Authors' Note: We wrote this article in the hopeful aftermath of the July 2024 uprising last year. But since then, we have witnessed a troubling resurgence of attacks on the trans and queer community in Bangladesh, some even led by organizers in the uprising.

"Why would the ones—those I cannot stop thinking about—forget me? Why cannot I live out my love freely? This is so unfair."

In 1994, gay rights activist Xulhaz Mannan wrote the above in a letter, possibly addressed to his lover. 

Twenty years later, Mannan was murdered for publishing Roopbaan, Bangladesh's first LGBT+ magazine. Since then, his letters remain stashed away in a closet of his residence. 

Last year, two queer archivists, including the authors of this op-ed, retrieved and digitized them. Excerpts from Mannan’s letters now appear on one of Dhaka’s freshly graffitied walls. 

On 28 July 2024, Bangladesh’s then Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina imposed a curfew, issued a shoot-on-sight order, and cut off telecommunications in an attempt to suppress a student uprising.

In response, coordinators of the student movement turned to guerrilla art. Armed with spray cans, they scrawled messages like "Hasina is a killer" on walls, streets, and riot vehicles before disappearing. People across the country joined in. The Hasina regime fell on 5 August 2024.

Street art now covers the city. But Mannan’s graffiti stands apart—it is not a demand, nor a slogan, nor a call for justice.

What does it mean to find a love letter rendered as political graffiti?

In a country where homosexuality remains criminalized and queer lives are violently erased, this graffiti blends love and mass uprising. It now sits beside an image of disappeared adibashi activist Kalpana Chakma. Together, they reveal the interwoven violences inflicted on queer people and dissenters under Hasina’s ultra-nationalist rule.

Mannan was murdered in 2016, during Hasina’s tenure. The Home Minister at the time condemned the victims: “Our society does not allow any movement that promotes unnatural sex.” 

Hasina herself repeatedly denied the existence of queer people in Bangladesh. In a 2023 interview, when asked about the criminalization of homosexuality in the country’s constitution, she responded, “That is not a problem in our country.” 

The Hasina regime also attempted to co-opt the gender rights movement.

A 2013 government gazette recognized hijra as a gender category, allowing inclusion in official documents and transgender women to run for reserved parliamentary seats.

But instead of expanding public understanding, the policy collapsed hijra, intersex, and trans identities into a single vague category that enabled abuse. In 2015, hijras applying for government jobs were forcibly subjected to medical examinations. 

This flattening of gender identity eroded organizing efforts. In the years that followed, state-aligned gender activists and NGOs gained prominence. They argued that Hasina’s authoritarianism was necessary to protect gender rights from Islamist groups. But their fear-mongering proved hollow. Violence against gender and sexual minorities only intensified under Hasina, whose politics local organizers now describe as “hijra-washed.” 

One telling example came when progressive organisers included a subsection on trans rights in a school textbook. Islamist groups led by Asif Mahtab Utsho mobilised violently, forcing sexual and reproductive health NGOs to shut down. The Hasina regime offered no protection. The trans content was officially removed in June 2024.

Queer people were targeted not only in public but also in digital spaces.

The regime’s Cyber Security Act 2023 severely restricted internet freedom, forcing queer Bangladeshis into online silence. From dating to organizing, their digital presence was strangled. 

As the Hasina regime collapses and new proposals for justice emerge, we must remember that the freedom of queer Bangladeshis is linked with the liberation of all marginalized groups. 

Mannan’s murder, the co-optation of gender rights, and the crackdown on queer life were all part of a broader regime—one marked by extrajudicial killings, the repression of journalists, activists, artists, and human rights defenders under the guise of digital security, and the systematic violation of women and girls, particularly in indigenous areas, in the name of development. 

Hasina's ouster does not mark the end of authoritarianism. When the dust settles, we may once again see the rule of Bengali Muslim cis-men. In such a moment, Mannan’s graffiti offers a sharp reminder that Bangladesh is made up of many communities. If queerness continues to be criminalized, denied, and erased, the country will simply reproduce the same systems of violence.

Queer people in Bangladesh have always fought for collective liberation—including in this very uprising. The question now is not whether they exist. It is whether the new Bangladesh is willing to coexist with them.∎