Divided by ideology, united in misogyny: How women of July became targets across Bangladesh's political spectrum
In May this year, Facebook accounts -- whether affiliated with the activity-banned Awami League, the BNP, Jamaat-e-Islami or the far right -- were found to be targeting two newly nominated women MPs, Nusrat Tabassum and Mansura Alam, with strikingly similar misogynistic attacks [1, 2, 3, 4].
Meanwhile, Umama Fatema, who garnered attention as a student coordinator, and Nusrat, one of the six key coordinators of Students Against Discrimination, emerged as two of the most recognisable faces of the July Uprising and were widely praised on social media for their leadership.
But that admiration was short-lived. Once the uprising had passed, both women became common punching bags. The attacks followed a familiar script: their bodies, their morality and their politics were all treated as fair game.
Both have been subjected to body-shaming, slut-shaming [1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 1, 2, 3, 4, 5], with Umama being labelled "Shahbaghi leftist" and "RAW agent" [1, 2, 3, 4].
The Daily Star searched Facebook for public posts about 15 such women who came to prominence during the July Uprising and identified 139 posts published between August 2024 and July this year. The targets included politicians, activists, academics and actresses, among them Tasnim Jara, Faria Ila and Mahmuda Mitu.
Together, the posts reveal that the abuse directed at any individual woman was not exceptional but part of a broader pattern of gendered harassment targeting women in public life.
A shared playbook of misogyny
Of the 139 posts analysed, nearly two in every three contained sexual insults, sexually degrading language or attacks on the women's character, making this the most common form of abuse across all political camps.
Among Awami League-affiliated accounts, nearly nine in every 10 posts contained sexualised content. The figure was about one in every two for both Jamaat-e-Islami-affiliated and BNP-affiliated accounts, while one in every three posts from unaffiliated far-right accounts contained similar abuse.
Body-shaming was the second most common tactic, appearing in at least 22 posts. These included eight posts linked to Jamaat-e-Islami and Chhatra Shibir, five linked to the BNP, four associated with the Awami League, and three from politically unaffiliated far-right accounts. The analysis also identified at least 11 posts containing explicit threats of rape or other forms of violence.
Of the 15 women identified, 12 were targeted by two or more opposing political groups. Regardless of political affiliation, the attacks followed a strikingly similar pattern: questioning the women's political legitimacy, policing their morality, and deploying gendered abuse to silence them.
In addition to sexual objectification, Awami League-affiliated accounts frequently sought to discredit women activists' role in the July Uprising by branding them "Razakars", "Pakistani seeds" or "Jamaat collaborators".
Jamaat-e-Islami-affiliated accounts, meanwhile, repeatedly labelled activists as "Shahbaghi", portraying the identity as anti-Islamic and pro-Indian, often linking them to Delhi or India's intelligence agency, RAW. They also used dehumanising insults, including claims that the activists "do not bathe", implying that they were both physically and morally "unclean".
Politically unaffiliated far-right accounts, many identifying themselves as "Tawhidi People", framed their attacks as resistance to "secular" or "atheist" influences, frequently using slurs such as "Shahbagi prostitute".
The BNP-affiliated accounts, meanwhile, portrayed some of the same women as "Jamaat sympathisers" while also resorting to body-shaming and sexually degrading language.
The women behind the data
Nusrat was predominantly targeted by Awami League-affiliated accounts, which published 11 posts weaponising an old video of her defending women's freedom to choose their attire. The campaign intensified after she became a reserved-seat MP backed by the Jamaat-NCP alliance. The BNP-affiliated accounts also targeted her over the same video in four posts.
The attacks on Umama are an example of rival factions converging on the same target. Ten posts originated from Awami League-affiliated accounts, centred on her public statements regarding university student organisation committees and Ducsu elections, aiming to discredit her as a campus politician. In addition, The Daily Star also identified six similar targeted posts against her from Jamaat-affiliated accounts and five from individuals associated with extreme right-wing groups.
Mansura, a BNP-nominated reserved-seat MP, and Ducsu candidate Faria were subjected to severe misogynistic online abuse from Jamaat-e-Islami-affiliated pages and profiles. The Daily Star identified five posts objectifying Mansura and three targeting Faria, including explicit calls for rape and other forms of violence [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6].
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel. Awami League-affiliated accounts targeted NCP reserved-seat MP Mahamuda Mitu and Ducsu Liberation War and Democratic Movement Secretary Fatima Tasnim Zuma across six posts while the BNP-affiliated accounts targeted both in four posts. The coordinated attack sexually harassed the women over their political positions [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. One post even disclosed Mitu’s home address and phone number.
