The Forest Revolution -Khandakar Nur Hossain

Once upon a time, deep within a forest, power belonged to the hyenas. For many long years, their rule was marked by fear and cruelty. Bloodshed was their language, and terror their instrument of control. They hunted at will, silenced voices at whim, and with support from powerful friends in neighboring forests, they tightened their grip over the land.

The voices of truth were few. Most of the forest’s so-called journalists and intellectuals were pigs and vultures who used their pens and tongues to glorify the hyenas’ reign. Their words painted tyranny as prosperity. Yet, a handful of birds, deer, and gentle creatures dared to speak honestly. Their bravery, however, often ended in abduction under the cover of night. Once taken, they were never seen again.

The hyenas controlled the army, the police, and every armed force in the forest. Darkness fell upon the lives of ordinary creatures. Disappearances, injustice, and murder became as common as the morning dew. The hyenas spoke endlessly of “development,” yet under this mask of progress, they stripped the forest of its trees, smuggled its wealth, and created a famine that starved their subjects.

Protests flared now and then, but every outcry was crushed with merciless violence. Those who dared resist were swiftly killed. The rest, broken by fear or bribed into silence, looked on helplessly. Thus passed sixteen long years of unbroken oppression.

But as the elders said, “Evil eventually consumes its own.” The destiny of the hyena queen was no different.

Hidden deep in the forest, a small group of young rebels had quietly survived. They carried within them the embers of defiance, feeding sparks of hope when all else seemed lost. After sixteen years, these brave souls roused the forest to courage. One day, when fear cracked under the weight of their determination, the forest erupted in revolution. Animals who had once cowered now rose together. Courage became contagious. The hyena ruler, faced with an unrelenting tide of resistance, fled to a foreign land. The revolutionaries declared a new dawn, and for the first time in years, peace seemed possible.

But peace is fragile.

The hyenas returned, this time in disguise, sowing unrest through new schemes and demands. Yet the conscious animals recognized the deception. Each attempt at sabotage was met with resistance. Still, a grave problem remained: many of the hyenas’ old allies, like bureaucrats, enforcers, and opportunists, continued to occupy influential posts in the forest. They refused to aid the new government, choosing instead to secretly abet conspiracies. To protect the revolution, the forest’s young defenders took action. They tracked down corrupt figures and handed them over to justice.

At that very moment, the pigs and vultures who had been silent during sixteen years of brutality suddenly rediscovered their voices. They denounced the revolutionaries’ efforts as “mob justice,” trying to confuse truth with falsehood and oppressor with victim. The struggle for a free forest did not end with the revolution; it merely took a new form.

Then, a tragedy struck. A year after the uprising, a plane crashed into a school, killing many innocents. The hyenas seized this moment of grief. They twisted the tragedy into political weaponry, distorting casualty numbers, calling for the return of their exiled queen, and unleashing violence against government offices. This time, the pigs and vultures did not cry “mob justice.” Instead, they justified the destruction, calling it the “anger of the people.”

The ordinary animals of the forest finally saw through the deception. They realized what had long been hidden in plain sight: the pigs had never spoken for truth, and the vultures had never stood for justice. Both had always been agents of lies, servants of tyranny.

The Forest Revolution had shown the animals that freedom is not a single victory but a struggle that continues with so much struggle of memory against forgetting, of truth against distortion.

And above all, the animals learned one timeless lesson: peace and justice are worth defending, not just once, but always.