the US Senate which articulates the plights of the [...]
I admire the way that despite losing presidential face, he didn’t sit on family laurels and exploit the power the name Kennedy held over Americans. He worked hard as a parliamentarian. What a work rate.
[Reply]
[...] “Rezwan” of Global Voices has a great roundup of Bangladeshi blogger reactions to Kennedy’s death, including “Unheard Voice,” which posts Kennedy’s original report to Congress. [...]
Dear Mr. Kennedy. I was there, physically. Both in August 1971 and later in february 1972. I saw what you saw. I felt what you felt. You did your part and I did mine, by joining the Mukti Bahini. The difference between you and me is that I had no choice. I had to do what I did, for me, my family, my people, may nation. You didn’t have to do anything. But still you did. That makes you the better man. Rest in Peace my friend.
[Reply]