THE POGROM: Reminiscence And Events That Bear Witness

COMPILED AND EDITED BY AMBROSE EHIRIM


"There are no exact numbers on the scale of the human tragedy gathering in Biafra. But all our sources do agree that more than a million people are likely to be in danger of starvation... There would be no question about evacuating the 5500 U.S. citizens or sacrificing the $300 million private investment on the Federal side if these stood in the way of relief. The heart of our dilemma, however, is that our instinctive moral concern and involvement with this tragedy cannot be separated from the political tangle..."

--------- Henry A. Kissinger, Memorandum For President Richard Nixon, The White House, Tuesday, January 28, 1969




World's first super model, British-born Jean Shrimpton joins a group of anti-Igbo Pogrom protesters campaigning to end the killing of women and children on the steps of the Shaftsberry Memorial in Picadilly Circus, Westminster, London. Image: Hulton Archive/Getty



Nurse Elva Peterson feeding starving Igbo children from effects of the 'Economic Blockade' initiated and orchestrated by Obafemi Awolowo. Image: Bettmann Collection




A starved to death child. Image: Gilles Caron.




Biafran Refugees flee Owerri upon advancement of the federal troops. Image: Associated Press, 1968'



Biafran children at the Umuosu Refugees Feeding Center await instructions, handouts, and distribution of food. Image: Kevin Doheny/Biafra: Forgotten Mission, TG4

Biafran children waiting for turn at the Mbaise Food Distribution Center September 1968. Image: Biafra Forgotten Mission, TG4 via Independent Irish News




A member of a US medical missions team, working with the ICRC in Biafra, in April 1968. Image: ICRC via Remembering Biafra


Holy Ghost missionaries and Biafran children pose for a photo promoting the Evening Herald’s fund-raising appeal. For a generation of Irish men and women, the word ‘Biafra’ conjures up such images of missionary nuns, brothers and priests distributing food, administering medicine and bearing witness to the war’s impact among their local communities. (Holy Ghost Fathers). Biafra was the world’s first televised famine. Image: Holy Ghost Fathers/Kevin O, Sullivan

Malnourished children, at the Queen Elisabeth Hospital in Umuahia, are being relentlessly rescued by humanitarian organizations mobilized during the Pogrom, a symbol of starvation in Yakubu Gowon's-led genocidal campaign. Image: Rue Des Archives/GDR

Women, children and their belongings flee the city of Aba and wall tens of miles to Umuahia for refuge. Image: Getty.


Biafran refugees in Nnewi upon invasion by the vandals.

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