AN exhibition entitled "Liberation and the News Media: Bangladesh 30 years after" was inaugurated on March and continue upto June 22. This was done by the Freedom Forum Asian Centre library, in collaboration with the Liberation War Museum in 1 long Kong and included newspaper clippings from 1971 and marked (he 30th anniversary of (he war. This coincided with (he 5th anniversary of (he IJberationWar Museum.

I he chief guest of the occasion was Akku Chowdhury, Director of the Museum, while the veteran journalist, Claire Hollingworth, Harvey Stockwin (Times of India) and Arnold Zeitlin (Director, Freedom Foundation ) were the main participants of the discussion lor the occasion).

Claire Hollingworth, who began her journalist career as the war correspondent of the Daily Telegraph saw the German attack into Poland in 1939. In 1971 she was in Dhaka during the noncooperation movement until the 27lh morning when along with 31 other foreign journalists she was thrown out of Dhaka by the Pakistan Army. Arnold Zeitlin (then the AP

Pakistan bureau chief) was able to escape the army roundup along with Simon Dring and Michael Lurent (AP photographer who died in 1975 in Vietnam). Harvey Stockwin was with the Financial l imes and in April 1971 he along with six other journalists (Inuis Craw, Malcolm Brown, Mot Rosenblaum, etc) were flown to Bangladesh to show that everything was normal here. As for USA it was the classic case of putting strategic issues before human rights. Stockwin realized that Pakistanis were using Biharis as their tool and could foresee the bloodbath. He recalls that alter thirty years the Bihari issue still remains to be settled. Although the Bangladeshi government have given Biharis citizenship (hey still believe (hat Pakistan will take them. Arnold Zeitlin recalled his first visit to Bangladesh in 1969 when he thought that Bangladesh would be the next Biafra with the breakout of civil war. 1 Ie said that the Pakistanis now realize how much better Bangladesh is doing without Pakistan. Akku Chowdhury, in his turn spoke of (he Liberal ion War, the genocide, and the birth of Bangladesh.