The minister came up with the remarks at a seminar arranged by Bangla Academy at its Abdul Karim Shahitya Bisharad auditorium, marking Bangabandhu’s 45th death anniversary and the National Mourning Day - 2020.

Remembering the martyrs of August 15, Khalid said August is the rueful and elegiac month for the Bengali nation as Bangabandhu, the Greatest Bengali of all time and his family members were brutally assassinated on August 15 in 1975 - and also, for the August 21, 2014 grenade attack on an Awami League rally at the capital's Bangabandhu Avenue in which Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, the then opposition leader in parliament, narrowly escaped from being killed.

“On February 15 in the year of 1975, the greatest Bengali of all time Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman attended Bangla Academy’s inauguration seminar of its week-long events marking the Amar Ekushey February, as the chief guest after winning the 1970 election,” he said.

He dedicatedly patronized Bangladesh's arts and culture till his last breath, he added.

Presided by Bangla Academy’s new President Professor Shamsuzzaman Khan, the event was joined by its Director General Habihullah Siraji who shared his opening remarks. 

Md Badrul Arefin, secretary of the Ministry of Cultural Affairs also spoke at the event and Dr Md Shahadat Hossain Nipu recited a poem titled ‘Tungipara Gram Theke’, written by poet Kamal Chowdhury during the post-1975 situation.

After the seminar, the state minister launched the publication of 26 out of 100 books that Bangla Academy is publishing on Bangabandhu’s philosophies and works, as part of the ‘Mujib Borsho’ celebration. 

The minister then inaugurated Bangla Academy’s tree plantation project marking the National Mourning Day 2020 at the academy premise.