BD pays tribute to martyred intellectuals

Hossen Sohel of DOT
President Md Abdul Hamid and Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina have paid tribute to the martyred intellectuals by visiting the Martyred Intellectuals Memorial in Mirpur yesterday, reports bdnews24.com.
Both the president and the prime minister have placed wreaths at the altar of the memorial and stood there in silence for a while.
A team of the President Guard Regiment offered armed salute as the bugle played a sombre tune.
The Awami League led by the prime minister paid their homage to the martyred intellectuals.
Thousands of people of all ages poured in, carrying the national flag and flowers to pay their respects to the martyred intellectuals after the memorial opened to all.
Different political parties, social and cultural organisations and peoples from all walks of life paid their homage to the martyrs at the Rayer Bazar Monument on Friday morning.
Families as well as students from different educational institutes have streamed onto the Rayer Bazar Monument.
Staring at a crushing defeat in the war, the Pakistani occupation army and its collaborators killed many university teachers, doctors, artists, writers, journalists and other prominent Bengalis just two days before their surrender, in a desperate act of vengeance.
They were systematically rounded up from their homes in the middle of the night, taken to torture cells throughout the city, brutalised for hours, and finally assembled on various killing fields and executed en masse.
The bodies of the slain intellectuals were found with marks of tortures in the capital’s Mirpur and Rayer Bazar where the monuments have been built to immortalise them.
Bangladesh has already hanged war criminals accused of mass killings, including those of the intellectuals.
It has also raised the demand in the international arena for recognition of the genocide carried out by the Pakistani forces and their local collaborators.