Word: biafrans
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...unexpected boost from President Charles de Gaulle. In a communiqué, the French government declared that the conflict should be settled "on the basis of the right of peoples to govern themselves"-the first such commitment favoring Biafra by a European nation. "This strengthens our hand at Addis," exclaimed Biafran Information Minister Ifegwu Eke. "And if the talks break down, our African friends will be prepared to take the issue to the United Nations." Only four African nations-Zambia, Ivory Coast, Tanzania and Gabon-have so far recognized Biafra. But it is entirely possible that the French declaration may move...
...also does not accord with the facts concerning the obstacles to the current "food for Biafra" projects. The Vatican, the International Red Cross, the London Times, the New York Times (to mention only a few) have consistently stated that if the relief efforts are to have any impact on Biafran starvation, food must be transported by land from the rest of Nigeria, because of the inadequacy of airport facilities in what remains of Biafra. The Nigerian Government would surely be responsible for Biafran starvation if she refused to permit the transportation of the badly needed food. Fortunately this...
...short, what is happening, according to a recent editorial in the London Times, is that the Biafran regime is playing politics with the lives of innocent children. They seem to be more interested in the potential political capital which our natural sympathies for suffering children may produce, rather than in the lives of the children themselves...
Thus the primary responsibility for the present mass starvation in Biafra rests with the secessionist leaders. They cannot be meaningfully excused from any ethical exercise we may engage in on the Nigerian war. At the very least Biafran leaders are guilty of gross deceit. Only a few months ago they were proudly announcing to the world that the Biafran economy was running efficiently in spite of the war. At the time, these leaders considered it politically expedient to "prove" the viability of secessionist Biafra outside of a Nigerian federation. Nigerian reports of mass hunger were rejected out of hand...
...course, serious students of African politics do not find this callous concealment of the truth surprising. They know that the majority of the Biafran leaders currently parading the world as tribal heroes with synthetic slogans of autochthonous virtues are the same politicians who, in concert with other members of the old Nigerian political class, ruthlessly exploited the Nigerian masses without regard to ethnicity only a few years ago. These tribal patriarchs of today were the nationally convicted rogues of yesterday. When the Nigerian masses were revolting against their exploitation in pre-coup Nigeria, the foreign minister, an Ibo, was busy...