'My Gay Friends Were Hacked to Death In Dhaka. I Escaped.'

The murder of LGBTQ activist Xulhaz Mannan, killed with a friend in Dhaka, sparked international outcry. Mannan’s friend, Ali Asgar, who escaped murder that day, tells their story.

TIM TEEMAN
10.10.17 12:00 AM ET

Ali Asgar still remembers the terrible screaming of Xulhaz Mannan, founder of Roopbaan, Bangladesh’s only LGBTQ magazine, and Mahbub Rabbi Tonoy, as a gang of six attackers hacked them to death.

The murders, on April 25 last year in Dhaka, Bangladesh, garnered international headlines. Then-Secretary of State John Kerry called the murders “barbaric.”

Asgar, who was a friend of Mannan’s and at his home at the time, managed to flee, and has never before spoken about the attack in detail. Now an artist and performer studying for an MFA at the University of Maine, Asgar, who identifies as genderqueer, is seeking permanent asylum in the U.S.

Asgar is one of the artists helping launch PEN America’s Artist at Risk Connection (ARC), which PEN describes as “an online collaboration of more than 500 global organizations that provide life-saving resources to artists worldwide who face oppression, persecution, arrest, and violence for their creative work.”

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https://www.thedailybeast.com/my-gay-friends-were-hacked-to-death-in-dhaka-i-escaped