Remarks

Remarks by Chargé d’Affaires, a.i. Judith A. Chammas

Archer K. Blood American Center Library Dedication

The American Center, Dhaka

December 13, 2005

Salaam aleikum and good afternoon.  Thank you for being with us on this important day, as we salute an American diplomat who was a true friend to Bangladesh – Archer Kent Blood.

Imagine making a decision for which you knew you would inevitably pay a price.  Imagine choosing to speak out against brutality and repression, even though you knew your point of view was deeply unpopular and expressing it could cost you your career. How many of us can say we would make such a choice?

Our speakers have recounted the terrible cost of Bangladesh’s independence, the determination of the Bangladeshi people and the actions of one man: Archer Kent Blood.  His former colleagues, friends, family, and his many admirers salute Mr. Blood for his integrity and his insistence on following his conscience.  These values – integrity, honesty, and holding oneself and one’s country to a higher standard – may seem old-fashioned today.  Disagreeing with official policy has been described as “career suicide,” “foolhardy,” and “headstrong.”  I would label it another way: courageous.

It takes one kind of courage to be a military man, which Mr. Blood was, as a member of the U.S. Navy during World War II.  It takes another kind of courage to be a good family man.  As a husband and father to four children and grandfather to eight, Mr. Blood also had that kind of courage.  And to be an eloquent speaker and writer, an avid reader, and a compassionate individual demands another kind of courage.  But Mr. Blood’s single most courageous act was the sending of the so-called “Blood Telegram.”

In this message to Washington, he used the term “selective genocide” to describe the targeted killings in Bangladesh, and urged President Nixon and Secretary of State Kissinger to intervene.  “Here in Dacca we are mute and horrified witnesses to a reign of terror by the Pakistani military…”  His American colleagues ended the telegram with “We, as professional civil servants, express our dissent with current policy and fervently hope that our true and lasting interests here can be defined and our policies redirected."

The Blood telegram eventually influenced the U.S. Congress to act in favor of an independent Bangladesh and swayed American public opinion.  It has been described as “the most public and the most strongly worded demarche from the State Department servants to the State Department that has ever been recorded.”  It earned Mr. Blood the Christian A. Herter Award from the Department of State – an award that recognizes creative dissent as essential to a strong democracy.

It would have been easy for Consul General Blood to avert his eyes from the genocide, to soften the images of violence and despair.  But he was determined to make sure the voices of the suffering Bengali people were heard in Washington and around the world.  Joe Galloway, a senior military correspondent for Knight Ridder newspapers, was allowed on a tightly controlled tour arranged by the Pakistani Army – a tour designed to rebut accusations of genocide.  Mr. Galloway met with Archer Blood at the Consulate. Though the Consul General had been officially “silenced,” Galloway writes:
 
“Blood said he couldn't speak, but he had scores of Bengalis on the consulate staff. He pointed to an office across the hall and said: "It's yours for as long as you need it. Those staffers who want to tell you their stories will come visit you there." For the better part of a day I listened to men and women who wept as they told how parents, siblings, even children had died in Dhaka and in towns from Chittagong to Naryanganj to the hill country tea plantations.”

Joe Galloway was the first and one of the very few who were able to tell the world the truth about events in Bangladesh, thanks to Archer K. Blood.

One of the basic tenets of any democracy – Bangladeshi or American – is the people’s right to information.  Information is the lifeblood of democracy: if people are barred from reading, exploring, studying, making their own decisions about their lives and the world, democracy withers and dies.  It seems fitting that the American Center Library be named after Consul General Blood, a writer, a reader, and a tireless advocate of the people’s right to know.

We opened our circulating library a few months ago with high hopes – that the people of Bangladesh would visit “this little corner of America,” and bring our two countries closer together.  I hope that the users of the Archer K. Blood American Center Library will always have the spirit of Consul General Blood: unafraid, resolute, and relentless in their search for the truth. 

We are deeply honored to have so many friends and family of Archer K. Blood with us today.  I would like to thank, first and foremost, Mrs. Margaret Blood, her daughter Shireen Updegraff, and her son Peter Blood for traveling so far to be here today. 

A note of special recognition to the American Center Library Director, Mahtab Uddin Ahmad.  Mahtab has been devoted to serving the American and Bangladeshi people for 22 years, first at the Library of Congress, then at USIS, and now at the Archer K. Blood American Center Library.  This is Mahtab’s last official event before he and his family depart for a new life in the United States.  We wish him all the best.

Thanks to Mr. Blood’s colleagues, members of the diplomatic corps, and the family’s lifelong friend Shahudul Haque.  To Kaiser Huq, we thank you for your gift of poetry and its ability to say the unsayable about the tragic events of ’71. 

Finally, to the freedom fighters in attendance, thank you, more than words can say.

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Note:  A Bangla translation of this article is also available from the American Center.  If you are interested in the translation, please call the American Center Press Section (Tel: 8813440-4, Fax: 9881677; e-mail: DhakaPA@state.gov; Website: dhaka.usembassy.gov