East Pakistan: Even the Skies Weep এই ছিল ১৯৭১ সালের ২৫শে অক্টোবর প্রকাশিত টাইম ম্যাগাজিনের একটি নিবন্ধের শিরোনাম।

এখনও সেই নিবন্ধটি পড়লে মুষ্টিবদ্ধ হয়ে আসে হাত। কি নির্মম বর্ণনা একটা জাতিকে নিপীড়নের, হত্যা আর ধর্ষনের। টাইম থেকে উদ্ধৃতি

Though Islamabad has ordered the military command to ease off on its repressive tactics, refugees are still trekking into India at the rate of about 30,000 a day, telling of villages burned, residents shot, and prominent figures carried off and never heard from again. One of the more horrible revelations concerns 563 young Bengali women, some only 18, who have been held captive inside Dacca's dingy military cantonment since the first days of the fighting. Seized from Dacca University and private homes and forced into military brothels, the girls are all three to five months pregnant. The army is reported to have enlisted Bengali gynecologists to abort girls held at military installations. But for those at the Dacca cantonment it is too late for abortion. The military has begun freeing the girls a few at a time, still carrying the babies of Pakistani soldiers.

A Million Dead. No one knows how many have died in the seven-month-old civil war. But in Karachi, a source with close connections to Yahya's military regime concedes: "The generals say the figure is at least 1,000,000." Punitive raids by the Pakistani army against villages near sites sabotaged by the Mukti Bahini, the Bengali liberation army, are an everyday occurrence.


এখন অনেককেই স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধে মৃতের সংখ্যা নিয়ে রাজনীতি করতে দেখা যায়। টাইম এর অক্টোবর নিবন্ধে সংখ্যাটা বলা আছে ১ মিলিয়ন মানে ১০ লক্ষ। যুদ্ধ এর পরেও চলেছে। চলেছে নির্মমমতা। তাদেরকে বলি পড়ুন আর সত্যিকারের ইতিহাসকে জানুন। যদি বাংলাদেশী হয়ে থাকেন তাহলে এটি আপনার দায়িত্ব।

একে নির্মমতা বললেও খুব কম বলা হয়ে যায়
Always Hungry. As conditions within East Pakistan have worsened, so have those of the refugees in India. The stench from poor sanitation facilities hangs heavy in the air. Rajinder Kumar, 32, formerly a clerk in Dacca, says he is "always hungry" on his daily grain ration of 300 grams (about 1½ cups). His three children each get half that much. "They cry for more," he says, "but there isn't any more."

Malnutrition has reached desperate proportions among the children. Dr. John Seamon, a British doctor with the Save the Children Fund who has traveled extensively among the 1,000 or so scattered refugee camps estimates that 150,000 children between the ages of one and eight have died, and that 500,000 more are suffering from serious malnutrition and related diseases.

সবাইকে অনুরোধ করছি ইতিহাসের এই অমূল্য দলিলটি পড়বার জন্য।

এখানে পাবেন টাইম এর নিবন্ধটি