News Flash
DHAKA, Aug 17, 2025 (BSS) – BNP Standing Committee Member Salahuddin Ahmed today said that the "chapter of fire" closed on August 5, 2024, and called on poets, writers, and literary figures to now focus on creating works that inspire democracy and uphold people's rights.
“Why are you still talking about fire? That chapter ended on August 5, 2024,” he said. “Now, you should write poems about the fragrance of flowers, the fragrance of democracy, and the fragrance of people’s rights.”
He made the remarks as the special guest at a view exchange programme titled "The Role and Responsibility of Poets and Writers in the Transition to Democracy."
The event was organized by the BNP Media Cell at the National Press Club's Abdus Salam Hall.
BNP Acting Chairman Tarique Rahman was virtually present as the chief guest in the event. President of the Jatiya Kabita Parishad Mohan Raihan presided over the event while its general secretary Rezauddin Stalin delivered a welcome speech.
Addressing the discussion, a response was given by Salahuddin Ahmed to a poet who had mentioned "volcanic lava" in an earlier speech. In reply to the poet, he said a world should be built in the kingdom of love, so that its fragrance may be spread across the country.
“Those writers who served Sheikh Hasina and the autocracy kept their pens silent during the time of genocide. Their pens ran out of ink. When people were being disappeared, murdered, and tortured, their poems did not emerge. A class of such people was born in Bangladesh,” he added.
Writers should unleash that volcanic lava against them while spreading the fragrance of flowers to the people for the sake of democracy, the BNP leader urged.
Referring to poets as observers who view society with a bird's-eye view, he said, “If poets, writers, and literary figures observe the entire country and its people from the sky with a bird's eye, and only then they will see that complete picture.”
"It is because poets dream that a country becomes independent and a nation becomes free. Revolutionaries are born based on the dreams of those poets,” he added.
BNP Vice Chairman Nurul Islam Moni, Media Cell Convener Professor Moudud Hossain Alamgir Pavel, Adviser to BNP's Acting Chairman Dr. Mahadi Amin and Amader Somoy editor Abu Sayeed Khan, among others, spoke in the event.
