IMMORTAL BANGABANDHU

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“This may be my last message, from today Bangladesh is independent.

I call upon the people of Bangladesh, wherever you might be and whatever you have, to resist the army of occupation to the last. Your fight must go on until the last soldier of the Pakistan occupation army is expelled from the soil of Bangladesh and final victory is achieved.”
Sheikh Mujibur Rahman
26 March 1971
The people of Bangladesh have proved to the world at large that they are a heroic nation, they know how to achieve their right and live like human beings.

We have achieve our independence. So long a Bangali lives, he will not allow this independence to be lost. Bangladesh will continue to exist as an independent country in history. There is no power on earth which can keep Bangladesh under subjugation.
Bangabandhu
Those who cannot maintain law and order cannot expect to be a great nation.

Independence is not achieved with the hoisting of the flag only. Ensuring the security of people’s lives and property is also an inseparable part on independence.

It is only through agriculture revolution that the country would become self-reliant in food. The farmers must see to it that not an inch of the country’s soil remains fallow and that the yield of the land is increased.
Bangabandhu
I have waged the independence movement of Bangladesh along with seven and a half crore people. So I appeal to the people to put an end to the activities of antisocial and disruptive elements.

My dear brothers of armed forces, you belong to the people and people belong to you. You do not form a separate entity. All of you are sons of the soil. This is why you will have to share the happiness and sorrow of the masses and stand beside them in rebuilding the devastated country. Allah is with you.

Our defence-preparedness is not meant to attack anyone. It is for self defense only. We are not willing to interfere into other’s internal affairs. Similarly, we shall not tolerate other’s interference into our internal affairs.
Bangabandhu

The heartless beasts, army personnel killed the architect of BANGLADESH.
The martyrs who gifted the independence of the country will never die. The souls of the martyrs will be contended only when the people of this independent country, established through the sacrifice of the martyrs, will get enough to eat and live a dignified life.

Depending on borrowed resources no nation can ever expect to become self-reliant and great.

I have made appeals to the world for help. I want help. But not at the cost of independence.

Armed forces alone cannot defend a country. It’s people who defend a country.

It is clear today that only democracy will work in future in this country.
Bangabandhu

The Army Personnel has killed :

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman
Begum Fazilatun Nesa

Sheikh Kamal
Sultana Kamal

Sheikh Jamal
Parveen Jamal

Sheikh Russell
Abu Naser
Sheikh Fazlul Huq Moni (nephew) Begum Arju Moni (Moni’s wife)
Colonel Jamil Uddin Ahmed (security chief) Sukanta Babu
Abdur Rob Serniabad Baby Serniabad
Arif Serniabad Shahid Serniabad
Nephew of Serniabad SI Siddiqur Rahman
Nayeem Khan Rintu 4 caretakers
3 guests 5 in neighboring Mohammedpur area killed by artillery shells (Shahabuddin, Amiruddin,Nasima, Rijia and Rasheda)
Killers of Mujib and his family
The Murder of young Sheikh Russell
Unlike the assassins of Alende of Chili, who only killed Alende but spared his family members and relatives, the assassins of Sheikh Mujib killed 31 people besides Sheikh Mujib. They killed his pregnant daughter-in-laws and did not even spare his 8 year old son, Sheikh Russell. So far we knew that the artillery soldiers shot the Sheikh Mujib family as instructed by their officers. But Dr Wajed Myan’s account on the murder of Sheikh Russell shows that the artillery officers were personally involved in the massacre: “………………Russell ran down to take shelter among the people put already in line at gun point for execution. Abdur Rahman Roma, who looked after Russell for years, was holding his hand. A little later one of the soldiers took Russell from Roma to send him out of the house. Russell, frightened to death, burst into tears and begged for life: “For God’s sake please don’t kill me. I’ll be forever your servant if you let me live. My Hasu apa (sister Sheikh Haisna) and brother-in-law live in Germany. I beg you, please send me to Hasu apa and my brother-in-law in Germany.” Moved by Russell’s tears, the said soldier hid Russell in the sentry box at the main gate of the house. Half an hour later, a major seeing Russell hiding there, took him upstairs and killed Russell in cold blood by shooting on his head with his revolver.”

Dr Wajed Miyan: Some events involving Sheikh Mujib and Bangladesh

BANGABANDHU SHEIKH MUJIBUR RAHMAN

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BANGABANDHU SHEIKH MUJIBUR RAHMAN DEDICATED his life to establishing a democratic, peaceful and exploitation-free society called “Sonar Bangla” – Golden Bengal. He sacrificed his life to liberate the Bangalee nation, which had been groaning under the colonial and imperialist yoke for nearly 1,000 years. He is the founding father of the Bangalee nation, generator of Bangalee nationalism and creator of the sovereign state of Bangladesh.

