Problems in Bangladesh

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32873, 23 March 1972, Page 14

Problems in Bangladesh

The state of Bangladesh today defied description, Dr H. K. Mahanty, a Bengali and lecturer in botany at the University of Canterbury, told a meeting of the Canterbury branch of the Royal Commonwealth Society on Tuesday evening. "The streets and bach yards are still covered with the corpses of the innocent, its rivers and ponds are swollen with decomposed . bodies of Bengalis, and the i cry of 200,000 ravished girls and anguished mothers, ol i thousands of victimised Biharis, and of 10 million rei turned refugees fills the air,*' he said. Without the leadership ol Sheik Mukib Rahman the new country would not be viable. He had a magnetic power over his people, said Dr Mahanty. This was especially evident when he told them to disarm in the face oi possible butchery by the Mukti Bahini for doing so.

At present the country was a . facing a deficit of 1A mil- • Hon tons of food grain for n t the year, and a badly dam- v » aged communications net- n e work. The Soviet Union had f< . pledged to help reconstruct f the communications system, l India had offered S3O million v “ to help the economy get on 0 I- its feet, and the United Na- a I- tions had promised a supply c of 200,000 tons of food grain a & every month. g h Besides the problem of the s L repatriated refugees who •e still had to be rehabilitated, tl d Bangladesh faced a very spe- >' , e cial and tragic problem in the « Is future of its ostracised 1* >f women raped by West Pakis-o d tan soldiers. Under Moslem * 5- religious law they were no 6 '» longer accepted by their hus- a bands and foe status of their B children would be changed. e These women needed to be ? e given land and money to es- ® c tablish them and to provide * d a dowry for husbands, said * i- Dr Mahanty. ’ d New Zealand and Austra- 6 if lia could play a significant r e role in the restoration of ” Bangladesh by setting up

agricultural and dairy firms. The recovery of the jute mills would be stow, but jute would continue to be the main foreign exchange earner i for . I If any lessons could be learned from the Pakistani war it would be that religious grounds were hot; always a basis for the division of a country, and that being the; ally of a great power was no guarantee against being left stranded, said Dr Mahanty. Before and during the war the world hrd remained cynically callous to the situation! in India and Pakistan. Mr Nixon refute veracity of the reports coming from East Pakistan, Britain chose to call the war an internal matter, It was impossible to put all the blame cm to West Pakistan’s President, Yahya! Khan. “The poor man was a victim of circumstances. He was delaying all the time, believing that he would be rescued somehow from the mess he was in,” said Mr! Mahanty. I