BENGALI WORKERS FACE LIVING ON PIG FOOD

Bengali workers beg in ist-inspired and grown since the war little of the streets of towns while the Lal Bahini. it reaches the silent mills Workers' anger has been many of them run by penniless villagers are forced to live fanned by the unrestricted pro- and allegedly inept Awami on food normally fed to fiteering of middlemen and the League officials brought in after pigs, according to a man sight of unbridled corruption Pakistani employers left. who has recently returned among whole layers of Awami League officials. dlemen who carry the jute Instead peasants sell to midfrom Bangladesh. Mujib gave urban workers across the border to India Kaled Yousuf told me that a limited pay rise when he came to power and peasants were where they can be sure of payshortages of foreign exchange given marginal tax concessions. Workers' protests are stoneindustry and opposition to the have paralysed Bangladesh materials, manufactured goods Apart from shortages of raw if pressed often invite visits walled by the government and mounting. Awami League government was and food, prices have risen by about 300 per cent and no from detachments of the Lal Bahini.

Veteran peasant leader moves have been made to alle- Yousuf claimed that the Maulana Bashani has organized viate the suffering of millions myth ofch includes i aruptidy nationwide mass hunger mar- of landless peasants. ches for September 5. Kaled Yousuf told me that from liberals to Naxalites—was the people a constitution of He has also pledged to offer ing idle industrial workers were with mills and factories stand- being used in the same way as after the war persecution of his own on October 15 if by being forced back to their the Biharis was used to divert then Sheikh Mujib has not already hard-pressed villages. attention from the problems announced a constitution and Among men with large families facing the country. returned full civil rights to the there were even a few cases of people. suicide. Yousuf said that only a masMeanwhile Mujib's police In the villages, millions of sive injection of international have stepped up their arrests peasants are living on a mix- aid could save Mujib's govof left-wing journalists and ture of ghechu roots and rice. ernment from unleashing a fullmilitants, censorship has been Ghechu is a root normally fed scale repression against workimposed and strikes are to pigs. ers and peasants in Bangla banned. According to Yousuf few In northern Bangladesh units peasants actually fought for the Under the existing governof the Indian and Bangladeshi Awami League in the war ment even the usefulness of aid armies have been putting down against Pakistan and although was in question. Most of it armed rural guerrillas who had their plight was bad before never found its way past the set up Maoist-style 'base areas' post-war shortages and the already rich he claimed. in which they had redistributed ravages of the fighting, now it The Awami League he said land and set up a system of has been intensified. now face a crisis they know government and education. Mujib's base, said Yousuf, they cannot solve and which Faced with growing despera- was largely among the rich, the they never wanted. tion and unrest among workers students and the urban work- He quoted ex-Prime Minister and peasants Mujib has ers who thought their wages Tajuddin Ahmed as saying: given free reign to the Lal would benefit if Pakistani ex- 'Before God we tried to preBahini ('Red Army')-an orga- ploiters were driven out. serve the nation of Pakistan nization of poor and mainly In practice foreign exchange in spite of the oppression, backward workers led by shortages have meant that des- neglect and servitude inflicted Abdul Mannen, ex-secretary of troyed factories cannot be rethe UK Bengali Workers' Asso- placed nor new plants built. Having inflamed the passions ciation-who act as shock Sixty-five per cent of industry of millions of workers as a troops against the protesting —jute, oil, steel etc is work- lever on Yahya Khan the organized workers. ing below capacity because of same passions now threaten Demands for workers' con- the cessation in supplies of Mujib unless he can start trol in the state run indus- raw materials. the factories and provide food tries are branded as commun- Although jute has been and homes on a mass scale.