10 years of bloodied grenade attack

Risingbd Desk : The saddened nation is recalling today with a heavy heart the tenth anniversary of the savage August 21 grenade attack with a renewed call for holding trials of perpetrators of the carnage.

 

On August 21, 2004 a series of grenades were thrown at the public meeting in front of the Awami League central office at Bangabandhu Avenue in the capital.

 

Then leader of the opposition and current prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, and some other Awami League

leaders escaped miraculously.

 

But many were not that lucky. A total of 24 leaders and workers including the wife of former president, Zillur Rahman, Ivy Rahman, also the women affairs` secretary of Awami League died in the massacre.

 

The survivors of the grenade attack say the evil forces that killed Bangabandhu and his entire family on August 15, 1975 also tried to continue their work by killing Bangabandhu`s daughter, Sheikh Hasina, on August 21, 2004. They have one last desire to see the trial and punishment of the attackers and killers.

 

 

Just as the clock strikes 5:22pm today, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina will place a wreath and observe two minutes` silence at a temporary memorial on Bangabandhu Avenue marking the 10th anniversary of the 21 August grenade attack.

 

Hasina will also meet victims and families of those who died and participate in a discussion, initiating countrywide programmes by associate bodies.

 

 

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Wednesday said the August 21 grenade attack was aimed to frustrate our independence, democracy, peace and development.

 

"The aim of the August 21 was also to give killing, conspiracy, militancy, corruption and misrule a permanent shape, destroy the spirit of the War of Liberation and make Bangladesh leaderless," she said in a message on the eve of the day.

 

Terming the August 21 a `day of black chapter` in the country`s political history, Sheikh Hasina said, "The killers carried out the barbaric attack in broad daylight on an anti-militancy rally of Awami League on Bangabandhu Avenue to kill me under the patronage of the then BNP-Jamaat alliance government".

"Our party leaders and workers by forming a human-shield saved me from the series of grenade attacks," she recalled.

 

Sheikh Hasina urged all to pay highest tributes to the martyrs of August 21 by building a peaceful and safe country as well as a terrorism-free democratic political environment.

 

Sheikh Hasina hoped that the killing, terrorism and militancy would end in the country for ever, and rule of law would be established after the holding of trial of the attackers, planners, orderers and patrons.

 

 

 

risingbd/DHAKA/Aug 21, 2014/Augustin Sujan