Nation's intellectuals honour fallen comrades
Nation's intellectuals honour fallen comrades
Prominent intellectuals of the country brought out a procession in the capital yesterday honouring their peers martyred during the Liberation War, waving national flags, singing patriotic songs, and calling out to defeat those who are trying to foil the trials of war criminals while resisting all kinds of communal forces.
They also demanded a ban on Jamaat-e-Islami, speedy trial of the war criminals, and quick execution of the verdicts.
The procession started from the Central Shaheed Minar and ended at Shikha Chirantan in Suhrawardy Uddyan after parading around Doyel Chattar, TSC and the National Museum at Dhaka University. 'Rukhe Darao Bangladesh', a civil society platform, organised the event.
Through their speeches and songs, they recalled the cause for which the martyred intellectuals sacrificed their lives, which is a nation free from fundamentalism, communalism, and autocracy.
Chairman of the platform, eminent litterateur Prof Anisuzzaman, said, "Each of us individually and we as a whole are bearing the legacy of the martyred intellectuals."
Rights activists Sultana Kamal, also a member of the platform, said the intellectuals were killed in 1971 because they had wanted to build a secular, non-communal and democratic Bangladesh, where every citizen could live with dignity and their rights. The War of Liberation was to start that very process but a disreputable fundamentalist, militant, and autocratic group stalled the process in between, she added.
She hoped that the new generation would again try to build the country in line with the dreams of the martyred intellectuals.
Science fiction writer and academician Mohammad Zafar Iqbal also expressed a similar hope at the gathering at the Shaheed Minar, before the procession took off to Shikha Chirantan.
Journalists, NGO workers, teachers, singers, theatre personalities as well as activists of Amrai Pari, a women's rights group, also joined the procession.