Jatiya Sangsad witnessed a tense and politically charged debate on Wednesday as treasury bench members alleged that Jamaat-e-Islami bore historical responsibility for opposing the birth of Bangladesh during the 1971 War of Liberation and that the opposition was attempting to turn the July uprising into a political business...
HISTORICAL research on the Liberation War of 1971 has long been constrained by uneven access to primary sources. Much of what transpired during those nine months remains under documented in Bangladeshi institutional archives, while critical evidence lies scattered across collections in the West, often inaccessible to local researchers. The recent digitisation of the...
I WRITE not only as a citizen of Bangladesh, but as the granddaughter of Kazi Nuruzzaman — a Mukti Bahini sector commander who did not inherit history, but helped forge it in fire...
BANGLADESH is once again confronting questions that go to the heart of its founding principles. The constitutional commitments to secularism, equality and cultural pluralism — rooted in the spirit of 1971 — have long been tested by political contestation and shifting ideological currents. Yet recent developments suggest a more visible strain, one that extends beyond...
Bangladesh on Thursday celebrated the country’s 56th Independence and National Day in a befitting manner with rich tributes to the national heroes, who sacrificed their lives for the country’s liberation....
BANGLADESH was not born gently in 1971. Nations rarely are. Ours emerged amid the smoke of burned villages, the dull thunder of artillery and the nervous crackle of radios carrying rebellion across a frightened countryside. Independence did not arrive as a constitutional gift; it was wrested from the wreckage of a collapsing state by men and women who decided...
BANGLADESH is celebrating its 55th anniversary of independence as a nation, and it’s time to ask: Are the people of Bangladesh free and independent? There is no doubt that the people of Bangladesh are free as a nation. This identity stems from the international fact that Bangladesh has been an independent nation-state recognised by the world since 1971....
‘TELL me something,’ a friend asked over tea in Winnipeg, Canada, recently, stirring his cup like it contained the secrets of the republic, ‘are we still the same country that was born in 1971?’...
The nation is going to observe Genocide Day today, recalling the horrors of the genocide committed on March 25, 1971 by the Pakistani occupation army against the unarmed people of Bangladesh...
BANGLADESH’S journey towards food security is a story of resilience, innovation and ongoing challenges. From the days of famine of 1974 (March to December) and food aid (Red Cross aid and soup kitchens) to becoming largely self-sufficient in staple crops, the country has made remarkable progress. Yet, as the population grows and climate change intensifies...
The country’s education sector had been neglected by all governments since its independence in 1971, BRAC University professor emeritus Manzoor Ahmed said on Tuesday...
HISTORY does not disappear because it makes someone uncomfortable. Numbers can be twisted, facts blurred, genocide softened into ‘excesses,’ but the truth of 1971 remains unyielding. It sits at the core of who we are. What is most alarming today is that denial is no longer only across the border; it is growing within Bangladesh. These are not harmless...
THE Memorial Volume Honouring Titled Freedom Fighters (Janata Bank Limited, 2012) documents the lives of the heroes of 1971, including UK Ching, a distinguished freedom fighter from the Chittagong Hill Tracts. Alongside UK Ching, who was awarded the Bir Bikrom gallantry title, many other Indigenous fighters from the hill regions displayed exceptional courage during Bangladesh’s Liberation War...
THIS soil of ours has witnessed agitation, bloodshed, death and pledges to build the nation anew since 1947. The fairest of the demand was turned down; the most vibrant voices were silenced along with the chanters, drenched in gore, the most celebratory moments blackened by treachery. Thus, this nation, liberated from a discriminatory rule for 23 years in 1971...
1971 was a line undeniable in the stream of political, class and peoples’ developments, and changes and evolutions in this subcontinent that, since then, began further forward movement with many ‘new’s never found in the land’s history of thousands of years. As history moves forward, although a section of analysts deny, these — the changes, developments and...
‘Aaj nei Borgi, nei Engrej, nei Pakistani hanadar. Aaj tobu keno amar mone shunnota aar hahakar?’ (‘There are no Borgis now, no British, no Pakistani invaders. So why do I still feel this emptiness and anguish in my heart?’)...
A group of performers on Saturday staged ‘Symbolic Mass Graveyard 1971’ to commemorate the martyred intellectuals of 1971.
Bangladesh Nationalist Party secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir claimed that false accusations are being labelled against his late father Mirza Ruhul Amin, saying that his father spent nearly the entire duration of the 1971 Liberation War in India.
Bangladesh Nationalist Party secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir on Monday raised alarm that individuals who collaborated with the Pakistani forces during the 1971 Liberation War, including those involved in killing freedom fighters, are now being...
Leaders of the Bangladesh Jasod on Sunday urged the government of Pakistan to offer an apology for committing atrocities on the unarmed people of Bangladesh during the war of independence in 1971...
SINCE independence in 1971, Bangladesh has gone through several political transitions, many of which involved interim or caretaker governments. During these times, significant institutional reforms have often been introduced that tend to last beyond their immediate terms. The current government, now responsible for leading the country through a critical...
Thirty-two citizens in a statement on Thursday said that Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami must admit that it played a role against the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971...
Politicians and former diplomats at a dialogue on foreign policy in the city on Thursday said that Bangladesh could not present a strong foreign policy due to lack of consensus since its independence in 1971...
Academics, professionals and journalists on Wednesday at a discussion meeting held in Dhaka said the late politician Tajuddin Ahmad, founding prime minister of Bangladesh, who was one of the organisers of the 1971 War of Independence, wanted to establish a democratic country upholding the rights of the common people...
The Appellate Division of the Supreme Court on Tuesday began hearing the appeal of Mobarak Hossain, an expelled Awami League leader and a former Jamaat-e-Islami member, challenging his 2014 death sentence for war crimes committed in the Brahmanbaria area during the 1971 Liberation War...
Left student organisations on Sunday condemned recent attacks on and threats to left student leaders and activists during demonstrations in Rajshahi and Chattogram rejecting the Supreme Court’s May 27 verdict acquitting Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami leader ATM Azharul Islam of 1971 war crimes charges...
Protests rejecting the Supreme Court’s May 27 verdict acquitting Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami leader ATM Azharul Islam of 1971 war crimes charges and against the recent attacks on left student leaders and activists in Rajshahi and Chattogram continued in Dhaka and elsewhere in the country for the fifth day on Saturday...
The Appellate Division on Tuesday overturned its 2019 judgement that had upheld the death sentence of Jamaat-e-Islami leader ATM Azharul Islam for crimes against humanity and genocide committed during the 1971 liberation war...
NINETEEN seventy-one arrived, not as a year, but as a violation, a savage tear in the thin skin of what we dared call life. I was a child, a splinter of a being, four years old, yet the tremors of that brutal rending still reverberate in the hollow spaces of my bones. They call it the Liberation War, a tidy phrase for a messy, monstrous thing. It was the air we choked on, thick with...
The Appellate Division of the Supreme Court on Wednesday decided to reopen the appeal of Jamaat-e-Islami leader ATM Azharul Islam, who was sentenced to death for war crimes committed during the 1971 Liberation War...