Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Monday conferred the "Friend of Liberation War" honour posthumously on the late US Senator Edward M. “Ted” Kennedy, Sr for his great contribution to Bangladesh's War of Liberation.
"Today I am highly delighted to hand over the Friend of Liberation War Honour, conferred posthumously on Edward M. “Ted” Kennedy, Sr to his able son Edward M. “Ted” Kennedy, Jr," she said while joining a dinner hosted in honour of the visiting Ted Kennedy, Jr and his family members at a city hotel this evening.
Hasina recalled with gratitude the great contributions of late senator Edward M. Kennedy, Sr during the War of Liberation and afterwards.
She mentioned that Kennedy took a bold stand against the genocide committed by the Pakistani army against innocent Bangalees, despite the then-US government’s role favouring Islamabad.
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The prime minister also mentioned that Ted Kennedy also criticised the US policy to supply arms to Pakistan, and boldly called on the US government to stop American military and economic aid to Pakistan till the end of the war.
She also recalled that Kennedy visited the refugee camps in India's West Bengal in August 1971. Indeed, Kennedy not only visited the camps, he also authored a report on the refugee crisis in the border areas, after an estimated 10 million people fled the fighting in what would eventually become Bangladesh.
In December 1971, Ted Kennedy, the young senator with a famous family name, strongly criticised the Nixon administration's support for Pakistan and its ignoring of "the brutal and systematic repression of East Bengal by the Pakistani army".
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In February 1972, Kennedy flew to independent Bangladesh and delivered a memorable speech at the University of Dhaka, where the Pakistan army's killing spree had commenced hardly a year earlier, saying: "We are brothers in liberty, and no man, no policy, no government can change that fact."
Kennedy served as a US senator for Massachusetts for 47 years till his death in 2009. In the course of his career he came to be known as "The Lion of the Senate."