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A mission to save the speech
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the cans of films and audio tapes to a further remote village called Karkosai.
Later, the materials were sent to India with the help of freedom fighters and Indian officials, and brought back to Bangladesh after the independence.
Amzad resumed his job at DFP after the war and later became the chief cameraman of BTV.
He also played a key role in protecting the precious recording of the speech after the brutal assassination of Bangabandhu and his family members in 1975, when conspirators raided the DFP office.
With the help of some trusted colleagues, he replaced the film negative of the March 7 speech with a different one in the designated canister. The conspirators took away the canister thinking they got the right footage.
Amzad, now 79, said it was the then director of Film Division Mohebbur Rahman Khair, popularly known as Abul Khair, who planned everything -- from shooting the historic speech to protecting it all the way.
Abul Khair, an acclaimed film and TV actor who passed away in 2001, had sent an eight-member team to shoot the historic speech Bangabandhu delivered at the mammoth rally on Race Course Maidan. Amzad was a member of that team.
They used German 35mm ARRI camera for filming the event and Nagra audio device for sound recording.
Reflecting on that day, Amzad said, “There were rumours that the stage might be blown up by a bomb. We were nervous ... but we were more concerned about recording Bangabandhu’s speech properly.”
He added, “We could not pay that much attention to the speech as we were involved in the shooting, but we were mesmerised by the way Bangabandhu issued clear-cut instructions throughout his address.”
Abul Khair had been worrying about the fate of the recorded materials since March 25, when the Pakistan military started massacring unarmed Bangalees as part of one of the worst genocides in the world.
“He [Abul Khair] trusted me as one of his loyal junior colleagues. When he told me about the task, I just said I want to meet my father and seek his blessings,” Amzad told The Daily Star.
SM Golam Kibria, the current director general of DFP, said they tried to recognise the persons behind recording Bangabandhu’s historic speech and proposed Amzad’s name for Ekushey Padak.
The 19-minute address of Bangabandhu set the tone for the Liberation War that would officially begin on March 26 and culminated with the Victory on December 16 after a bloody nine-month war.
“The struggle this time is the struggle for our emancipation. The struggle this time is for independence,” the Father of the Nation had roared to deliver a clarion call for independence.
The speech has been inducted into the book, “We Shall Fight on the Beaches: The Speeches that Inspired History” by Jacob F Field, a collection of “extracts from the most rousing and inspirational wartime speeches of the last 2,500 years -- Cicero to Churchill, Lincoln to Mao”.
In 2017, Unesco inscribed it as a documentary heritage in the Memory of the World Register.

China pushes ‘direct’ Russia-Ukraine negotiations as war rages
AFP, Beijing
Beijing urged direct negotiations between Russia and Ukraine during a Saturday call between Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi and his American counterpart Antony Blinken, as the war following Moscow’s invasion entered a tenth day.
The exchange marked the first call between the country’s top diplomats since the beginning of hostilities marked by heavy Russian bombardment and fierce resistance from Ukrainian fighters who maintain control of the capital Kyiv.
China has walked a cautious diplomatic line since the conflict began, refusing to condemn Moscow’s actions after only last month touting a “no limits” friendship between the two countries.
On Saturday, Wang told Secretary of State Blinken: “We encourage direct negotiations between Russia and Ukraine,” according to a statement released by the Chinese foreign ministry.
“We hope that the fighting will stop as soon as possible... and that a large-scale humanitarian crisis will be prevented,” Wang added, conceding negotiations between the two countries would not be “smooth sailing”.
Blinken, meanwhile, said the world was “watching to see which nations stand up for the basic principles of freedom, self-determination and sovereignty,” according to State Department spokesman Ned Price.
“The world is acting in unison to repudiate and respond to the Russian aggression, ensuring that Moscow will pay a high price,” Blinken said.
But while the US and numerous other countries have imposed a wide range of sanctions against Moscow, China has yet to refer to the crisis as a war.
Wang reiterated the complexity of the issue Saturday, saying it was “closely related to the security interests of all parties”.
He added that the US, NATO the European Union and Russia should conduct dialogue and “pay attention to the negative impact of the continuous eastward expansion of NATO on Russia’s security environment” -- a key Russian talking point.
Nearly 1.37 million people have fled Ukraine since the start of the invasion, according to the latest UN data.