Shaheed Minar
The Shaheed Minar
(Bengali: Shohid Minar) is a national monument in
Dhaka,
Bangladesh, established to commemorate the martyrs of the
Language Movement of 1952.
On
February 21, 1952, dozens of students and political activists were killed when the
Pakistani police force opened fire on Bengali protesters who were demanding equal status to their native tongue, Bangla. The massacre occurred near
Dhaka Medical College and
Ramna Park in Dhaka. A makeshift monument was erected on February 23[1] by students of University of Dhaka and other educational institutions, but soon demolished on February 26[2] by the Pakistani police force.
The
Language Movement gained momentum and after a long struggle,
Bangla was given equal status as Urdu. To commemorate the martyrs,
the Shaheed Minar was designed and built by Hamidur Rahman, a Bangladeshi sculptor. The monument stood until the Bangladesh
Liberation War in 1971, when it was demolished completely during Operation Searchlight, a genocide carried out by the Pakistani Army resulting in an estimated 50,000 civilian deaths. After
Bangladesh gained independence, it was rebuilt.
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