People from all walks of life will throng the Martyred Intellectuals Memorial at the capital's Rayerbazar on Thursday to pay homage to the brave sons of the land brutally murdered by the Pakistani military and their local collaborators at the fag end of the 1971 Liberation War.
The day is observed as Martyred Intellectuals Day, and the authorities undertake some routine steps a couple of days ahead, which include cleaning work and hanging banners and festoons. But a foul smell has filled the air.
During a visit to the site on Wednesday, the Dhaka North City Corporation workers were seen busy cleaning the memorial inch by inch, starting from the entrance to the main altar. The pillars of the memorial have been polished with fresh colours. While the cleaners and painters were busy face-lifting the venue, electricians were seen installing closed-circuit television cameras (CCTV) on multiple pillars and walls.
The main element of the monument is an approximately 18-metre-high, one-meter-thick, and 116-metre-long curved brick wall, representing the brick kiln. The wall is broken at the two ends, representing grief and sorrow. Visitors can watch the sky from a square window on the southwest side. Opposite the wall is a still water body from which a black granite column is erected, representing grief.
However, an entirely different scene prevailed outside the premises and along the two-kilometre-long boundary wall of the memorial.
The area surrounding the entrance to the memorial remained shabby with garbage. The road and footpath leading to the monument remained unclean, as garbage was seen stockpiled here and there, along with clogged water.
While the cleaners of the city corporation were occupied cleaning the inside, the outside remained relatively ignored. However, this correspondent found some activity close to a wall outside the memorial.
When approached, city corporation cleaner Mojibur Rahman told this correspondent they had been cleaning the inside part of the memorial for the past week as per the instructions of their officials. "Garbage that was stockpiled throughout the year cannot be cleaned in a day. Therefore, we are cleaning the garbage along the walls of the memorial first," he said.
Md Rokonuzzaman, a cleaning inspector of the DNCC, told this correspondent that workers of the Bangladesh Power Development Board had dug the road leading to the memorial recently for repair work, and the extracted soil was not removed. Local people also crashed their garbage in the area. The official said they have been using trucks to remove garbage from the area for the past few days, but there is still much work.
This official said that the memorial will be kept clean throughout the year.
"We are cleaning this memorial ahead of December 14 according to our ability. But from now on, we will clean it regularly. Also, we will take action so that businesses, including temporary shops, nurseries, and grocery markets established alongside the memorial walls, cannot dump their waste here."
Meanwhile, the authorities have beefed up security inside and outside the Martyred Intellectuals Memorial.
Emdadul Huque, deputy director of the Public Works Department and manager of the memorial, said: "We have ensured full-fledged security in the area ahead of Martyred Intellectuals' Day. We have held meetings with law enforcement agencies as well. They have undertaken a three-layer security measure. Police and plain-clothed members of different law enforcement agencies will be deployed in the area. Apart from this, we have installed eight CCTV cameras on the back side and ten on the front side of the memorial to add to the security measures."
An irreparable loss
The blueprint for crippling the intelligentsia is known to have been chalked out by a body of at least ten people headed by Major General Rao Farman Ali, the military adviser to the governor of East Pakistan. It is widely believed that Rao Farman Ali orchestrated the killing of December 14. At least 1,111 people were killed across the country.
After the surrender of the Pakistani military, a list of Bengali intellectuals (most of whom were executed on December 14) was discovered on a page of his diary left behind at the then Governor House, now Bangabhaban.
On November 3, 2013, the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) sentenced al-Badr leaders Chowdhury Mueen-Uddin and Ashrafuzzaman Khan to death for masterminding the killings. The duo could not be executed as they stayed in the UK and the US, and Bangladesh does not have extradition treaties with these countries.
