Student Groups Seek Help For Starving Biafra

Several groups at Harvard are trying to focus attention on the plight of starving Biafrans.

More than 1200 are said to be dying daily of starvation in the West African tribal state, which has been blockaded off by Nigeria, the parent country from which it seceded.

Phillip Whitten, president of the Ed School's Student Association, sent letters to President Johnson, U.N. Secretary-General U Thant, Mrs. Coretta King and Swedish sociologist Gunnar Myrdal asking them to intervene "in the name of humanity."

An ad hoc group, calling itself the International Witnesses Against Genocide, has called a meeting for 6 p.m. tonight in Phillips Brooks House. The Witnesses will be asking people around the nation, and, they hope, around the world, to wear a black star with the word IBO in it, as a reminder of the yellow star "once imposed upon the victims of another 'final solution'" of the Nazis. Ibo is the name of a Biafran tribe.

Still another group, the Committee of Returned Volunteers, representing those who have served in the Peace Corps, is calling a meeting at Phillips Brooks House tonight, probably to begin at 8 p.m. to discuss Biafra.

A member of the Returned Volunteers said he hopes there will be major demonstrations around the country this Saturday, protesting the starving of Biafrans.

Although delegations from Biafra and Nigeria met Saturday, there was no indication that progress was made on the question of relief measures.

The Witnesses would like to see the United States, under the auspices of an organization like the Red Cross, airlift food and supplies to the Biafrans, according to Alan Berman, a graduate student in English and a faculty member at Queens College.