22/02/2021
Shaheed Minar
In 1999 the south-west corner of Altab Ali Park gained a Shaheed Minar (Martyrs’ Monument), a semi-circular concrete plinth with five white steel screens, representing a mother and children, the former to the centre, bow headed in front of a blood-red circle. This is a smaller version of Dhaka’s Shaheed Minar, originally designed by Hamidur Rahman, which commemorates activists of the Bengali language movement killed in 1952. Long desired and petitioned for, the Whitechapel monument began to be planned in earnest in 1996, though not at first with this site in mind. The Bangladesh Welfare Association marshalled contributions from 54 organisations and worked closely with the Council, principally through Mike Howes, the Acting Head of Leisure. Another copy of the Dhaka monument was made in Oldham in 1996–7. Its designers, the Free Form Arts Trust, Hackney based and represented by Tim Ward, were brought in and commissioned to make Whitechapel’s structure larger. Landscaping and the plinth were handled by the Council and Arts Fabrications made the monument which was unveiled on 17 February 1999 by Humayun Rashid Choudhury, Speaker of the Bangladeshi Parliament