Martyred Intellectuals Day, 14 December

In the final days of the 1971 war, teachers, doctors, writers and journalists were abducted and killed; the nation remembers them each 14 December.

As defeat approached in December 1971, the Pakistani army and its local collaborators, including the Al-Badr militia, abducted many of Bangladesh's leading intellectuals from their homes in Dhaka and elsewhere. Professors, physicians, writers and journalists were killed, many of their bodies found later at Rayerbazar and Mirpur. The killings aimed to deprive the new nation of its thinkers. On 14 December each year people gather at the Martyred Intellectuals Memorial at Rayerbazar and the memorial in Mirpur to lay flowers.