The government’s decision to allow Jamaat-e-Islami back in active politics, instead of bringing it to book for its 1971 role, will be suicidal for the ruling Awami League and above all, the country, said freedom fighters, families of the martyrs and war crimes researchers.
Tribute to Munier Chy, education for children lost to land dispute
A local elderly resident shows rods sticking out of a broken pole on the premises of the primary school, established to commemorate martyred intellectual Munier Chowdhury, at Gopairbagh village in Noakhali’s Chatkhil upazila. The school has remained shut for 22 years over land dispute. Photo: Star
Land dispute has locked up, over two decades, a primary school that had been opened up, in 1972, to commemorate martyred intellectual Prof Munier Chowdhury.
Numerous attempts to reopen the school, which was located at Gopairbagh village in Shahapur union No 1 of Noakhali s Chatkhil upazila, went in vain as a case remains under trial stage over the dispute.
They were the country s leading intelligentsia who were the guiding light for Bangalees. These brightest sons and daughters of the soil were instrumental in the mass movements against the disparity and repressive measures of the Pakistani rulers and contributed to the 1971 Liberation War efforts.
But, faced with impending defeat, the Pakistan army, aided by their bootlicker local collaborators, planned and brutally killed them to cripple the future nation intellectually so that it could never stand tall.
Sadly, 49 years after the country s independence, the nation is still in the dark about how many of these luminaries faced martyrdom lacking a comprehensive and final list of martyred intellectuals or even a definition of the term.