Sacrifice of Martyred Intellectuals must not go in vain

THE nation is observing the ‘Martyred Intellectuals Day’ today with solemnity remembering them in pain and sorrows. They were the best sons of the soil who were mercilessly tortured and killed at the dawn of the victory from December 12 to 14, 1971. The Pakistani occupation army and its local collaborators carried out the heinous barbaric acts as a last attempts to foil the advancement of the Bengali nation by making it intellectually weak. It was indeed the darkest hour of an emerging nation before the rising Sun ushers in the land of freedom. But the people who made the most contributions towards creating the awareness of freedom and creating an independent nation free from exploitation of the West Pakistani rulers were brutally killed to deprive the free Bangladesh from their intellectual leadership. The Intellectuals we lost included noted philosophers, academics of the Dhaka University, journalists, physicians, filmmakers, artists and cultural activists. Today, mere mourning the death of the greatest sons of this nation at the National Mausoleum is not enough, but to feel honestly about the importance of giving their lives for the cause of freedom is the honest way of paying tributes to the martyrs. We must individually and collectively be imbued with their unparalleled devotion and commitment to the motherland to create a peaceful society where people will share prosperity and peace under honest and corruption free leadership. To condemn the Pakistan occupation army is a hypocrisy if we do not respect and follow the values they upheld and died for. We should have investigated seriously the purpose of killing those who valued democracy most by Pakistan army just few days before their surrender. In the absence of those intellectuals we have lost those who could have made killing of democracy in free Bangladesh difficult and the nation not subservient.