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Although he was very small at the time, Abir Abdullah remembers vividly when his father was taken away in the middle of the night during Bangladesh’s war of independence.
As Abir was to learn later, his father was lined up with two others to be shot by a Pakistani army firing squad.
“The first two persons were gunned down and my father was praying to God and counting his time. But suddenly the army people opened his eyes and told him that they wouldn’t kill him because he was a doctor and did good service to the sick people.”
Abir says his father had been protesting about killings and rape by the Pakistani army. “After three months of beatings and torture, my father was eventually freed at the war’s end,” he remembers.
Not surprisingly, although now grown up and a successful photo-journalist in Bangladesh, Abir Abdullah’s thoughts have rarely been far from the war in 1971. And he wondered how the veterans of that war were being treated in their home country.
What he discovered shocked him.
“During the nine months of war in 1971, after which Bangladesh separated from Pakistan, many people lost their lives. Thousands of soldiers and civilians lost arms and legs. The injured and disabled freedom fighters have still not been properly rehabilitated. They are ignored by the nation at large and hidden away from mainstream society, their lives stretching ahead — friendless, jobless, and lonely.”
After what he says was much official indifference and hostility, Abir finally managed to start visiting the wounded from the war, some of whom pass their time at a rest house near College Gate at Mohammadpur in the capital Dhaka.
The images Abir captured there went to make up an exhibition in 2000 which was widely visited and covered by the media in Bangladesh. Thirty-four-year-old Abir, who has won many awards for photography and is the Bangladesh representative of the European Press Photo Agency, hoped his images would help end what he sees as the terrible state in which these men exist.
“What I have seen personally is that, as a result, some of the freedom fighters have been given better shelter and the Government has increased the monthly honorium (money). I certainly believe that my exhibition created impact with officials and the general public,” says Abir, who was one of the first participants in a World Press Photo Seminar in Bangladesh and completed a three year project supported by the organization.
“But I am far from satisfied. I can see some positive changes over the last three or four years but it needs a long time to change the whole situation. We have, after all, been independent 34 years.”
Still, only a minority of the war veterans receive sufficient financial support from the government, says Abir, and outside the capital many have homes which are not fit to live in.
Which is why he says he will continue to campaign – through the power of pictures – to help those still alive.
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Shaheed Ali, shot in the leg during battle, now uses a special shoe for walking.
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