On April 25, 2016, Xulhaz Mannan and Mahbub Rabbi Tonoy were murdered in Dhaka in a targeted attack that marked a turning point for queer organizing in Bangladesh. Xulhaz, publisher and co-founder of Roopbaan (the country’s first LGBTQ+ magazine), and Tonoy, its general secretary, a cultural activist and organizer, were part of a small but growing movement creating space for queer visibility, community, and expression. Their murders were not isolated acts of violence but part of a broader structure of repression, where law, state inaction, and social hostility converged to make queer lives precarious.
In the years that followed, the response was not collective visibility but retreat. Activists went underground, public organizing became nearly impossible, and the cost of being seen shifted dramatically. For many, survival required silence, distance, or departure, and ten years later, that moment continues to shape how queer life, activism, and community are negotiated, both within Bangladesh and across its diasporas.
This collection comes out of that afterlife, bringing together writings that move across memory, distance, reflection, and critique. Some pieces return to personal encounters, holding onto moments that feel unfinished, while others engage the political aftermath, questioning visibility, fear, responsibility, and the limits of what was possible then and what remains possible now.
These writings do not attempt to produce a unified narrative. Instead, they reflect the uneven ways these ten years have been lived, holding contradictions, grief alongside critique, admiration alongside discomfort, memory alongside disagreement, and allowing these tensions to exist without resolution.
As part of the Bangladesh Feminist Archives, this collection treats memory as both preservation and intervention. To remember is not only to look back but to ask what has been lost, what has been silenced, and what still demands articulation, even when no clear answers emerge.
Ten years later, the questions remain open, and the need to keep asking them continues.
All Pieces
- Confession from a Reluctant Keeper of Your Names – Shakhawat Hossain Rajeeb
- A Portrait Left Blank – Tom Bradley
- Past in Present: On Visibility and Fear – Manush
- জুলহাজ ও তনয়: বাংলাদেশে ভালোবাসার অধিকারের প্রথম শহীদ – মুনতাসির রহমান
- Thursday Nights with Xulhaz – Raju Ahmmed
- Say His Name: Queer Activist Tonoy Also Killed on 25th April 2016 – Tanveer Anoy
This collection was curated by Tanveer Anoy & Artwork by Ankur Sinha.