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How shall we honour Ted Kennedy?

A proposal

Prof. Haroon-Er-Rashid, Dr. Shamsui. Bari, Muzammel Huq
The death of Senator Ted Kennedy on 25 August 2009 is being mourned all over the world. The US President has described him as the best Senator ever in US history. His colleagues in the Congress, which he served for close to half a century, and the ordinary people of his country saw him as the staunchest defender of liberal causes in US history. His death is thus being mourned by people from all walks of life, but more particularly by the poor, the deprived and the most downtrodden in the US.
Why only the US? People all over the world have benefited from the support he gave to people's causes. He was perhaps the most loved US personality in recent history.
Among all the people of the world, it is perhaps the people of Bangladesh who have benefited the most from the support he gave to our cause in 1971. Those of us. including these »Fwriters, who worked with him and his staff in 1971, for the
independence of Bangladesh, remember the strong support he gave us in our efforts to create a favourable US public opinion to advance the Liberation of our country.
Ted Kennedy's visit to the refugee camps in India in August 1971 and the reports/statements that emanated from it exposed the Pakistani propaganda that all was well in Bangladesh. He was perhaps the first person to decry the slaughter as “genocide" and the trial of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman as a mockery. This made our task of winning over the American public to our side a lot easier.
More crucial perhaps for our cause was the fact that Ted stood as a rock to stop all US support to the war efforts of the Government of Pakistan. This led to the passage of the Saxbe-Church amendment to the Foreign Assistance Bill in the US Senate and the earlier passage of the Gallagher amendment in the US House of Representatives whose objectives were to cut off all military and economic aid to Pakistan, including the aid commitments already in the pipeline. The importance of these
efforts in hindering the genocidal war-efforts of the Government of Pakistan in Bangladesh cannot be overstated.
One can go on writing about many other aspects of Ted's crucial support to our War of Liberation. There are others who have already written about it and many others will surely write about them. But we think it is important that the government and people of Bangladesh do more than simply convey our heartfelt condolences on the death of Senator Ted Kennedy. His help to Bangladesh and its people both in the course of its creation and for close to four decades since then call for a much greater expression of gratitude from us.
He deserves to be honoured
by the entire nation as one of the greatest benefactors of Bangladesh. Only the highest honour that the country can bestow upon him, albeit posthumously, will be the fittest expression of our gratitude to this great man of our time. The government could consider bestowing such an honour through a special ceremony during the Victory Day celebrations next December to which members of his bereaved family could be invited. A declaration on this could be made at/before his funeral.
The writers, Professor Haroon-Er- Rashid, IUB (at the time with the World Bank in Washington DC), Dr Shamsui Ban, Chairman RIB (at the time with the University of Chicago), Muzammel Huq. MD. EDCL (at the time a graduate student at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor), worked with Senator Kennedy during 1971.