Nation to observe Martyred Intellectuals Day today

The nation is set to observe the Martyred Intellectuals' Day today as most of the top executioners of the leading intelligentsia were exposed to gallows in the past three years on charges of crimes against humanity during the 1971 Liberation War.

A memorial erected in memory of the martyred intellectuals at Mirpur in the capital was readied as President Abdul Hamid and Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina were set to lead the nation in offering tributes by placing wreaths there, BSS reports.

The Pakistani troops and their Bengali-speaking collaborators belonging to Razakar or other auxiliary forces killed a number of intelligentsia throughout the nine-month long Liberation War.

But they visibly engaged the infamous Gestapo like Al-Badr and Al-Shams forces on December 14, 1971, just two days ahead of the final victory carried out a systematic campaign to murder the most regarded academics and professionals like doctors, engineers and journalists visibly to expose the newborn nation to a state of brainlessness.

The then Bangladesh government and victorious freedom fighters, however, came to know about their last brutal massacre only after the December 16, 1971 surrender by the Pakistani troops when their top accomplices mostly belonging to Jamaat-e-Islami and its student wing went into hiding to be resurfaced years later.

Those who were exposed to the killers wrath on December 14, 1971 included Drs Alim Chowdhury and Fazle Rabbi, Journalists Shahidullah Kaisar, Sirajudddin Hossain, Nizamuddin Ahmed, S A Mannan and Selina Parveen and Litterateur Monier Chowdhury.

Most of the December 14 victims were picked up from their houses blindfolded and killed between December 10th and 14th 1971.

Bangladesh this year observes the day with a sense of relief from stigma of impunity as the top assassins managed to make their room in the national politics with the patronage of influential vested quarters which emerged after the August 15, 1971 assassination of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. Al-Badr chief Motiur Rahman Nizami and his second in command Ali Ahsan Mujaheed, who subsequently became Jamaat's ameer and secretary general and ministers in the past BNP-led four-party coalition government were hanged after trial in the past two years as major war criminals.

Awami League and other political parties like the Jatiya Samajtantrik Dal (JASOD), Workers' Party and their associate organizations and different cultural and social organizations have chalked out various programmes.