My father spent nearly half his life behind bars and yet with extraordinary courage and conviction he withstood numerous trials and tribulations during the long period of his political struggle. During his imprisonment, he stood face to face with death on at least two occasions, but never for a moment did he waver.

As a daughter of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, I heard many tales about him from my grandfather and grandmother. He was born on Mar. 17, 1920 in Tungipara, in what was then the British Raj. During the naming ceremony my great-grandfather predicted that Sheikh Mujibur Rahman would be a world-famous name.

My father grew up rural – amid rivers, trees, birdsong. He flourished in the free atmosphere inspired by his grandparents. He swam in the river, played in the fields, bathed in the rains, caught fish and watched out for birds’ nests. He was lanky, yet played football. He liked to eat plain rice, fish, vegetables, milk, bananas and sweets. His care and concern for classmates, friends and others was well-known. He gave away his tiffin to the hungry, clothes to the naked, books to the needy and other personal belongings to the poor. One day, my grandfather told me, he gave his clothes to a poor boy and came home in his shawl.

At the age of 7, he began his schooling, though an eye ailment forced a four-year break from his studies. He married at the age of 11 when my mother was 3. He demonstrated leadership from the beginning. Once in 1939, he led classmates to demand repair of the school’s roof – just when the premier of then undivided Bengal happened to be in town. Despite a deep involvement in politics, in 1946 he obtained a BA.

Bangabandhu was blessed from boyhood with leadership, indomitable courage and great political acumen. He played an active role in controlling communal riots during the India-Pakistan partition. He risked his life for the cause of truth and justice. He rose in protest in 1948 against the declaration of Urdu as the state language of Pakistan and was arrested the following year. He pioneered the movement to establish Bangla as the state language. In 1966, he launched a six-point program for the emancipation of Bangalees. In 1969, my father was acclaimed Bangabandhu, Friend of Bengal. His greatest strength (and weakness) was his “love for the people.” He is an essential part of the emotional existence of all Bangalees.

The appearance of Bangladesh on the world map in 1971 was the culmination of a long-suppressed national urge. On Mar. 7, 1971, my father addressed a mammoth public meeting in Dhaka and declared: “The struggle now is the struggle for our emancipation, the struggle now is the struggle for Independence.” He sent a wireless message, moments after a crackdown by the Pakistani army, declaring the Independence of Bangladesh in the early hours of Mar. 26. The world knows he courted arrest – and yet Bangabandhu emerged as the unquestioned leader of a newborn country.

Once in power, my father pursued a non-aligned, independent foreign policy based on peaceful coexistence. Its basic tenet: “Friendship to all, malice to none.” He advocated world peace and declared his support for all freedom struggles. He supported the concept of a “Zone of Peace” in the Indian Ocean. In 1974, he was awarded the Julio Curie Prize for his devotion to the cause of peace.

But at a time when Bangladesh was emerging as an advocate for oppressed nations, his foes assassinated him on Aug. 15, 1975. My mother and three brothers were also killed. Even my younger brother Sheikh Russel, who was then nine, was not spared. The only survivors were my younger sister Sheikh Rehana and myself; we were on a trip to Germany.

Consequently, the political ideals for which Bangladesh sacrificed three million of her finest sons and daughters were trampled, and Bangladesh became a puppet in the hands of imperialism and autocracy. By assassinating Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the conspirators wanted to stop the country’s march to freedom, democracy, peace and development. The process of law and justice were not permitted to take their course; human rights were violated. It is, therefore, the solemn responsibility of freedom- and peace-loving people to help ensure the trial of the plotters and killers of this great leader, my father.

Author : Sheikh Hasina, daughter of the late Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, is the prime minister of Bangladesh.

Images of the Father…

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Icon of our NATION

Sometime in the later part of the 1950s, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, then a young, rising politician, threw a question at a rather drowsy Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy. Was it not possible, he asked Pakistan’s prime minister, for East Pakistan to become independent someday? The question startled Suhrawardy wide awake. In a state of disbelief, the prime minister (he was in office only a year) admonished Mujib. Do not ever entertain such thoughts, he told his protégé. Pakistan had been achieved at a huge cost and its unity needed to be preserved. Mujib murmured, almost muttered: “We’ll do our job when the time comes.”

