A country without a conscience?
Next week sees the second anniversary of the Nigerian invasion of Biafra. the event which marked the start of the bloodiest war on the face of the earth. It may also prove to be a week in which more inno- cent children die than ever before in the history of the world. This is no fanciful exaggeration—would that it were. Last Tuesday the sober, reticent, Swiss Presi- dent of the International Red Cross, M Naville, summoned a special press con- ference in order to warn the world that, in his own words, 'hundreds of thousands of children will starve in the next few days alone, unless food supplies to Biafra can be resumed.' And this will occur. he added, because of the policy of the Federal Nigerian government and the 'role of some non-African powers.' The policy to which M Naville referred is that of the deliberate starvation of the civilian population of Biafra. The role of the non- African powers is that of providing the military means to enable the Nigerian government to implement this murderous policy. And the non-African powers who are the subject of M Naville's unpre- cedented public indictment are Russia and Britain.
Less than twenty-four hours earlier the Foreign Secretary had been given the opportunity to present to Parliament the British government's case. Reports of starvation in Biafra are greatly exagger- ated, he assured the House of Commons, calling in aid Colonel Ojukwu's statement of 1 June that we seem to have overcome the imminent danger of mass starvation and now it appears after this crisis that we can look forward to comparative plenty.' Now Mr Stewart must have known perfectly well that at that time. on I June, an average of forty planes a night were landing at Uli airstrip in Biafra. Mr Stewart also knows that four days later, on 5 June, the Nigerian Air Force deliberately shot down a Red Cross relief plane, clearly marked, killing its four occupants; and that soon afterwards, after further evidence of the Nigerian MiGS' new-found accuracy, all Red Cross flights and virtually all other relief flights into Biafra came to an end. There are now just three planes landing at Uli every other night, and the local representatives of the Red Cross, Joint Church Aid and other Christian charities are at their wits' end as they watch the queues of starving
children they are unable to do anything to help. Mr Stewart has certainly suc- ceeded in proving Colonel Ojukwu a poor prophet. but this hardly justifies a deliberate attempt to mislead the House about the true situation in Biafra.
Perhaps Mr Stewart, who has no direct evidence of conditions there, considers M Naville and the representatives of the Churches on the ground (who have) to be liars. If so. it would be interesting to know his reasons. It would also be inter- esting to know how many child deaths a day through starvation Mr Stewart con- siders tolerable. This we have not yet been told. Mr Stewart did, however, find time to praise the Nigerian government for having been prepared to allow, over the past two years, breaches in its block- ade of Biafra. know of no historical parallel,' he enthused to the House 'to a government engaged in war being pre- pared to do that'. The truth of the matter is that at no time have the Nigerians will- ingly allowed their attempted total block- ade to be breached. All that has happened is that, in the past, the Egyptian mercen- aries who flew their mics failed to shoot the relief planes down, and preferred easier targets like hospitals; now, with new (thought to be East German) pilots, possi- bly helped by a new radar guidance system, the position has been transformed.
If the Nigerians, once they discovered that a quick military victory was beyond their capabilities (for all their lavish sup- plies of arms from Britain and Russia), had ever wavered in their policy of starv- ing the Biafrans into submission, however great the cost in human life, why is it that they bombed Obilago airstrip within hours of its being demilitarised by the Biafrans and handed over to the Red Cross exclusively for relief work? Why is it that they have kicked the distinguished Red Cross representative out of Nigeria altogether, and announced that in future all relief supplies must be handled en- tirely by the Nigerian military govern- ment? Why, indeed, is it that both Nigeria's Chief of Staff and the leading civilian in its government have in the past few days openly admitted to a deliberate policy of starvation?
Mr Stewart, after glibly referring to 'the four million lbos living in peace and go- ing about their business under the Nigerian regime' (this again is. incident. ally. untrue: numbers apart, all the evid- ence indicates that, outside Lagos itself, the Ibos living under Federal rule are everywhere harassed and victimised), claimed again on Tuesday that everything was Colonel Ojukwu's fault for failing to allow daylight relief flights into Uli. In fact, the Biafrans agreed to daylight relief flights a fortnight ago; whereupon the Nigerians refused to permit them unless Biafra gave up flying what little arms it can get hold of in by night. This is still the position. Yet Mr Stewart still has the temerity to argue that there is no evidence that the Nigerians arc attempting to starve the Ibos and other inhabitants of Biafra.
As a result. Britain stands in the dock alongside Russia, indicted before the whole world by the President of the Inter- national Red Cross for the most inhuman crime known to man. When govern- ment spokesmen discuss the Brooke affair, they claim to be motivated by the fact that we have different values, more humane ethics, attach a greater import- ance to the sanctity of human life than do the Russians. Hundreds of thousands of starving Biafran women and children must be hard put to tell the difference. Yet why is it that the overwhelming majority of Members of Parliament see no reason to demand that the British government at last gives evidence of its much-vaunted influence with Lagos by in- sisting that this mass starvation is averted and Red Cross and Joint Church Aid relief flights resumed without further de- lay? A failure of imagination? This. cer- tainly, is part of the answer.
But there is more to it than that. For too long the Conservatives have tacitly taken it as read that the Labour party. the party of protest, represents the con- science of the nation. If a course of action is immoral, then those Labour chaps will be quick to point it out--and if they don't then it must be all right. So that now, when we find ourselves with a Labour government as defective morally as it is in the practical management of the nation's affairs, with a group of ministers whose hands are more deeply stained with inno- cent blood than those of any British government this century, there is no effect- ive opposition whatever. And so, today, we stand, alongside Russia, in the dock of responsible world opinion, branded as a country without a conscience.
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