Sharmin S Murshid, Adviser for Women’s and Children’s Affairs, addressed a crowd gathered on Monday at Osmani Memorial Auditorium to commemorate World Children’s Day.
Fittingly, most of her audience consisted of children, and the room was filled with innocent youngsters—chattering, fidgeting, laughing, and, in some cases, openly falling asleep. After all, children will be children.
However, this year’s ceremony was not the usual heartwarming affair; instead, it was somber. Somber because the families of 90 children, martyred during the July uprising, were present to receive recognition for their losses.
Though it was scant consolation, the families lined up to meet the adviser and receive Tk50,000 along with a framed poem dedicated to their lost children.
The line was far too long. A total of 105 children were killed during the July uprising, a chilling statistic. But numbers alone do little to convey the tragedy of losing a child—let alone the heartbreak of that loss multiplied a hundredfold.
Many parents could not hold back tears as they spoke with the woman now responsible for the welfare of Bangladesh’s children. They shared stories and pictures of their lost loved ones, recounting how their children were taken from them.
The panel assembled to speak before the adviser echoed the sentiment that children are the future of Bangladesh. Yet, as their involvement in the uprising demonstrates, they are already its present.
Many of the martyred children had chosen to attend the protests, the adviser explained, out of a profound lack of hope for the future of the country and as a rejection of the silence of adults in the face of the events of the past 15 years—years in which the previous government failed its people as citizens, as workers, as leaders, and, in its dying moments, as parents.