Help is not optional: Operation Omega to Bangladesh

There was so much violence around the birth of Bangladesh in 1971 and the subsequent India-Pakistan war that nonviolent actions are largely overlooked.  Operation Omega, however, was an important activity and set out principles that were later developed by others as humanitarian intervention and the Right to Protect. Operation Omega was created by editors and some readers of the English newspaper Peace News.  Most were affiliated with the War Resisters’ International (WRI), some with the English Fellowship of Reconciliation (1).  The name itself was taken from the writings of the French Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin for whom the Point Omega is the force that draws humanity forward — called God by the more theistic-minded. “The world would not function if there did not exist somewhere ahead in time, in space, a cosmic ‘Point Omega’ of total synthesis”. Even the Indian Gandhian movement was divided in 1971 on the legitimacy of the use of armed force to reverse the mass flood of refugees into India.

A word of background for those who were not following the 1971 events: In 1947 at the time of the independence of British India and the integration of the Princely states, there was a division largely based on the majority religion of an area.  India was a majority Hindu area, but the Congress Party leadership led by Nehru insisted on its secular character.  Pakistan was born as an Islamic state, created of two areas: West Pakistan with the Punjab as the dominant cultural force and East Pakistan in part of Bengal — the other half of Bengal was part of India.  There was no historic, cultural or linguistic link between Bengal and Punjab other than having shared an English colonial status which influenced the way the army was organized and the civil service structure.  The two wings of Pakistan shared the fact that they were Muslim-majority areas and even there, the Islam was largely culturally different. Over a 1000 miles separated the two parts of Pakistan with India between the two.

Pakistan quickly became a military-led dictatorship with elections largely meaningless, but political parties continued in existence.  Every so often, the Pakistan army would return the government to civilian rule under its watchful eye.  In December, 1970, the first national elections were held.

The Awami League — the East Pakistan political party led by Sheik Mujib Rahman – the ‘father of Bangladesh ‘ — won a majority of the seats in the national assembly.  The government of Pakistan refused to convene the national assembly since it would result in shifting political control from West to East Pakistan.  The military-led government and the Awami League attempted to negotiate a political settlement.  However on 25 March, 1971, the government of General Yahya Khan broke off negotiations and arrested Mujib Rahman who was put into prison in West Pakistan.  The West Pakistan army then invaded East Pakistan, attacking Dacca, the major city, and deliberately killing a large number of civilians.  A refugee flow began into India, especially to Indian Bengal, that would reach some 10 million persons.

Justice Abu Sayyed Choudhury, a leading Bengal judge, was sent to New York to try to present the fate of East Pakistan to the United Nations.  He was helped by Rev. Homer Jack, an FOR member and at the time Secretary-General of the World Conference on Religion and Peace.  However, most government representatives in New York said that the fighting was an ‘internal matter’, and the Security Council refused to act. Homer Jack, a long-time friend, sent Justice Choudhury to me in Geneva to see if the diplomatic milieu at the UN in Geneva was more open to taking a stand.  Although the Pakistani Ambassador to Switzerland (not to the UN) resigned over the killings, the diplomats in Geneva could not have different views from those in New York as policies are set in the respective Foreign Ministries not by the UN delegations.  We saw many people, but no action was taken at the time.

However by July 1971, 23 international NGOs with representatives in Geneva signed a joint written statement for the session of the UN Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities which met in Geneva.  John Salzberg of the Geneva-based International Commission of Jurists presented the text in an oral statement.  The Sub-Commission, supposedly a body of independent experts, refused to act on the issue.  Only Branimir Jankovic of Yugoslavia spoke to the issue.

As John Salzberg later wrote, “The United Nations never deliberately considered the massacre of at least several hundred thousand persons and the perpetration of other forms of gross violations of human rights in Bangladesh, formerly East Pakistan, from March to December 1971.  The UN’s non-response to these tragic events represents a serious omission in the exercise of its responsibility to promote human rights.  Prompt UN consideration of the human rights violations when they were first reported might have prevented further violations as well as the secession of Bangladesh from Pakistan and the hostilities between India and Pakistan.  The Bangladesh experience vividly illustrates the inextricable relationship between the UN Charter’s principles of promoting human rights and maintaining international peace and security.  It also illustrates, unfortunately, that member states consider that the Charter’s principle of non-interference in matters essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of a member state may prohibit UN intervention until a situation reaches a level of international conflict incapable of a non-violent solution.”

