S Muazzem Ali passes away
Veteran diplomat Syed Muazzem Ali passed away yesterday in Combined Military Hospital (CMH) in the capital. He was 75.
Muazzem Ali was admitted to the hospital after he had fallen ill on December 24. There, he was diagnosed with pneumonia and had almost recovered.
He suddenly had a cardiac arrest yesterday around 9:00am and died around 11:55am, his elder sister Prof Fawzia Ali said.
The former foreign secretary and immediate-past high commissioner to India left behind his wife, two sons and a host of relatives and well-wishers.
He will be buried tomorrow after the arrival of his sons from abroad, Fawzia told The Daily Star.
His first namaz-e-janaza would be held at 10:30am on Wednesday at the Padma State Guest House.
His second janaza would be held on the same day after Zohr prayers at the Gulshan Azad Mosque, after which his body would be buried at the Banani graveyard.
His qulkhani will be held on Friday after Asr prayers at the Gulshan Azad Mosque.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina visited CMH to see the body of Muazzem Ali around 2:00pm yesterday. There, she expressed her condolences and spoke to his family members, including his wife, said the PM’s Press Secretary Ihsanul Karim, reports UNB.
President Abdul Hamid, Foreign Minister Dr AK Abdul Momen, State Minister for Foreign Affairs M Shahriar Alam, Chief of Army Staff General Aziz Ahmed, PM’s Prinicpal Secretary Md Nojibur Rahmad and PMO’s Senior Secretary Sajjadul Hassan, among others, were present there, reports UNB.
They also conveyed their sympathies to his bereaved family members and prayed for the eternal peace of his departed soul.
In a condolence message, the president said Muazzem Ali’s death is an irreparable loss to the country. “The nation will remember him for long, with due respect.”
Hasina recalled Muazzem’s outstanding contributions on the diplomatic front during the 1971 Liberation War.
Dr Momen said Muazzem Ali performed his duties skilfully as a diplomat. The two were family friends.
Shahriar said Muazzem Ali returned to work after his retirement at the call of the PM and completed his assignment just 10 days ago.
“We’ll never forget his contributions to building opinions in favour of Bangladesh during the Liberation War during his stay in the US,” he said.
Indian External Affairs Minister Dr J Jaishankar also expressed deep shock at the death of Muazzem Ali.
“Deeply shocked to learn of the passing away of former High Commissioner Syed Muazzem Ali,” Jaishankar tweeted yesterday.
He said Muazzem was a good friend and a strong partner for so many of them. “Our thoughts are with Tuhfa and [his] family.”
Muazzem left New Delhi on December 19 after the successful completion of his five-year long tenure (from September 2014 to December 2019) as the High Commissioner of Bangladesh to India.
The High Commission of Bangladesh in New Delhi will open a condolence book from December 31 2019 to January 2, 2020. The timings to sign the condolence book are 11:00am to 1:00pm and 3:00pm to 5:00pm.
Born on October 29, 1944, in Sylhet, Muazzem joined the Pakistan Foreign Service in 1968 and retired from work in December 2001. While serving in the Pakistan Embassy in Washington DC in 1971, he declared his allegiance to the government of Bangladesh.
As a founding member of the Bangladesh mission in Washington DC, Muazzem was busy lobbying for political support for Bangladesh’s independence movement.
After the independence, he was directly involved in getting US’s recognition of Bangladesh as well as the US, World Bank and UN participation in the massive reconstruction efforts in a war-torn Bangladesh (1971-1975).
He also served in the Bangladesh embassies in Warsaw (1975-1978), and New Delhi (1986-1988) and in the Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York (1982-1986).
He was Consul General in Jeddah during the Gulf War, and later served as Bangladesh ambassador to Bhutan, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Turkmenistan, France and Portugal.
In Paris, he was also Bangladesh’s Permanent Representative to Unesco. In that capacity, he tabled a draft resolution on behalf of Bangladesh for the proclamation of February 21 as the International Mother Language Day.
He spearheaded the lobbying efforts and its unanimous adoption by the Unesco General Conference in 1999.
As foreign secretary, Muazzem worked for the peaceful resolution of conflicts in the South Asian region and beyond.
Since Bangladesh was the chairman of the LDC group at that time, he coordinated the move that led to duty- and quota-free access of LDC exports to the EU at the Third UN LDC Conference.
He also worked for the emergence of Bangladesh as the largest troop contributor to UN peacekeeping.
Specialising in multilateral diplomacy, he has represented and led Bangladesh delegations to various Senior Officials’, Ministerial, and Summit-level meetings of the UN, UNESCO, Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), Commonwealth, South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), Group of 77, and World Bank’s Development Forum (earlier know an Consortium) meetings.
Muazzem Ali came from a distinguished literary family of the Greater Bengal. His father, late Syed Mustafa Ali, and uncle late Syed Murtaza Ali, served in the Assam Civil Service prior to 1947, and also wrote several books and articles.
His youngest uncle late Syed Mujtaba Ali is a distinguished writer of Bengali literature. His eldest brother Late SM Ali (Syed Mohammad Ali), founder-editor of the leading Bangladeshi English newspaper The Daily Star, was one of the most well-known Bangladeshi journalists in the international arena.
His father-in-law late Chowdhury Imamuzzaman served in the Assam Engineering Service prior to 1947. Muazzem’s wife Tuhfa Zaman Ali obtained her MA from Dhaka University and MPhil from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
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