They were systematically rounded up from their homes in the middle of the night and executed en masse
Published : 14 Dec 2022, 02:03 AM
Bangladesh is paying homage to the nation’s best brains executed indiscriminately by the Pakistan Army and their local collaborators on Dec 14 in 1971 during the dying moments of the Liberation War.
In a last-ditch effort to exact revenge after realising they had lost the war, the Pakistani occupation army and their cohorts murdered numerous university professors, doctors, artists, writers, journalists, and other prominent Bengalis, just two days before their capitulation.
They were systematically rounded up from their homes in the middle of the night, taken to torture cells throughout the city, brutalised for hours, and finally assembled on various killing fields and executed all at once.
The bodies of the slain intellectuals were found with marks of torture in the capital’s Mirpur and Rayerbazar where monuments have been built to immortalise them.
Bangladeshis will pay respect to the martyred intellectuals by placing flowers on the Martyred Intellectuals Memorial on Wednesday.
In his message on the eve of Martyred Intellectuals Day, President Abdul Hamid said the intellectuals, as the conscience of the nation, had played a very significant role with their sharp writings and intellect-based spirit to create public opinion in favour of the Liberation War, provide suggestions to the war-time government in advancing the war towards a successful conclusion.
“But it is unfortunate that the occupation forces and their local collaborators had brutally killed the country's eminent intellectuals, including academics, physicians, litterateurs, journalists and artists just on the eve of the victory, causing an irreparable loss to the nation.”
He called upon all to be imbued with the ideology of the martyred intellectuals and build a non-communal society based on the spirit of the Liberation War.
In her message, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said Bangladesh has brought the killers of the martyred intellectuals to justice and is executing some of the verdicts. “No conspiracy can divert the nation from this process. Those who wanted to save the heinous war criminals will also be brought to justice one day," she said.
“The nation will remember forever the sacrifice of the martyred intellectuals,” she said and called upon the people to be united against the conspiracies of the killers of 1971.
The president and the prime minister will lead the nation in paying tribute to the martyred intellectuals by placing wreaths on the memorial in Mirpur early in the morning.
The memorials in Mirpur and Rayerbazar will be open to the people at 8:30am.