STATELESS JULY MARTYR: Noor Mostofa

On 5 August, 2024, 17-year-old Noor Mustafa participated in a demonstration against the then Awami League government in front of the Eidgaon police station in Cox’s Bazar. At noon, he sustained bullet injuries when the gun-wielding Awami League supporters opened fire on the demonstrators. He died from the injuries the next day while undergoing treatment at a hospital. In 1993, Noor Mustafa’s father, a Rohingya citizen, Shafiul Alam entered Bangladesh from Myanmar and has been living in the Eidgaon area of Cox’s Bazar. Noor Mustafa, a tenth-grade student at the local Darus Salam Dakhil Madrasa, was born a refugee and died a refugee in Bangladesh. It took months of campaigning for the interim government to finally recognise him as the July martyr. Rummana Jannat, a poet, also actively organised the campaign for a stateless martyr’s recognition and wrote an obituary for Noor Mustafa

Our Mostafa is light on the horizon today.

Standing with us right there. Our brother, Mostofa. With our stones we were answering the rifles. The Murderer’s masnad had become so strong by then - there was no other way but to become absolutely one.

Now Mostofa’s fallen. And all the land is noor.

We’ve carved his name in white marble. His tiny nimble footprints hang in the air. The day a homeland became bathed in red, he laid out the whole of his soul with quiet martyr’s resolve. That day, there was no flag that could separate us as different.

Shahid Mostofa left us every speck of noor he brimmed with. 

A drowned baby lying on its face by the sea washes into memory. Crossing the same high seas in a different part of the world, one day, from within the green sea breeze, a Noor was born. Our Mostofa. His soul a blue, blue khushbhu. His body, the soaring white of a seagull’s wings. And his travels, forever towards Azadi. His blood drips down our hills, it floods our rivers red. Seeping through the cedars along the shoreline, Mostofa’s blood washes into the roaring ocean beyond.   

Shining over the map of this nation-state, a Mostafa lives on in light as Noor.

Rummana Jannat is a poet and actively campaigned for Noor Mostafa’s state recognition as a July martyr. Translated from Bangla by Riasat Salekin; he is a writer and actor.