BROTHER Uses Money From Colleges To Help Send Relief Missions to Biafra

After a recent unsuccessful effort to launch a relief ship to Biafra, "BROTHER"--a Cambridge-based group of students--is now supporting relief flights to the secessionist African nation.

BROTHER is collecting money from approximately 80 colleges across the nation to finance its new project. The major contributions so far have come from the University of California at Santa Barbara ($1900), B.U. ($1568), Brandeis ($1300), M.I.T. ($800), and U.C.L.A. ($600).

Phillip Whitten, a second-year student at the Graduate School of Education and chairman of BROTHER (Biafran Rescue Organization to Hasten Emergency Relief), said that the group has also raised about $4000 from personal contributions by Harvard professors and students, and from collection boxes in Harvard Square.

BROTHER is using money primarily to support one of the 56 flights made every week by the Church World Service (CWS) to bring food, medicine, and other relief supplies into Biafra. Each flight costs about $2000, with the money needed in order to secure a charter and to pay the pilot and navigator.

Whitten said that BROTHER also has arranged the sending of $5000 to Terre des Hommes, a Swiss-based humanitarian organization which finances the flying of starving Biafran children to other African countries.

BROTHER sent $100 yesterday to the Biafran Association, an organization which aids in the rehabilitation of Biafrans in refugee camps. Whitten's group also has sent $1600 to Abie Nathan, Israeli peace pilot to help finance his missions to Biafra. BROTHER has channeled about $3000 in personal contributions to CWS and to the Catholic Relief Service (Caritas).

Whitten said that BROTHER is applying pressure on American government officials to take some action regarding the Biafran crisis. This pressure has taken the form of telegrams, telephone calls, letters, and personal visits to selected congressmen and administration officials. Whitten claimed that Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's Biafran speech on Sept. 24 was partially the result of Kennedy's talks with BROTHER agents.

The Committee for Nigerian-Biafra Relief, an organization which Whitten founded along with BROTHER, has screened over 600 people to do relief work in Biafra, Whitten said. Ten of them have been accepted by such organizations as UNICEF, the American Friends, and the Lutheran World Service, he added.

The relief situation in Biafra, Whitten stated, has become "much worse." Carbohydrate malnutrition has aggravated protein malnutrition, and over 1.1 million died of starvation already, he said.

Whitten called "completely unfounded" the statement attributed to Samuel Gonard, president of the International Red Cross, in the Oct. 29 issue of the New York Times, in which Gonard Claimed a "clear improvement in the food situation."