Prapti Taposhi, initially praised for media appearances during the movement [1, 2, 3], was later targeted with slut-shaming, communal hate speech, and personal attacks [1, 2, 3].
Shima Akhter was injured in an attack by the Bangladesh Chhatra League, then the ruling party's student wing and now a banned organisation, while taking part in the movement. In the years that followed, however, her political peers turned on her with online harassment, including slut-shaming and racist abuse [1, 2].
Shima Akhter said the contrast in how men and women were treated after the movement was stark. "It felt as though men were celebrated as the 'heroes' of the July Uprising, while women were branded as 'sluts'," she said.
"The women who played major roles on the front lines were deliberately targeted with online harassment and slut-shaming to sideline them so they couldn't enter mainstream politics," she added.
Tasnim Jara, former National Citizen Party (NCP) politician was initially targeted through distorted representations of her sexual health education content. Following her departure from the party, she faced increasingly sexualised abuse, including false and derogatory labels aimed at undermining her credibility [1, 2, 3, 4, 5].
During the movement, Samina Luthfa, then an associate professor of sociology at Dhaka University and now a professor, was one of its most vocal voices. In the months that followed, however, she became the target of online smear campaigns over her perceived leftist views [1, 2].
Meanwhile, actress Azmeri Haque Badhon was subjected to slut-shaming and labeled "Lal Bador"(1, 2, 3).
The Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) interviewed 150 women parliamentarians and parliamentary staff across 33 countries for a study published in March 2025. It found that three out of every five respondents in the Asia-Pacific had been targeted online with hate speech, disinformation, image-based abuse or the unauthorised publication of personal data -- the highest proportion the IPU has recorded in any region.
Online harassment remains "a major social barrier" preventing women from entering politics, Umama Fatema told The Daily Star. She also criticised political parties for failing to promote more women into frontline leadership roles.
"They often limit women to reserved seats or favour those with political family connections, rather than creating equal opportunities for everyone," she said.
Umama also described women in politics as being left without adequate protection, leaving them vulnerable to both online and offline abuse. "Beyond online abuse, there is always a constant risk of offline abuse."
Shima sees the abuse as a deliberate warning. By targeting a handful of visible women, she said, perpetrators send a message to the next generation that entering politics means enduring the same insults and injustice -- a pattern she attributes to political parties that remain "fundamentally rooted in patriarchy".
"Women are often accepted in movements only as long as they conform to others' expectations. Once they express different views, they become targets of sexist abuse, obscene language and even rape threats," said Zobaida Nasreen, professor of anthropology at the University of Dhaka.
Meta's rules, Meta's failure
Most of the 139 posts violate Meta's own written rules on Bullying and Harassment, Adult Sexual Exploitation, and Privacy/Doxxing.
Meta also commits to removing what it calls directed mass harassment when the target is at heightened risk of offline harm -- a category it defines to include human rights defenders and "opposition figures in at-risk countries during election periods."
Two things complicate that.
The first is enforcement. For public figures, several of these protections are triggered only when the target reports the content. Fatima Tasnim Zuma told the research outlet Dismislab that she reported manipulated images of herself to Meta and that they were not removed. A general diary she filed with the police went nowhere.
The second is that the rules have been moving. On January 7, 2025, Meta rewrote its Hateful Conduct standard, adding exemptions that allow allegations of mental illness based on gender or sexual orientation and certain gender-based cursing. Of the 139 posts in this analysis, 131 were published after that change.
In April 2025, Meta's own Oversight Board rebuked the company over the rewrite, saying it had been announced "hastily, in a departure from regular procedure," with no public information about what human rights due diligence had been done, and called on Meta to assess and publish the human rights impact - including on users in what the Board termed global majority countries. Meta has not published that assessment yet.
A further change has gone unremarked. Meta's own change log shows that until at least January 22, 2025, its Bullying and Harassment standard protected everyone from "derogatory terms related to female gendered cursing." In the current version, that protection appears only in the tier reserved for private minors. An archived copy of the page shows the new wording in place by April 5, 2025. Meta's change log records no date for it.
The effect on this dataset is measurable. Of the 47 posts containing the commonest Bangla slurs against women in this analysis, 32 use terms Meta still protects everyone from. The remaining 15 use gendered cursing that, under the rules as they now stand, Meta undertakes to remove only if the target is a child -- that is, someone under the age of 18.
Additional reporting & interactive: Mir Rownak