Kate Sosin

LGBTQ+ reporter

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In 2016, anti-LGBTQ+ extremists broke into the apartment of Bangladesh’s only LGBTQ+ magazine editor, Xulhaz Mannan , and murdered him and friend Mahbub Rabbi Tonoy . Tara Asgar was there, but she managed to escape.

She needed to get out of Bangladesh.

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“I was a queer, gender-nonconforming person with no institutional protection, navigating state systems that were openly hostile toward people like me,” Asgar said. “Leaving Bangladesh became less a decision and more a fight for survival.”

It was three difficult months before Asgar got

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