Badhon is not the first victim. Who will be next?

Badhon travelled to Italy to attend the screening of The Difficult Bride at the 83rd Venice Film Festival. What a matter of pride. Bangladesh's film industry has been on the wane for the last few decades, so when films such as The Difficult Bride, Rehana Maryam Noor, Bonolata Express or Barir Naam Shahana make it to major international film festivals in Cannes, Venice and elsewhere, it feels almost like a revanche, a reclaiming of lost glory. It puts Bangladesh on the contemporary global cultural map. Actress Azmeri Haque Badhon herself deserves enormous credit in this regard. She has delivered stellar performances in several films, including Bonolata Express, Rehana Maryam Noor and The Difficult Bride, as well as in the Bollywood thriller Khufiya.

It was therefore shocking, horrific and shameful when, on 7 September, Badhon was physically assaulted, abused and humiliated while taking a walk with her brother and his family in a park in Mestre, near Venice. This was neither a racist attack nor a mugging. It was an attack specifically directed at Badhon. Azmeri Haque Badhon Why Badhon? Who were these hoodlums? Badhon had been a vocal activist during the anti-fascist movement in 2024 that ousted then-prime minister Sheikh Hasina and her party, Awami League, from power after 15 years of oppression, corruption and a politics of fear. While many in the cultural sphere had made millions as Hasina sycophants, Badhon took to the streets. She was brash, bold and outspoken. Many Awami League loyalists fled the country with the money they had made, unwilling to face the consequences of their alleged crimes. And it was such political grifters who, as evidence shows, attacked Badhon in that park. They physically assaulted her, abused her and shoved her around, reportedly not even…