Staff Reporter :The historic Ekushey February is today (Saturday). The nation will pay homage to the martyrs of the language movement of 1952 by placing wreaths at Shaheed Minars across the country. The Central Shaheed Minar has been well decorated for the observance of Shaheed Dibas, which is also being observed simultaneously as International Mother Language Day since 2000 after UNESCO announced the decision in November, 1999.Thousands of extra police, members of elite force RAB and Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) have been deployed across the country to reinforce security during the historic occasion on Saturday, Home Ministry sources said. People from all walks of life will place wreaths at Shaheed Minars singing the chorus ‘Amar Bhaiyer Rakte Rangano Ekushey February, Ami ki Bhulite Pari’, stand in solemn silence for a while and file past the altar in honour of Salam, Barkat, Rafiq and Jabbar and other unnamed martyrs who were killed in police firing on this day in 1952 when they rallied for the recognition of Bangla as a state language of Pakistan. The events of the language movement led to other landmark movements, including the historic Six-Point Movement of 1966, and culminated into the War of Independence in 1971.President Abdul Hamid and Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina are expected to place wreaths at the Central Shaheed Minar in Dhaka one minute past midnight. The visiting West Bengal chief minister, Mamata Banerjee, is also expected to pay tributes to the language martyrs in the first hour of the day.Later, opposition leader Raushan Ershad, ministers, attorney general, members of the diplomatic corps, chiefs of the three services, various political, cultural and professional bodies will pay tribute to the martyrs one after another. Later, the Central Shaheed Minar will be opened to all.Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) Chairperson Khaleda Zia’s visiting the Shaheed Minar to pay tribute was uncertain, said her office sources. Meanwhile, bomb disposal squads, police personnel in plain clothes, special weapons and tactics personnel, patrol and roof-top security will be deployed to maintain law and order around the Central Shaheed Minar, the police said.The police set up checkpoints in different strategic places, including thel entry points to the campuses of Dhaka University and Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, and Dhaka Medical College Hospital premises. Closed-circuit television cameras were also installed.On this day in 1952, Rafiq, Shafiq, Salam, Barkat, Jabbar and several others sacrificed their lives as the Pakistani rulers ordered police to suppress the Language Movement initially started by students of Dhaka University and later joined by all Bangla-speaking people in the then East Pakistan.They suffered the wrath for demanding that Bangla should be made a state language of Pakistan along with Urdu, the language spoken by non-Bengali West Pakistanis. But they trampled the demand and responded by spilling blood on the streets of Dhaka, then a provincial capital. But the brutality could not suppress the indomitable Bengalis imbued with great sense of nationalism and patriotism – and above all their love for mother language. Pakistani rulers bowed down and conceded to the demand of the Bangla speakers.
