By December, 1971, Pakistan knew that the game was up. The brutal war it had unleashed on unarmed civilians that it claimed were its citizens, the genocide it had begun against the Bangalee nation – all of it, in the face of indomitable resistance, was coming to nought.
Throughout the war, Pakistani forces had murdered intellectuals and persons of culture whenever the opportunity arose, in a bid to destroy the repository of the nation’s intellectual capital, its most inspiring thinkers and its most eloquent voices.
But with imminent defeat looming on the horizon, the Pakistani occupation forces ramped up their savage policy of selective murder to add force to the general policy of blood-letting.
Starting on December 9 and building up murderous intensity by December 14, the occupation army and its local henchmen killed off as many intellectuals as they could.
The remembrance of the martyred intellectuals this year is special, because some of their tormentors and murders have finally been brought to justice.
The local death squads belonged to a group called al-Badr, which operated as an auxiliary of the Pakistan army.
Islami Chhatra Sangha, later called Islami Chhatra Shibir, the student wing of the Jamaat-e-Islami, a party termed a criminal organisation by the International Crimes Tribunal, provided the bulk of al-Badr’s recruits. On the nights of December 13 to 15, masked al-Badr men surveying the roads in microbuses, knocking at the doors of selected intellectuals and picking them up.
In this way, teachers, littérateurs, journalists and professionals were picked up and taken to the Physical Training Institute in Mohammadpur where they were beaten up ruthlessly. Their eyes were gouged out and their bodies pierced with bayonets, and eventually met their deaths.
After the Pakistani surrender, dumping grounds were discovered at Rayerbazar and at Mirpur, where the bodies of men and women were found dead among the bricks, mud and water, their hands tied and eyes blindfolded.
This year’s observances are different because four of the masterminds behind the systematic killings – Motiur Rahman Nizami, Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mujaheed, Chowdhury Mueen-Uddin and Syed Ashrafuzzaman – have been sentenced to death for the crimes by the war crimes tribunals. The verdicts are awaiting execution.
The government and different socio-cultural organisations have chalked out elaborate programmes to observe Martyred Intellectuals Day today.
President Abdul Hamid and Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina will pay tribute to the martyred intellectuals by placing wreaths at the Martyred Intellectuals Mausoleum at Mirpur in the city at 8:05am and 8:15am respectively.
Afterwards, the Liberation War Affairs minister, freedom fighters, family members of the martyred intellectuals and the public will pay their respects by placing wreaths at the mausoleum.
