Honouring the friends of 1971

The government has, at long last, decided to honour the nation's friends of 1971. Four decades into independence, in a long overdue show of gratitude, the close to 500 individuals and organisations which helped the nation achieve freedom are to be accorded a reception and awarded something significant in recognition of their support, next Independence Day. They range from individuals and institutions in India and Russia to the United Kingdom and Canada; from media organisations such as Akashbani of India and the BBC to different United Nations bodies.
While the gesture comes a few decades too late, we welcome it. For, through recognising and honouring those who helped us in our struggle for freedom, we honour ourselves. Though the atrocities were unspeakable and the sacrifices tremendous, few other nations have achieved independence in a span of time as brief as nine months and it may be said that this was due at least in part to the international goodwill garnered. Indian soldiers and Russian submarines were deployed in battle and poetry, music and resistance in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries laid bare to the world the brutality of the occupation forces in Bangladesh's liberation war. The international community had a catalytic influence on our independence movement -- as we hope it will have in the current movement for justice for the war crimes committed in 1971.
The recognition of our foreign friends' contributions to our freedom struggle comes as a reminder to our nation and to the world, of the ravages of war and the ruins it leaves behind. That, and the love with which every word spoken and written, every song sung, every gesture made, is remembered generation after generation in a nation set free with their help.
We felicitate the government on its decision and hope that the nation's friends of its freedom struggle, too, will see Bangladesh as a country strong enough to face its past and do justice not only to those forces who fought against its independence, but also those who helped to fight for it.