Xulhaz Mannan
He founded Bangladesh’s first magazine for queer people – and was murdered for it in 2016, together with his friend Mahbub Rabbi Tonoy.
Xulhaz Mannan grew up in Dhaka. He studied international relations and peace and conflict studies at Dhaka University and worked for the US embassy and later for the development agency USAID. Friends describe him as a gentle, open-hearted man who also campaigned for HIV awareness and for former garment workers.
In 2014, with his friend Mahbub Rabbi Tonoy, a theatre-maker who taught children, and others, he founded “Roopbaan”, Bangladesh’s first and only magazine for lesbian, gay and other queer people. It was named after a heroine of Bengali folklore and wanted to show that there is nothing un-Bengali about being gay. The launch caused a stir; Islamist groups called for the editors to be killed, and printers refused to print further issues. Mannan and Tonoy also organised the “Rainbow Rally” at the Bengali New Year festival. In Bangladesh, sex between men can be punished with life imprisonment.
On 25 April 2016 several men posing as delivery workers entered Mannan’s flat in Dhaka and killed him and Tonoy with machetes. Mannan was 39. The attack was part of a series of murders of secular bloggers, publishers and academics by Ansar al-Islam, a group linked to al-Qaeda.
The murders devastated the young queer movement in Bangladesh; many activists fled abroad. In 2021 an anti-terrorism court sentenced six men to death, stating that the two had been killed because they had publicly campaigned for the rights of homosexuals.