It started with silence.
One day, the internet simply vanished. No warnings. No explanations. One moment, you were scrolling through protest updates on Facebook; the next, nothing. No messages, no news, no way to know who was safe, who had been arrested, or who was next.
For days, there was no internet across Bangladesh. That was the fascist regime’s way of dealing with unrest. People were angry. Students were protesting. The streets were noisy, but the digital world had been muted, a void of pin-drop silence.
Except, people found another way to speak.
Somewhere in the middle of Dhaka, while police and army vans patrolled empty streets, bullet shots and sirens shrieked at night, a few young people stood by a wall with paint in their hands. Among them was Mohsin Islam, 24, a student who had not planned on becoming an artist. He was simply angry.
“We heard they were arresting and shooting people,” Mohsin said. “It made me furious. So, my friends and I went to Dhaka Residential College and started painting our message.” They painted quickly. Hearts pounding, always looking over their shoulders.
“I was scared,” he admitted. “I thought the police might shoot us from behind. But I kept going.”
For Mohsin, the wall became more than bricks and concrete. It became a place to scream without sound. A message painted in red and black. His way of saying: “We’re still here. We won’t be quiet.”
Adiba Anisha Chowdhury, 22, had never done graffiti before either. A BBA student at North South University, her world had always been more academic than activist.
“Honestly, I barely knew anything about my country,” she said. “History was something we memorised for exams. It never felt like it belonged to us.” That changed during the uprising.
Adiba watched students her age pour into the streets, post artwork online and even get arrested. “That was my wake-up call,” she said. “I wanted to be part of something. I couldn’t march, but I could paint.”
So, she joined others who were reclaiming the city, wall by wall. With brushes and stencils, they filled Dhaka with colour. “After everything, the streets looked different. Not just the paint, everything felt different. It finally felt like it belonged to us.”
To her, the green and red that appeared on the walls weren’t just patriotic colours. They were symbols of unity, anger and memory. “The new look of Bangladesh isn’t about portraits of politicians anymore. It’s about all of us. That’s how it should have been from the start.”
Not everyone who painted was new to it.
Imtiaj Ahsan Rafin, 27, had been painting graffiti for years. A student at European University and a member of Chhatra Union, he had learned the art from seniors who treated it like a political tradition.
“I used to watch them do it. That’s how I got into it,” he said. “They taught me everything. Even though I wasn’t from Charukola, I loved paints and brushes.”
For Rafin, graffiti was not just protest. It was culture. Resistance passed down like songs or slogans. And when the streets lit up with rebellion again, he was there, guiding the newcomers.
“I still do graffiti,” he said with a smile. “And it still feels amazing every single time.”
When the internet went dark, many people assumed the protests would fade. But they didn’t. They just changed form.
Graffiti was not the only outlet. Memes, the same silly, sarcastic images we scroll past every day, were another powerful tool.
Even without internet access, people printed memes. They passed them hand to hand. Posted them on noticeboards. Pasted them under bridges. Some memes mocked the regime. Others turned state propaganda on its head.
One widely shared meme showed Hasina wearing a crown, with the caption underneath: “Her Majesty, Queen of Silence.” Another showed a blacked-out phone screen with the words: “Even WiFi knows when to protest.”
It was bold. Risky. But it spread.
Some graffiti artists even painted QR codes on the walls, scannable links that led to VPN instructions or underground blog posts. It was like a digital whisper in a locked-down country.
The government tried to erase everything. But people kept finding ways to talk.
Safayet Sagor, a university student and contributor to Dhaka Comics, had always drawn political cartoons. But in July, something shifted. His work grew bolder, sharper, less commentary, more confrontation.
“I started making uprising-related cartoons around the 20th,” he said. “But the one that really took off was drawn on August 4. It had the slogan ‘Shoirachar nipat jak’ [End to fascism]- she’s being kicked off the chair. The next day, Hasina was gone.”
“I had no idea it would actually happen the very next day,” Safayet said. “I drew it out of anger. Frustration. And somehow, it caught fire. People saw it and felt stronger. More defiant.”
His work quickly spread online, in group chats, even printed out and taped onto poles and rickshaws. But with reach came risk. “I got threats. Real ones. My safety was genuinely at risk,” he said. “But I kept going.”
For Safayet, the art of cartoon was not just about mocking those in power. It was about giving people something to hold onto, something to smile at.
He plans to keep making political cartoons. “This is just the beginning,” he said.
Whether it was graffiti on a wall, a meme or a cartoon shared in whispers, the message was the same: You can shut down the internet, but you can’t shut down the people.
Eventually, the world noticed.
Photos of painted walls began appearing on foreign news sites. Hashtags like #WallsOfDhaka and #ArtAgainstOppression trended in places where the internet still worked.
Solidarity murals popped up in Kolkata, Berlin, London. The diaspora shared videos of painted graffiti, edited them into reels and added subtitles. Even when voices inside the country were silenced, the message kept echoing.
Now, a year later, the streets are still marked.
Some walls have been washed. Others were covered with grey paint. But most remain. In Shahbagh, someone recently touched up a faded red fist, adding fresh paint without a word. No one knows who. And no one really needs to.
The wall speaks for itself.
Bangladesh did not just survive the blackout. It broke through it with humour, with paint, with fearless colour.
A generation that once scrolled in silence found its voice. And when the screen went dark, they picked up brushes, markers, memes and painted their country back into existence.