Today is a sad day of remembrance. We pay homage to the brightest souls of the intelligentsia who were picked up and murdered brutally by an occupying Pakistani military and their local collaborators. Between December 12 and 14, the nation lost some of its best intellectuals and professionals to mass and premeditated murder. Whilst it was a desperate ploy to cripple society on the eve of victory, we have prevailed as a nation and as a people.

On this day, we look back and wonder what more we could have achieved had they not been taken from us. The martyrs believed that this country would find its rightful place in the league of world's nations as a country built on the principles of justice and equality for its people, and their supreme sacrifice give us pause to reflect, whether we have done them justice in striving towards building a just, egalitarian and secular Bangladesh.

While we pay homage to the martyred intellectuals, we are ever grateful that the long awaited road to justice for the family members has come to fruition through the war crimes tribunal. However, to truly honour their memory, we must keep alive their sacrifice through deeds and not words. That can best be served if we preserve the memory of the killing fields nationwide in a just and fitting manner so that the younger generations who were born after the birth of Bangladesh do not forget their predecessors who loved this country enough to sacrifice their lives for it.