BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia did not cut cake at the first hour of her “birthday” to mark her 70th birth anniversary this year, but party leaders and activists said they would cut cake later in the day today.
Every year, Khaleda, flocked by leaders and activists of her party, cuts a cake at one minute past midnight on the night of August 14-15 to celebrate her birthday.
Party leaders said because this year Khaleda’s birthday falls on a Friday, party leaders and activists will cut cake on Saturday instead.
Each year, August 15 is observed as the national day of mourning for the 1975 assassination of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and the murder of most of his family by a group of disgruntled military officers in one of most heinous assassinations in the history of the world.
“As Madam [Khaleda] does not attend office on Friday, she will stay home and will not come to the office. So we will celebrate her birthday on Saturday,” Syed Moazzem Hossain Alal, president of the Jubo Dal, told the Dhaka Tribune.
The ruling Awami League has repeatedly urged Khaleda Zia, a former prime minister, not to celebrate her birthday on a day of mourning.
Meanwhile, the official website of the Jatiyatabadi Chhatra Dal, the student wing of the BNP, was hacked by people who urged Chhatra Dal leaders “not to commit violence in the name of celebrating Khaleda’s birthday on national mourning day.”
The actual birth date of Khaleda Zia, who according to the BNP entered her seventh decade of life this year, has long been a matter of contention.
Khaleda’s father Iskandar Majumder, originally from Feni, was a resident of Dinajpur, where Khaleda was born. Her mother was Tayeba Majumder.
Khaleda married Ziaur Rahman, a captain of the then Pakistan army, in August 1960. Zia fought as a sector commander in the 1971 Liberation War.
Awami League leaders accuse the BNP chief of observing her birthday on August 15 to celebrate the attempt to turn Bangladesh towards Pakistani ideals after Bangabandhu’s assassination.
It has been reported that Khaleda’s marriage certificate lists her birthday as September 5, 1945. However, on her first passport, the date of birth is allegedly dated August 19, 1946.
According to a curriculum vitae distributed to the media after Khaleda took oath of office as the prime minister of Bangladesh in 1991, the BNP chairperson was born in Feni on September 19, 1945.
The BNP observes Khaleda’s birthday on August 15.
