Killing of Amanullah Asaduzzaman

Date: January 20, 1969 • Location: Rome, Italy

This milestone marked the outbreak and beginning of this historic period, which spanned 1969–1971.

Bengali student activist Amanullah Asaduzzaman was shot and killed by East Pakistani police, an event that led to the Bangladesh Liberation War.

Amanullah Mohammad Asaduzzaman was an East Pakistani student activist whose death at the hands of police during a protest on 20 January 1969 "changed the nature of the student-mass movement and ... turned into a mass-upsurge against the Ayub regime and its repressive measures", according to Banglapedia. The Daily Star reports him as one of three martyrs of the 1969 uprising in East Pakistan which "set the stage for the liberation war". He was awarded the Independence Day Award in 2018 posthumously by the Government of Bangladesh.