With government unwilling to act through the United Nations, non-governmental organizations had to take the lead.  The large relief organizations were banned from going into East Pakistan, and at the time, relief organizations which had to work with governments in other contexts were unwilling to go against government orders.  Thus the lead was taken by an ad-hoc group led by editors of the London-based Peace News, the War Resisters’ International and a network of nonviolent activists including the (UK) FOR. The founding statement said “We Believe that no boundary is legitimate which attempts to separate those in pain from those who can help.  Human beings do not need permission to come to the aid of fellow human beings threatened with death and disease. Operation Omega to Bangladesh could mark the beginning of a new era: an era in which governments will have to deal directly with the ‘human factor’.  No longer will they have the luxury of ignoring letters, petitions, resolutions, and cries at a distance, instead they will have to deal with the stubborn flesh and blood of those who are compelled to act by the very definition of what it is to be human.”

The organization took the name Omega and the vision of Teilhard de Chardin written in China during the dark days of the Second World War: “Everyone wants something larger, finer, better for mankind.  Scattered throughout the apparently hostile masses which are fighting each other, there are elements everywhere which are only waiting for a shock in order to re-orientate themselves and unite.  All that is needed is that the right ray of light should fall upon these men as upon a cloud of particles, that an appeal should be sounded which responds to their internal needs, and across all denominations, across all the conventional barriers which still exist, we shall see the living atoms of the universe seek each other out, find each other and organize themselves.”

However, WRI is not a regular relief organization with a mailing list of those who regularly donate to relief causes.  Thus it took from mid-May when the idea was agreed upon to mid-August 1971 to have Land Rovers and supplies on the frontier between India and East Pakistan.  The aim, as an August statement stressed, was to crash “the artificial, unnatural and immoral boundary erected by an army to stop aid reaching its own citizens, and thus to establish a human precedent which will be followed not only in India and Pakistan but in similar conflict situations throughout the world.  Members of the mission are pledged to non-violence.  They will be completely unarmed and are prepared to face the risk of arrest or death.”

In order to stress this principle, four team members, two women, two men, and two vehicles crossed into East Pakistan at a major crossing point held by the Pakistan army.  As could be expected, the four were arrested and the vehicles and supplies taken by the army.  They were placed in jail for 10 days in a nearby large town.  Prior to the trial, they were in touch with the British and American consulates who contacted the Pakistan government.  At the trial, the four refused to plead and stated their non-acceptance of the court’s authority.  As Ben Crow, one of the team members, wrote “The magistrate smiled and took what we said as a plea of guilty and with no further ado, sentenced us — a few hours further detention and ordered to return to our home countries, not passing through India.”  The team members were flown to Dacca and then to the UK.

The principle having been clearly stated, most of the 10 other crossings with relief supplies were done from crossing points controlled by the Mukti Bahini, the Bangladesh insurgent army.  In addition to bringing some relief supplies, the team members carried out evaluations of needs.

Operation Omega members were in touch with Gandhian movements in India.  Narayan Desai, who later became President of WRI, had proposed a ‘Freedom March’ in which some 50,000 refugees would re-cross the frontier as a ‘nonviolent liberation force’.  However, under the pressure of what was estimated to be ten million refugees moving into India from East Pakistan, the Indian army attacked the Pakistan forces in East Pakistan on 2 December.  Since the bulk of the Pakistan army was in West Pakistan and unsure if India might attack there as well, no reinforcements were flown to East Pakistan.  The Indian army in a lightning move took Dacca by 21 December 1971, and the new state of Bangladesh was officially proclaimed.

The Indian army stayed on for some months to prevent revenge killings, especially against the Biharis.  The Biharis were Indian Muslims, many from the poor and densely populated state of Bihar, who had gone to East Pakistan in search of employment — some one and a half million people.  The Biharis were considered as ‘collaborators’ since they had not joined in the demands of Bengali nationalism.  However, the West Pakistan government did not want to transfer them to West Pakistan since the Beharis had never lived there.  The Indian government did not want to take them back to India since at least a quarter of a million had opted for Pakistani citizenship while working in East Pakistan.  The Biharis often lived together in a common neighbourhood — a ghetto — and so were easily recognized and could be attacked by mobs.

Some of the Omaga team stayed on in Bangladesh after independence and worked for reconciliation between Biharis and Bengalis.  Unfortunately, this was a very difficult task; the Biharis became a poor underclass in a Bangladesh that was economically stagnant. In 1975 there began a series of military coups followed by military rule until 1991 when civilian rule was restored, though the military remain a strong force in the country.

The Operation Omega effort is seldom mentioned in accounts of non-violent action.  However, the concept that governments should not be able to prevent relief supplies from those in need has become a widely accepted value.  Thus as Teilhard de Chardin had said when the right ray of light — or the right idea falls — people find each other and organize themselves.
 
(1) See an account in the history of the WRI written by its long-time Secretary General Devi Prasad War is a crime against humanity: The Story of War Resisters’ International (London: War Resisters’ International, 2005, 556pp.)