<i>Country could not care less</i>

On the Martyred Intellectuals' Day the nation is reminded of the cost it had to pay in the Liberation War and also the fact that the victory wasn't easy at all. File photo

A shaken Shaheen Reza Noor helplessly watched the gunmen pushing his father, journalist Sirajuddin Hossain, towards a car in the small hours of December 10, 1971.
The gang of 10 to 12 Bangalee collaborators covering their faces with mufflers asked him to shut the door and go inside the house at Shantinagar in the capital.
Sirajuddin was whisked off to an unknown location. He had been missing since then.
Sixteen-year-old Shaheen did everything he could for the next few months to know the whereabouts of his father. All his attempts went in vain. It was not until 1972 that he came to know about the fate of his father.
Khalil, a member of Al-Badr, confessed to police in 1972 that he and his gang killed Sirajuddin and dumped his body in the Rayerbazar killing ground.
"I could not even find my father's body. The self-confessed killer managed to elude punishment despite being sentenced for life by a court," Shaheen, assistant editor of The Daily Ittefaq, said yesterday, recalling the memories of the turbulent times.
A Dhaka court sentenced Khalil to life imprisonment in 1973 after Shaheen filed a case following his confessional statement to the police.
Khalil got released in December 1975 after the then president Ziaur Rahman stopped the trial of war criminals by cancelling the Collaborators Act 1972.
With the present government's move to try war crimes 39 years after the independence, Shaheen wants his father's killers including Khalil to be brought to justice through proper investigation.
Like him many families of martyred intellectuals demand proper probe into the mass killings in 1971 saying witnesses and enough evidence are there to bring the perpetrators to book.
"We have evidence. Many of us were even witnesses to the killings but the government has not approached us. Some of us even handed evidence to the investigators on their own," said Shumon Zahid, son of martyred journalist Selina Parvin.
The aggrieved families with the whole nation observe the Martyred Intellectuals Day today with a renewed demand for trial of war criminals.
"The killings of intellectuals and professionals must be probed with special priority. We might not get the names of all three million people killed during the Liberation War. But we can have a list of our martyred intellectuals and professionals with references to their families and evidence," said eminent journalist Shahriar Kabir, also president of Ekatturer Ghatak Dalal Nirmul Committee.
"Many of our martyred intellectuals and professionals had enjoyed global fame and trial of the killers of those sons of the soil would get support of the international community," he added.
There is no list of martyred intellectuals and professionals, let alone the three million martyred freedom fighters.
"The liberation war ministry can make a list easily and it should do that," said Shahriar Kabir.
"In every corner of the country, you will find places where monuments were built in memory of local intellectuals and professionals. What the government needs to do is to collect their names," he said.
Killing of intellectuals and professionals, who helped organise the independence movement, had become a priority of Pakistan occupation forces since the start of the Liberation War on March 26, 1971. They killed many teachers and students at Dhaka University.
Sensing defeat, Pakistan occupation forces with the help of their collaborators -- Razakar, Al-Badr and Al-Shams -- prepared an execution list of progressive intellectuals and professionals five months after the start of the Liberation War, said experts quoting the diary of the then Pakistan Army general Rao Farman Ali.
They began executing the list on November 15 in 1971 and killed nearly 12,000 intellectuals and professionals across the country.
The martyred intellectuals include Prof Muneir Chowdhury, Dr Alim Chowdhury, Prof Muniruzzaman, Dr Fazle Rabbi, Shahidullah Kaiser, Prof GC Dev, JC Guhathakurta, Prof Santosh Bhattacharya, Mofazzal Haider Chowdhury, journalists Khandaker Abu Taleb, Nizamuddin Ahmed, SA Mannan (Ladu Bhai), ANM Golam Mustafa and Syed Nazmul Haq.
The then commander-in-chief of Al-Badr and Jamaat Ameer Matiur Rahman Nizami, Jamaat Secretary General Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mojahid, its assistant secretary general Muhammad Kamaruzzaman and Mir Kashim Ali led the killings, according to accounts of both victims and collaborators, various publications and secret documents of Pakistan home department.
The Gestapo-styled killings were so well planned that the country still suffers from the loss and the people including political leaders remain divided over the issue of having a secular state, said Shahriar Kabir.