Biafra and human rights
Sir: Of your courtesy: I think I may have been among the first non-Jewish -writers in these islands to welcome publicly the setting up of the State of Israel in 1948, in the then- Jewish Standard. I was certainly among the first 'of the Irish writers to do so. And Israel's cause was by no means as popular in Britain then as it may be today.
Today, I hope to be among the first who will soon welcome the setting up and recognition de facto if not at once de jure of the State of Biafra. I am aware the British government is opposed tooth and nail to the concept -nf an independent Biafra; but then British govern- ments have always been opposed to any real independence of virtually anyone else, tooth and nail! (See how today they don't think of telling the Falkland Islanders somehow to stand on their own feet, as they must, and make what accommodation they can with other nearer neighbours!. No, they want to hand the poor Falklanders over to some other virile pater- nalism!)
However, the Biafran Minister of Informa- tion is reported to have said 'Give us indepen- dence or nothing,' which is the same thing as `Give me liberty or give me death,' and who among us has the right to deny that indepen- dence, that liberty? There is nothing whatever of morality in the present government's addic- tion to the concept of 'one Nigeria'; or of mere logic, for that matter. Do I have to ask why it is that force cannot be used against Mr Smith's regime in Rhodesia, but is admissible against Biafra, even though to the point of blockade, famine and the bombing of Red Cross hospitals; to a possible final 'scattering' of the Ibo people and their associated tribes in Biafra that will bulk far larger in history than the scattering of the Jews under Tiberius or Hitler, or the scatter- ing of the Irish by the Tudors and in the Famines of the '40s?
Mr Angus Buchanan (Letters, 13 December) supplies an answer which seems to reflect that of the current British establishment, when he says that the Ibo cause is based on 'treachery, murder, assassination [does he mean that assas- sination isn't murder?), mutiny, piracy, sabo- tage, theft, hi-jacking and sheer downright power-hungry ambitions.' Ab, yes—just so was the Irish cause described, over whole genera- tions! And so, only yesterday, was the Israeli cause in Palestine described. Hence, I find this overheated description encouraging, and repeat that 1 hope to be among the first to hail the setting up of an independent state of Biafra! And I look forward to the downfall of all coer- cionists, be they Russians in Czechoslovakia, or Federationists in Nigeria, who would force and bend other peoples to their intolerant will: Be- cause 1 think through liberty only can any of us find our true identities, not least in Africa.
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