The leaders and activists of the BNP are set to celebrate the birthday of their party chief Khaleda Zia on Saturday, but they will not cut cake at the first hour of the day.
Party leaders said because this year Khaleda’s birthday falls on a Friday, party members will cut cake on Saturday instead.
Related story: Huda asks Khaleda not to cut birthday cake Aug 15
“As Madam [Khaleda] does not attend office on Friday, she will stay home and will not come to the office. So we will celebrate her birthday on Saturday,” Syed Moazzem Hossain Alal, president of the Jubo Dal, told the Dhaka Tribune.
Every year, Khaleda, flocked by leaders and activists of her party, cuts a cake at one minute past midnight on the night of August 14-15 to celebrate her birthday.
August 15 is observed as the national day of mourning for the 1975 assassination of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and the murder of most of his family by a group of disgruntled military officers.
The ruling Awami League has repeatedly urged her not to celebrate her birthday on a day of mourning.
Take a look: AL leaders ask Khaleda not to celebrate fake birthday on August 15
Meanwhile, the official website of the Jatiyatabadi Chhatra Dal, the student wing of the BNP, was hacked by people who urged Chhatra Dal leaders “not to commit violence in the name of celebrating Khaleda’s birthday on national mourning day.”
The actual birth date of Khaleda Zia, who according to the BNP entered her seventh decade of life this year, has long been a matter of contention.
Khaleda’s father Iskandar Majumder, originally from Feni, was a resident of Dinajpur, where Khaleda was born. Her mother was Tayeba Majumder.
Khaleda married Ziaur Rahman, a captain of the then Pakistan army, in August 1960. Zia fought as a sector commander in the 1971 Liberation War.
Awami League leaders accuse the BNP chief of observing her birthday on August 15 to celebrate the attempt to turn Bangladesh towards Pakistani ideals after Bangabandhu’s assassination.
It has been reported that Khaleda’s marriage certificate lists her birthday as September 5, 1945, while on her first passport, it is allegedly dated August 19, 1946.
According to a curriculum vitae distributed to the media after taking oath as prime minister of Bangladesh in 1991, Khaleda was born in Feni on September 19, 1945.
The BNP observes Khaleda’s birthday on August 15.
Source: Dhaka Tribune
