Missionary’s views of Pakistan war

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32706, 8 September 1971, Page 12

Missionary’s views of Pakistan war

The Pakistan civil war did not begin because East Pakistan intended to secede from Pakistan, as was popularly believed, said a missionary from East Pakistan (the Rev. P. McNee). in an interview in Christchurch yesterday.

Mr McNee spent three years in East Pakistan working with the New Zealand Baptist Missionary Society and is home on furlough. He was in East Pakistan when the civil war began. It was reported that the Bengalis wanted to make East Pakistan a separate state but this was not so, said Mr McNee. In a political speech to Bengalis Met May, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, leader of the East Pakistan Awami League, which won a majority of seats in the country’s new National Assembly after the first free elections last December for 12 years, said that East Pakistan did not inexpected he would campaign only for political. independence. East Pakistan needed West Pakistan.- East Pakistan was wealthy. but only in terms of agricultural wealth. Jute, one of the Bengalis major source of income.was continuously declining in demand as it could not compete successfully with synthetics. The country’s industrial wealth was concentrated in West Pakistan.

The Bengali drive for economic autonomy was undermining the financial stability of West Pakistan, and the distance between East and West Pakistan was causing East Pakistan to look to East Asia for its trade from which only East Pakistan was reaping all the benefit, he said. This had been the cause of a grudge against East Pakistan which had gone very deep. It had been part of Pakistani Government propaSnda to attribute the growI split between East and West Pakistan to India, but this was not the case either, he Mid. It had also been part of Government policy to censor all press information leaving the country, so that the reports that the war was settling down, which were re-

leased soon after the invasion of East Pakistan, were nothing-but nonsense. The war was intensifying when he left the countfy three weeks ago, not getting any better, he said.' At present East Pakistan was in a state of famine,but when countries wanted to organise aid the President of Pakistan, Mohammed Yahya Khan, said that no relief would be allowed into East Pakistan unless it went through Government channels in West Pakistan. As « result no relief was given in case West Pakistan took «d--vantage of financial aM for military purposes. , Three weeks ago a United, Nations official had been placed in Pakistan to ensure sasafxxre to ail appearances this had achieved nothing' 'to far, he said, and the famine crisis the threat of Japanese attack in 1942 it folic wed a scorched-earth policy. The same thing was happening in ? East Pakistan now in the face of West Pakistan attack. Crops which had failed in the cyclone earlier this year had resulted in a seed shortage which had become drastic as communications were cut and seed begkn stockpiling and rotting. Refugees were crossing the border at a rate of 40,000 to 50,000 a day. Of a total of 37 Baptist missionaries in a single East ; Pakistan mission area, only two remained. The rest had been evacuated as the war went on. The prevailing - mood in Asia and Pakistan was that there was no solution to the present situation in Pakistan. Asians generally felt that the war in Vietnam was only to be repeated in Pakistan. Mr McNee spent three weeks touring Asia on his way back to New Zealand.