Editorial

Dear Friends,
Assalamu Alaikum. Hope you are well in a turbulent world dogged by the illegal Israeli-U.S. blitzkriegs on Iran, Israeli aggression in Gaza, the West Bank, and Syria along with Lebanon, the Indian attack on Pakistan, and the Russian assault on Ukraine. When the issue reaches you, it will be July. One year ago, as Bangladesh was forever changed in this month, we have made the story on the sacrifices made in July last year as the cover story. The July Uprising was not merely a political protest—it was a generational cry for dignity, justice, and breath. Maisha Amin’s cover story, “They Died in July Uprising So We Could Breathe,” puts us in direct contact with those who stood, marched, and ultimately fell—not for a flag, but for the future.

The names—Rifat, Tamim, Swapan—are not just etched into university murals or street signs. The nation’s conscience carries their names. Rifat, with his broken glasses and unshakable belief in justice, embodies these values. Tamim, the firebrand who declared, “Amar bhitore Bangladesh.” Swapan, who could not hear the revolution but lived it in every fiber of his being. Their stories are not statistics. They are sacrifices. They are truths we must carry forward.

This editorial is not just remembrance—it is reckoning. These young lives were not lost to war. They were taken in peacetime by forces afraid of change. The silence of institutions, the brutality of impunity, and the complicity of indifference allowed this tragedy to unfold.

We are living in the world they died to make possible. To forget them is to betray them.

The revolution may not have worn medals, but it stitched together a nation’s moral fabric. If Bangladesh is to be worthy of their memory, we must remain vigilant—against injustice, against apathy, against forgetting.

History does not belong to victors alone. It belongs to those who dare to remember.

Say their names. Not just in grief—but in action.

Because their uprising let us breathe. Now it is our turn to speak. Their memory must remain our movement.
Hope you will like the story.