Bangladesh Embassy jointly celebrated the great ‘Martyrs’ Day’ and ‘International Mother Language Day’ with the ancient Leiden University for the third time. In this colorful event, people from different castes and create gathered together and sang the victory of their mother tongue.
20 countries joined as co-hosts in this embassy event. The Dean of the Linguistics Department of Leiden University gave a welcome speech. Children and students from different countries like China, India, Italy, Yemen, Puerto Rico, Ukraine, Spain, Kosovo, Bolivia, and Morocco showed their cultural diversity and traditions by performing songs, poems, and instrumental music in their languages. Students from different Dutch schools also put on a variety of performances in Dutch.
In the presence of more than two hundred students, the importance of mother tongue, multilingualism, etc. was discussed by Kathleen Ferrier, Chairman of UNESCO-Netherlands, and Robin Baldev Singh, Coordinator of the National Committee against Discrimination and Racism of the Netherlands. In addition, researchers from Leiden University shed light on multilingualism and cultural diversity. The importance of the ‘Esperanto’ language is explained by Frederico Gobo, professor of Italian at the University of Amsterdam.
At the event, Bangladesh Ambassador to the Netherlands Riaz Hamidullah said that Bangladesh has expressed solidarity with all the nations of the world and more than 7000 language-speaking ethnic groups to preserve their language and culture. Bangladesh is the holder and bearer of consistency, pluralism, and diversity in all fields.
On the occasion of International Mother Language Day, the Embassy and Leiden University jointly organized a creative poster competition open to students living in the Netherlands to reflect the thinking of future generations. Besides a spontaneous quiz competition on language was organized among the students present on the occasion.
Senior officials of the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, teachers of various universities, and representatives of various think tanks in the Netherlands were present at the event.
Bangladeshi artiste Tanjina Tama and members of the Bangladesh Embassy family performed songs by Ekush.
This arrangement is widely appreciated in various circles. The head of the sub-mission of the Ukrainian embassy excitedly said that this arrangement of the Bangladesh embassy will play a special role in holding and conveying the unique language culture, and color of all the countries of the world.
Earlier, in the morning, the ambassador, the embassy family and expatriate Bangladeshis living in the Netherlands paid tribute to the memory of language martyrs by laying wreaths at the Permanent Martyrs located in the heart of The Hague.