Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Monday said the masterminds behind the August 15 massacre will also be gradually exposed in the near future.
“It was very essential to try the killers first. We’ve done it. And it’ll also come out eventually one day who had been behind the killings. And that day is not far,” she said.
The prime minister was addressing a memorial meeting arranged by Bangladesh Awami League (AL) marking the National Mourning Day and 46th martyrdom anniversary of Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
Sheikh Hasina, also the AL President, presided over the virtual function joining it from her official residence Ganobhaban, while other participants were connected from AL central office in the city’s Bangabandhu Avenue.
She said all of those who took part in the brutal assassination and who stood beside them (killers) or who prepared the ground for it are equally guilty.
READ: Mourning Day: PM pays homage to Bangabandhu
About the demand for a commission to find out the masterminds of the cruellest mayhem, Sheikh Hasina said things would be very clear to all from the newspapers of those days.
“We will not need to go far to find out them, if we see who criticised (the rule of Bangabandhu), who spoke (against it) and who prepared the ground. You’ve asked for formation of a commission. It is very fine. But if you read the then newspapers, many things would be very clear to all,” she said.
Sheikh Hasina, also the eldest daughter of Bangabandhu, said the father of the nation returned home on January 10, 1972, and the conspiracy against him started the same year, not giving him time to rebuild the war-ravaged country.
It takes many years to rebuild a war-ravaged country, but criticism started against him just in one year, she said.
The PM said the killings were carried out as Bangabandhu could not be detached from the mass people by spreading propaganda against him.
“Who had written those? Whom they wanted to satisfy? Who prepared the grounds of the killings?” she said.
August 15 carnage can be comparable only with Karbala:
Describing the August 15 incident as the most heinous and cruel killing in the history, she said this carnage can be compared only with the Karbala tragedy.
Sheikh Hasina said it is usually seen that only the head of the state or the premier of the government is assassinated for the state power.
“Such carnage was carried out in Bangladesh, which can be compared only with Karbala. Women and children had not been killed in Karbara. But women and children were not spared (in the August 15 carnage) in Bangladesh,” she lamented.
Noting that the conspirators wanted to exploit and deprive the people of Bangladesh for ever, she said the real revenge of the August 15 carnage would be taken when the people would get a decent life in every front, having food, cloth, shelter, education and health rights as dreamt by the Father of the Nation.
She, however, said her government has already done a lot of in ensuring the rights for improving the living standard of the people.
“My father had liberated the country. This independence can’t go in vain. It would be a success,” Hasina said adding that the benefit of this success would reach every house even in grassroots area and the people will have improved living standard.
At the outset of the event, a one-minute silence was observed in memory of Bangabandhu and martyrs of the August 15 carnage.
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AL general secretary Obaidul Quader delivered the welcome speech, while its presidium members Begum Matia Chowdhury, Dr Muhammad Abdur Razzaque, Jahangir Kabir Nanak and Abdur Rahman, joint general secretaries Mahbubul Alam Hanif and AFM Bahauddin Nasim, religious office secretary Advocate Sirajul Mostafa and office secretary Barrister Biplab Barua, among others, spoke at the meeting conducted by its publicity and publication secretary Abdus Sobhan Golap.