It was this spontaneity resting on decisiveness that sustained Bangabandhu in his political career. The trajectory he followed was clearly defined. There was no grey region in his politics, nothing to suggest that, like so many others before or during his time, he was ready to do flip flops. Never a fence-sitter, his overriding goal was ensuring the welfare of his Bengalis. His enthusiasm for Pakistan, a state for whose creation he had struggled mightily in his youth as a follower of the All-India Muslim League, had clearly begun to wane within months of its emergence. And by the time Ayub Khan clamped martial law on the country in October 1958, Mujib did not have any illusions about the future. Bengalis, he knew, had to find their own way to salvation.

Bangabandhu’s thoughts were as robust as his persona. Arriving in Rawalpindi a couple of days after the withdrawal of the Agartala conspiracy case in February 1969, he was intrigued by the warmth in which he was welcomed in West Pakistan. He quipped, about himself: “Yesterday a traitor, today a hero.” It was in that heroic mould that he met Field Marshal Mohammad Ayub Khan, his tormentor for years. When the dictator, by then a lion in extreme senility, offered Mujib the prime ministership of Pakistan, the Bengali leader prudently spurned it. The back door was not for him. It was Bangladesh where his heart and mind lay embedded. Indeed, he took the first step toward restoring their land to the Bengalis when he told a memorial meeting on Suhrawardy’s death anniversary in December 1969 that East Pakistan would henceforth be known as Bangladesh. His reasoning was unassailable: if Sind, Punjab, Baluchistan and the North-West Frontier Province could keep their old names, why not Bangladesh?

There was the indomitable about Bangabandhu. The state was never able to make him bite the dust. He kept going to prison, coming out of it briefly and then going back in. Following his release in 1969, he publicly demanded that Ayub Khan take his “patwary” Monem Khan out of the governor’s office. During the election campaign in 1970, a time when almost every politician in both wings of Pakistan appeared to be directing their spears and arrows at the Awami League and its Six Points and spreading innuendo against Mujib, the Bengali leader told them in no uncertain terms: “If you can’t speak the truth, don’t tell a lie.” Indeed, lies he abhorred, so much so that when the Indian journalist Kuldip Nayar narrated to him in 1972 Bhutto’s version of the meeting between the two leaders after Pakistan’s battlefield defeat in December 1971, Mujib’s response was that Bhutto was a congenital liar.

Bangabandhu remembered faces and did not forget names. He and the late Indian journalist Nikhil Chakravartty knew each other in the 1940s. When partition came, they went their separate ways. In January 1972, however, Chakravartty was in Dhaka to cover Bangabandhu’s maiden news conference as Bangladesh’s prime minister. Chakravartty sat right at the end of the hall. Bangladesh’s leader walked into the hall, greeted everyone with his customary smile and suddenly spotted his old friend. They had not met after 1947, but the Father of the Nation had no difficulty recognising Chakravartty. Tui Nikhil na (aren’t you Nikhil)? He asked. Chakravartty was overwhelmed.

In 1973, a young parliamentarian was busy delivering a rousing speech on the national budget in the Jatiyo Sangsad. As he spoke, Bangabandhu entered the chamber and took his seat. His arrival prompted a sudden change, tonally and thematically, in the young lawmaker’s speech. He moved away from the budget and went headlong into a profusion of praise for Bangabandhu’s leadership. Mujib stared at him, but the lawmaker showed little sign of stopping. Finally, Bangabandhu intervened. Ebar thaam (finish it now). Like a punctured balloon, the young man sat down.

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman could be harsh when the times demanded firmness from him. When Saudi Arabia’s King Faisal griped that Bangladesh’s emergence had weakened Pakistan and indeed Islam, the Bengali leader asked him, with few of diplomatic niceties coming in, where Saudi Arabia had been when Islamic Pakistan’s soldiers went on a rampage raping tens of thousands of Bengali women and murdering Bengalis by the millions. That put Faisal in his place. In much the same way, when Nigeria’s Yakubu Gowon asked Bangabandhu if Pakistan could not have been a powerful Muslim state had Bangladesh not broken away, Mujib’s answer silenced him: “Pakistan would indeed be strong if it had stayed united; likewise India would have been stronger had partition not happened; indeed Asia would be a power if it had not been fragmented into so many diverse states. But, Excellency, do we always get what we want out of life?” Gowon said not a word.

