Int´l Mother Language Day observed in Helsinki

The International Mother Language Day was observed in Finland as elsewhere in the globe on February 21 with the view to preserving linguistic diversity and promoting mother tongue-based multilingual education.

Bangladeshi community Helsinki in cooperation with Kontula Art School and Helsinki library marked the day through placing floral wreaths at makeshift Martyrs' Monument in Kontula where people from different countries including Finland, Sweden USA, Russia, Senegal, Kongo, Kenya, Gambia, Morocco and Egypt also took part.

They paid tributes to the Martyrs of Bangladesh (Then East Pakistan), who sacrificed their lives to establish Bangla as the state language through waging greater movement against the Pakistani rulers on 21 February 1952.

Speakers at the programme expressed their gratitude to the locals and foreigners for their presence on the occasion and sought all-out cooperation to set up a parament Martyrs' Monument in Helsinki.

The UNESCO selected February 21 to celebrate the International Mother Language Day to pay respect to the Language movement of Bangladesh in 1952.

Number of Bangladeshi people were killed by the then Pakistani government to establish the right of Bengali language as state language of the country. Pakistan wanted to impose Urdu as the state language of Bangladesh (Then East Pakistan) instead of Bengali, which was strongly protested by Bangladeshi people. Such incident of sacrificing lives to establish rights of language is very rare in the world, which encouraged the UNESCO to celebrate the day on the language day of Bangladesh.

International Mother Language Day was proclaimed by the General Conference of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in November 1999. The UN General Assembly welcomed the proclamation of the day in its resolution of 2002.