My brothers,

I stand before you today with a heavy heart overflowing with grief. You are fully aware of the events that are going on and understand their import. We have been trying to do our best to cope with the situation. And yet, unfortunately, the streets of Dhaka, Chittagong, Khulna, Rajshahi, and Rangpur are awash with the blood of our brothers. The people of Bengal now want to be free, the people of Bengal now want to live, and the people of Bengal now want their rights. What have we done that was wrong? After the elections, the people of Bangladesh voted as one for me. for the Awami League. We were to sit in the National Assembly, draft a constitution for ourselves there, and build our country: the people of this land would thereby get economic, political and cultural freedom. But it is with regret that I have to report to you today that we have passed through twenty-three tragie years: Bengal's history of those years is full of stories of torture inflicted on our people, of blood shed by them repeatedly. Twenty-three years of a history of men and women in agony! The history of Bengal is the history of a people who have repeatedly made their highways crimson with their blood. We shed blood in 1952; even though we were the victors in the elections of 1954 we could not form a government then. In 1958 Ayub Khan declared Martial Law to enslave us for the next ten years. In 1966 when we launched the six-point movement, our boys were shot dead on 7 June. When after the movement of 1969 Ayub Khan fell from power and Yahya Khan assumed the reins of the government he declared that he would give us a constitution and restore democracy: we listened to him then. A lot has happened since and elections have taken place.