Mission

July Council is a dedicated oral history archive born out of the historic 5th August Mass Uprising in Bangladesh. Which is a pivotal moment in the nation’s democratic journey. Our mission is to document, preserve, and honor the personal narratives that shaped the Anti-Discrimination Movement, which ultimately led to the downfall of autocracy and national awakening. According to a UN investigation, the uprising witnessed the sacrifice of around 1,400 individuals including students, workers, children, laborers, and journalists and left nearly 20,000 severely wounded. These numbers reflect not only the scale of the repression but the immense human cost of the people’s resistance.

At the heart of July Council lies a commitment to memory and justice. We focus on collecting and curating visual interviews with the families of martyrs, wounded survivors, and other key participants of the uprising. These testimonies raw, emotional, and truthful serve as living monuments to the courage and sacrifice of those who fought for a just and equitable Bangladesh.

Through memoirs, archival footage, and story driven oral narrations, we aim to reconstruct the lives of the Shaheed (martyrs) not just how they died, but how they lived, what they believed, and why they rose. Their families’ words become vessels of remembrance, healing, and bravery.

July Council is more than an archive, it is a growing collective memory. It is where truth is spoken, grief is dignified, and history is kept alive. Our purposes are to build an archive where future generations can see the faces, hear the voices, and feel the truth of what happened and to guard against forgetting.

We travel across cities, universities, villages, riversides and remote borderlands, entering homes where grief still lingers, where portraits of lost sons and daughters hang quietly, and where voices tremble as they tell stories of courage, loss, and undying hope. We sit with those who carry the memories of the fallen parents, siblings, neighbors, and wounded survivors.

Though currently limited in scope due to financial constraints, our long term goal is to interview every martyr’s family and every survivor willing to speak. Every voice matters and every story deserves to be told.

The work of July Council is led by a committed team based in Dhaka, consisting of academicians from various universities, journalists, researchers, and development professionals. Together, we are building a public memory project for Bangladesh which rooted in truth, grounded in dignity, and accountable to the people who lived its history.