Bangabandhu had a sure sense of destiny. When a foreign newsman asked him, at the height of the Agartala trial, what he thought his fate would be, his answer was emphatic. “You know,” he told the journalist, “they can’t keep me here for more than six months.” He turned out to be almost right. He was freed seven months into the trial. After he was arrested by the Pakistan army on the night of March 25-26, 1971, an officer asked Tikka Khan over walkie talkie if he wanted the prisoner brought to him. Tikka Khan answered in disdain, “I don’t want to see his face.” Three years later, on February 23, 1974, Tikka Khan, as Pakistan’s army chief, saluted Bangabandhu at Lahore airport when Bangladesh’s founder arrived to attend the Islamic conference. Mujib smiled meaningfully, said “Hello, Tikka,” and moved on.

Bangabandhu was a natural. His conversations were regular sessions in spontaneity. He identified as easily with a peasant or rickshaw-puller as he did with a political leader or academic or visiting statesman. His laughter was loud, came from deep within. His presence filled the room.

The scholar Khan Sarwar Murshid once asked the French philosopher Andre Malraux if he thought Mujib could lead Bangladesh to progress. Malraux said yes, and then qualified his answer: “If you don’t kill him.”

We killed him. And we go on paying the price for that gigantic sin.

Author : Syed Badrul Ahsan, The writer is Executive Editor, The Daily Star. E-mail: bahsantareq@yahoo.co.uk

National Mourning Day today

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National Mourning Day today

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina placed wreaths at the portrait of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman at the Bangabandhu Memorial Museum at Dhanmondi in the city this (Wednesday) morning.

The Armed Forces gave her a guard of honour on the occasion.

Sheikh Hasina also offered prayer during her visit to the museum at about 6:15am. Chiefs of three services and senior Awami League (AL) leaders were present.

The Prime Minister later visited the graves of the members of Mujib’s family and other martyrs of 1975 at Banani Graveyard and placed wreaths and offered fateha there.

Senior ruling party leaders accompanied her.

A grateful nation pays deep homage to Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman today (Wednesday) in observance of the National Mourning Day commemorating his 37th anniversary of martyrdom, reports BSS.

On the fateful night of August 15 in 1975, some disgruntled and over ambitious army officers assassinated Bangabandhu and most of his family members at his Dhanmondi Road-32 residence in the capital in a military putsch.

Those 18 members of Bangabandhu’s family and his close ones massacred in the August 15 tragedy included his wife Bangamata Fazilatunnessa Mujib, brother Sheikh Naser, brother-in-law Abdur Rab Serniabat, sons Sheikh Kamal, Sheikh Jamal and 10-year-old Sheikh Russell, daughters-in-law Sultana Kamal and Rosy Jamal, nephew Sheikh Fazlul Huq Moni, his pregnant wife Arzoo Moni and Bangabandhu’s military secretary Bir Uttam Colonel Jalil (later promoted as Brigadier General posthumously), who rushed to the spot of occurrence on receiving an SOS from Bangabandhu Bhaban early in the morning.

However, both the daughters of Bangabandhu, Sheikh Hasina and Sheikh Rehana, escaped the carnage as they were abroad then.

Since the mayhem, Awami League, its associate bodies and other likeminded pro-liberation, democratic and progressive political partiers, social, cultural and professional organisations have been observing the day as the National Mourning Day.

After assumption of office in 1996, the Awami League government led by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina initiated trial of the self- confessed killers of Bangabandhu in a traditional court and the court awarded them with capital punishment, which was upheld by the country’s apex court. The court’s verdict for five of the self-confessed killers had been executed on January 27 in 2010 while the government had already taken steps for bringing back home the remaining absconding killers from abroad to free the nation from a stigma.

In a message on the eve of the National Mourning Day, President M Zillur Rahman recalled with gratitude Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s chequered, long and eventful political career and his immense contributions and dedication to present an independent and sovereign Bangladesh in the comity of nations.

“Father of the Nation Bangabandhu dreamt of a ‘Golden Bangla’ throughout his life. It is our utmost responsibility to materialise his dream by building a happy and prosperous country.

If we do so the soul of Bangabandhu would remain in ever-rest in peace and we will be able to pay our deepest homage to him,” the President added.

Terming the killing of Bangabandhu on August 15 in 1975 the most barbaric massacre in the history of the mankind, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, in a message, said though the anti-liberation reactionary forces and their stooges assassinated Bangabandhu, they could not kill his dreams and ideologies.

In her message, the prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, said that although the killers had assassinated Mujib, they could not kill his dreams and ideals. Millions of people nurture in their hearts the ideals of Mujib.
‘Let us take forward with bold steps the struggle to build a Golden Bangla as dreamt by Bangabandhu turning the grief of the great loss of the father of the nation into strength,’ she said.