A woman decorates the Bangladesh Central Language Martyrs’ Memorial monument with flowers in homage to the martyrs of the 1952 Bengali Language Movement in Dhaka yesterday, on International Mother Language Day. International Mother Language Day is celebrated each year on this day, which in Bangladesh marks 65 years since police officials fired at thousands of protesters at universities in then East Pakistan, who were demanding that Bengali be declared the state language. The deaths marked the start of a nearly two-decades-long struggle for the establishment of the state Bangladesh which was achieved when Indian troops were victorious in the 1971 independence war with Pakistan.