Dhaka scraps Hasina govt’s ambitious project to record interviews of 1971 Liberation War participants: Report

Bangladesh’s interim government has scrapped a Rs 50-crore Liberation War documentation project initiated by Sheikh Hasina’s administration, citing poor quality and historical inaccuracies in 14,640 recorded interviews. The contractor will not be paid, and the videos will not be archived

New Delhi: A Rs 50-crore project undertaken by the now-deposed Sheikh Hasina government to preserve the history of Bangladesh’s Liberation War of 1971, which included video interviews of about 15,000 participants, will be shelved now, said reports.

Dhaka’s current administration has no plans to preserve the interviews, and the agency working on the project will not be paid, according to a report in Bangladesh’s prominent newspaper Prothom Alo on Wednesday.

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Officials told the newspaper that they found the recorded interviews did not depict the “exact history” of the Liberation War, adding there were inconsistencies in the video. Claiming that the experience of freedom fighters was not adequately reflected in the recordings, the videos were discarded fearing that these may create a negative impression about the Liberation War among the future generation, the report said.

According to the newspaper, the project was initiated in 2022 by the Awami League government so that participants in the 1971 Liberation War could share their experiences with later generations. The cost of implementing the project titled ‘Birer Kante Bir Gatha (Heroes Voice Heroic Tales)’ was estimated at Rs. 49.57 crore (Bangladesh).

It included 80,000 documentaries, based on interviews with freedom fighters, 80,000 YouTube content and 16 documentaries, which were scheduled to be completed in December 2024. The Awami League government was ousted in August that year amid a students’ uprising. The project was finalised in May 2023 with the-then Ministry of Liberation War entering into an agreement with a company named Management and Training International Limited (MTI).

According to the agreement, interviewees were to be asked 19 questions, including the sector a freedom fighter fought in; under whose direction he participated in the war; where and how he was during the nine months of the Liberation War and if he was injured, etc.

The report attributed project officials claiming the scrapped videos did not meet prescribed criteria. The interim government had reportedly asked them to stop making videos, but the contractor did not comply, project director Afrazur Rahman told Prothom Alo, adding that their bills were not paid because of this. The decision to cancel the assignment was taken after a committee formed to verify 14,640 videos recommended to the administration not to accept it.

Prothom Alo quoted a report of the reviewing committee that claimed the recorded video images to be of very poor quality. It also found that the assigned organisation could not present the real history of the Liberation War in the interviews.

“If these videos are preserved in archives, the future generation will have a negative impression of the Liberation War. Paying the bill against these videos will be a waste of government money,” said the report.

Asked about the future of the scrapped interviews, Prothom Alo quoted unnamed officials of the Ministry of Liberation War Affairs saying that these videos will not be preserved in the film archives since these images did not depict the exact picture of the Liberation War.

Ajmal Kabir Rabbi, deputy program manager of Management and Training International Limited (MTI), told the newspaper that they think the decision to cancel the videos was “intentional”. “If our previous 12,788 interviews were of good quality, how can the next 14,640 interviews be bad? This is a vindictive act of the current interim government,” he stated.