Lines of Hunger from Bangladesh, by © Muhammad Haque 1991, 2012

THIS PUBLICATION is dedicated to
Kay Jordan
who told me on 23 December 201o to “Write the Book”!
This is part of my writing of the
Book.
1705 Hrs GMT London
Sunday
23 December 2012.
Lines of Hunger from Bangladesh: The © Muhammad Haque UPDATER LINES,
21 years on,
on the original
Lines of Hunger from Bangladesh
that I had written in May 1991.
Here are today’s UPDATER lines recalling the campaigning moment when I went to the London office of the UNITED NATIONS ORGANISATION about the urgency to do everything to help the people in Bangladesh who had been affected by the cyclone of 30 April 1991.
It was part of my action that included telling John Major [then the occupant at No. 10 Downing Street, London] to stop uttering banal words and to show that his UK Government was up to the task. That it cared. That it was true to the routinely flaunted claims of the UK valuing human lives and of caring for the victims of natural disasters like the one that had just occurred in Bangladesh killing thousands.
He eventually gave in to the demands and his Govt made direct financial contributions to the then Bangladesh Govt.
I also spent the months that followed the cyclone in getting the UNO to put together a plan to PREVENT the huge casualties that the cyclones and storms were causing

My plan for the UNO was written in a few thousand words under the title “Bangladesh 2001.” This was done while I was battling at the same time to get the UNO’s Geneva based bureaucracy to get off the comfy chairs, as it were and to do the urgent thinking that I was trying to share with them. The lethargy of the UNO that I came across, both in Switzerland and in the USA and the almost lifeless zombie state in which the various personnel in the Bangladeshi “diplomatic missions” across the Western Hemisphere were found in in the weeks and months following the 30 April 1991 cyclone forced me to conclude that I had to do the fast and the comprehensive thinking. And the equally fast and urgent communicating. How to save lives the next time the storm hits? How to prevent such large scale loss of lives. And the related issues. I had written it 1991 bit I gave it the title “ Bangladesh 2001”. In the parts that follow the one below, I shall cover the campaign for relieving hunger and deaths in Bangladesh that I did in 1991 and in the years after that. Here is how I recall the demonstration that I did outside the UNO offices in 1991. I was accompanied by two supporters: Shujata Luptajan and Peter Murray. While Shujata held the action unit together, Peter Murray gave vocal support to my recitation of the lines of hunger from Bangladesh. We took it in turns to read out my lines of hunger from Bangladesh. Peter Murray also read from my lines at a poetry reading event that I organised a few weeks after that in the Whitechapel Road. [Updater on that event in due course] THE LINES OF HUNGER FROM BANGLADESH were written in an inter We stood We stood opposite the tall building we stood opposite the tall London building We stood

to make a stand We stood We made the stand We stood opposite the tall London Building housing the symbols of the huge United Nations bureaucracy thousands of miles away in Geneva in New York NY USA We stood Opposite the tall London building We stood making the stand We stood demanding action We stood we stood clear of the haze of lies spread in the days following the storm that had hit thousands across the coasts of southern Bangladesh the lies spread by Big Biz media manufacturing daily diversions away from the tears of the bereaved bereaved parents bereaved mums bereaved dads bereaved children orphaned babies floating signs floating signs of life floating signs of lives swept away by the harsh killer storm cursing the earth... We stood opposite the tall London building demanding action... [To be continued]