Word: nigerian
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...hauling crates of food and medicines. Eventually, crews as varied as their airplanes - Swedes, Finns, Americans, a stolid Yorkshireman, a not so dour Scot - screech up in cars and climb aboard. One by one, at 20-minute intervals, the cargo planes lumber down the runway, turn northward toward the Nigerian coast. Late afternoon sunlight splashes on little blue and gold fish, the fuselage emblems of the interfaith airlift organized by the World Council of Churches and the Catholic relief organization Caritas to shuttle food to starving Biafra...
...flying time from Sāo Tomé, is shrunken Biafra's lone remaining link with the world, the night shuttle frequently hauls passengers as well. A visitor has to be nerveless to endure the trip. Approaching the coast at dusk, the planes are occasionally shot at by Nigerian antiaircraft batteries. When they reach Uli, homing in on the airfield's radio beacon, they face worse harassment from a twin-engine Nigerian Ilyushin the pilots call "the Intruder." The Ilyushin hovers over blacked-out Uli every night for four hours, drops 500-lb. bombs from time to time...
...sound public health policies with many physicians, nurses, hospitals, and clinics. Following the slaughter of 40,000 Ibos in 1966, about two million Ibos and other minority groups left their positions throughout Nigeria and fled to Biafra. Additional refugees continue to pour into Biafra to avoid capture by the Nigerian troops who have gained a reputation for slaughtering whole villages...
...condition in any of the camps they visited. Mass feedings must be made under the most difficult of situations: distribution centers and refugee camps are bombed and strafed if any large numbers of people are visible in the daylight. Red Cross insignias are singled out for special attention by Nigerian bombers. Mayer saw one European engaged in working on the Biafran side of the war front carry 117 dying children in his truck to a hospital in a single night...
...fundamental action needed to alleviate suffering in the Nigerian civil war is an immediate ceasefire, for this is the only way that food and medical relief can be adequately provided. 2) The atrocities being inflicted upon Biafrian civilians must be halted. 3) The Biafrans need a greatly expanded tonnage of relief supplies, especially food. To accomplish this,, in addition to the relief plane flights, a sea or land corridor must be opened up under international control. Only this method would be able to furnish Biafrans with the six to eight thousand tons of relief supplies needed each week...