ISLAMABAD, March 22: Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajid will bestow the “Foreign Friends of Bangladesh Award” upon five distinguished Pakistanis who had opposed the Pakistani army action of 1971 in East Pakistan and voiced their support to the Bangladesh’s War of Liberation.

The awards will be distributed amongst the offspring of poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz, poet and activist Habib Jalib, writer and intellectual Prof Waris Mir, Baloch nationalist leader Mir Ghaus Bux Bizenjo, and lawyer-activist Malik Ghulam Jilani.

The awards will be distributed on March 24 at a special ceremony in Dhaka which will be presided over by Prime Minister Hasina Wajid.

Those who will be given away gold-plated silver metallic plaques, bearing replica of the National Memorial of Bangladesh and a citation on silk cloth, include Saleema Hashmi, the daughter of Faiz; Asma Jahangir, the daughter of Malik Ghulam Jilani; Hamid Mir, the son of Prof Waris Mir; Hasil Bux Bizenjo, the son of Ghaus Bux Bizenjo, as well as the daughter of Habib Jalib.—A Reporter