Losing Hadi is like losing a compass because his courage gave language to frustrations many of us were too scared to name. Photo: Collected
In July 2024, we, the Gen-Z, stepped into the streets, frightened yet resolute, wounded yet unwilling to break, because we believed Bangladesh could be rewired around dignity. We believed that power could no longer be exercised through a gun or the shadow of intimidation. And we believed that violence would finally lose its legitimacy as a political language. Sharif Osman Hadi's death shattered that belief.
Hadi, a man whose integrity felt like an act of rebellion in itself, died from bullets in broad daylight. He was killed in full view of the nation he tried to uplift. He is now a martyr to Bangladesh, a country which was not ready to protect him. His death feels like a personal tragedy that should haunt us for the rest of our lives. I do not speak on behalf of his political community. But I speak as a Bangladeshi who recognises that the bullet that ended his life tore through the promise of July. We said never again, and yet here we are, as if July was a mere fever dream rather than a turning point. Hadi embodied that change, and he died in the most preventable and brutal way. If July was supposed to redraw the boundaries of the nation, then Hadi's death shows those boundaries have been violated in broad daylight.
Yesterday, thousands of people turned up at Shangshad Bhaban for the state funeral of Sharif Osman Hadi. Photo: AMRAN HOSSAIN
Political violence is not random. It often sends a deliberate message. It tells you who is allowed to participate and who is meant to be silenced. It tells you which voices are considered inconvenient enough to eliminate. And more than that, it tells you that the fundamental promise of July—building a political environment grounded in accountability, justice, and moral courage—is already corroded. Those of us who believed in that promise are left asking ourselves uncomfortable questions. Did we overestimate our collective strength? Did we underestimate the forces that thrive on chaos and fear? Or did we fail to realise that revolutions do not end on the day the crowds disperse? The real fight begins only when systems try to reassert the old order.
Hadi's death sends a clear message: anyone who dares to imagine a politics built on courage, honesty, and moral clarity will be confronted with the oldest instrument of power in this region. Hadi spoke the truth with a steadiness that unsettled the corrupt. He terrified those who depend on intimidation to survive. And so they killed him. But if history teaches us anything, it is that a man can be killed, but his ideas cannot. Not when they grow roots in the collective conscience of many youths. Did we fail him? Because revolutions lose when we forget to defend the values we once bled for. The systems we thought we had defeated were not gone; they were lurking. And when the moment came, they found Hadi unprotected. His death forces us to confront the reality that our transformation was merely declared, not realised.
It is important to realise that we cannot rebuild Bangladesh on the scaffolding of fear. We cannot claim to pursue democracy while normalising brutal crimes. And we cannot build a future where honesty and integrity become liabilities. Our generation owes itself greater courage than that. We owe ourselves a politics worthy of the risks we took. We owe Bangladesh a commitment to stand against violence with the same unanimity and moral clarity that defined our uprising.
As Hadi was laid to his final rest yesterday, I remembered the man we lost, who, for many of our generation, was a symbol of principle in a landscape where principles are often liabilities; he was brave and sincere. Losing someone like him is like losing a compass. It is because his courage gave language to frustrations many of us were too scared to name. Because he made us believe that maybe the future was not a myth; it was inching towards us.
This should haunt us forever. This death feels personal, national, generational, and foundational. And if we do not confront that fracture, if we do not let this loss change us, then we will lose far more—the future he died trying to build. And that is something we cannot afford to do.
Maisha Islam Monamee recently graduated from the Institute of Business Administration (IBA) at the University of Dhaka and is a contributor at The Daily Star.
Views expressed in this article are the author's own.
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