The afterlife of an uprising

This is an opinion piece published in The Daily Star (Bangladesh) on August 5, 2026, written by Maisha Islam Monamee, a student at the Institute of Business Administration, University of Dhaka. The article reflects on the two-year anniversary of the July 2024 uprising in Bangladesh, during which protesters — many of them students — were killed by the state, ultimately leading to the fall of the Sheikh Hasina government. The author argues that the genuine, grassroots grief and unity of July 2024 has since been hijacked and politicized by political parties who now invoke the uprising to advance their own agendas, particularly around elections. She emphasizes that the movement was not ideological but a desperate cry for basic human rights, and that the victims are now being reduced to slogans and political currency rather than remembered as human beings. The piece closes with a call to remember July honestly — not as a revolution or a brand, but as a moment of shared suffering that has since been betrayed.

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The Daily Star

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The Daily Star

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ark:/19160/sgzvp5mjd3raj3fytky2bkbbac4

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