Bangladeshi mountaineer Wasfia Nazreen, centre, waves after arriving at the Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in Dhaka yesterday

By Mizan Rahman
Dhaka
Wasfia Nazreen, the second Bangladeshi woman to conquer world’s tallest peak Mount Everest, has dedicated her feat to the women’s rights activists of the country.
“This is not only my achievement. I could not have done it without the support of the people of my country,” she told reporters after her plane landed at the Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in Dhaka at 1:25pm yesterday.
“I’m dedicating my victory to those associated with women’s rights movement.”
Following her arrival in the country, Wasfia visited and paid her respect to the martyred intellectuals of 1971 Liberation War at the memorial erected in their memory at the capital’s Rayer Bazar.
On May 26, the 29-year-old mountaineer reached the 8,850m high (29,035ft) summit of Mount Everest from the southern side at 6:26am (Nepal time) with Ngima Girmen Sherpa and Da Kusang Sherpa.
Wasfia is the fourth Bangladeshi mountaineer to hoist Bangladesh’s flag on the top of Everest just a week after Nishat Mazumder did it as the first Bangladeshi woman.
Wasfia, a rights activist, writer and development practitioner, said she wants to promote the women freedom fighter who fought bravely for Bangladesh’s independence in 1971.
“We have failed to give proper respect to them yet after 40 years of independence. I want to tell the world about them from the highest peaks of all the continents,” she said.
As Bangladesh turned 40 last year, Wasfia ventured into climbing the seven summits, the highest mountains in each of the seven continents through the ‘Bangladesh on Seven Summits’ campaign in July 2011.
As part of this effort, last year she climbed the 5895m high Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa in October and near-7km high Mount Aconcagua in Argentina in December, the second highest of the Seven summits.