Tasleema Nasrin 'exiled again'

[mark61]

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/40839000/jpg/_40839137_tassyap.jpg
Ms Nasreen had faced death threats in her homeland

Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen has arrived in Europe to begin a new life, reports say, after protests by Muslim groups forced her into hiding in India.
"She has landed safely somewhere in Europe," a spokeswoman for the writers' group, Pen, told the BBC, adding that her exact location could not be given.

Ms Nasreen said earlier this week that her health had suffered as a result of spending time in hiding.

She fled her native Bangladesh in 1994 when her book attracted death threats.

After spending several years in Sweden, she moved to Calcutta, an Indian city close to Bangladesh where Ms Nasreen's mother tongue of Bengali is spoken.

She was moved from the city last November after Muslim groups staged violent protests, accusing her of having insulted Islam.

Property was damaged in the riots and at least 43 people were hurt.

Ms Nasreen has since lived in secret locations in the Indian capital, Delhi.

Earlier this week, she said she was preparing to leave India as her confinement had damaged her health.

She also accused the Indian authorities of encouraging her to leave the country.

Muslim anger

A spokeswoman for the Swedish office of international writers' rights group, Pen, told the BBC she did not know where Ms Nasreen eventually intended to settle.

"Taslima Nasreen is really a citizen of the world," Ms Maria Modig said.

Ms Nasreen rose to prominence in 1993 after her first book, entitled Lajja, or Shame, angered some of the country's Muslims.

The book argued that Bangladeshis had mistreated the country's Hindu minority.

A more recent novel by Ms Nasreen, Dwikhondito or Split in Two, was accused by some Muslim groups of causing offence to Islam.

She was also accused of calling for changes to be made to the Koran to give women more rights.

Ms Nasreen has vehemently denied making such remarks.

[Umarvlie]

Bleh... weer een kneusje on te knuffelen. :boer:

[mark61]

Bleh... weer een kneusje on te knuffelen. :boer:

Wat is er kneuzig aan haar? Iemand die iets te melden heeft dat de meerderheid niet wil horen is per definitie een kneus?

[Umarvlie]

Wat is er kneuzig aan haar? Iemand die iets te melden heeft dat de meerderheid niet wil horen is per definitie een kneus?

90% van de tekst gaat over hoe zielig (kneuzerig) ze is.. er staat weinig concreets in van wat ze nu wel of niet gezegd/geschreven zou hebben. Dit is meer een berichtje waarvan de goegemeente moet zeggen.. " ach wat een zielepoot, kom maar hier hoor " dan iets anders.

[mark61]

90% van de tekst gaat over hoe zielig (kneuzerig) ze is.. er staat weinig concreets in van wat ze nu wel of niet gezegd/geschreven zou hebben. Dit is meer een berichtje waarvan de goegemeente moet zeggen.. " ach wat een zielepoot, kom maar hier hoor " dan iets anders.

Zij zegt daar zelf niets over. Haar verhaal is al zo oud, dat wordt iedereen geacht te weten.

[Umarvlie]

Zij zegt daar niets over. Haar verhaal is al zo oud, dat wordt iedereen geacht te weten.

Hmm .. ben het dan mogelijk al weer vergeten ben ik bang... ben zelf te oud denk ik :traan1:

[mark61]

Taslima Nasreen: Controversy's child

Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen has been forced to leave her adopted city of Calcutta in India after riots by Muslims there. Her writings have made her a controversial figure for more than a decade.

The doctor-turned-writer first made a name for herself with her feisty newspaper columns, picking up a prestigious Bengali literary award in India for her book, Nirbachito Kolam (Selected Columns) in 1992.

She has since written nearly 30 books of poetry, essays, novels and short stories in her native Bengali language, mostly in exile.

Ms Nasreen fled her home country Bangladesh in 1995 after Muslim extremists called for her death following her most controversial book, "Lajja" (Shame).

The book was banned for offending Muslim religious sentiments.

She was reported to have told an Indian newspaper that Islamic religious edicts should be changed. Her comments enraged some militant Muslim Islamic groups.

Falling foul

They pronounced a death sentence on the writer and offered $2,000 to anyone who killed her.

For a few months, Ms Nasreen lived under heavy security at her apartment in the capital, Dhaka, before leaving the country for Sweden.


Muslim groups feel that her writings ridicule Islam

She returned to Bangladesh in 1998 to visit her ailing mother and faced renewed threats from extremist Islamic activists.

After her mother's death, Ms Nasreen went to live in Paris.

In 1999, the Bangladeshi government banned her book, My Childhood, saying it could hurt the people's religious sentiments.

Earlier that year, the government disapproved of a poem she wrote in her mother's memory in an Indian magazine, and stopped imports of the issue carrying the poem.

And in 2002, the authorities in Bangladesh banned her newly published novel Wild Wind - a sequel to My Girlhood - saying that the book could anger the country's Muslim majority and lead to religious tensions.

It was the third time in a decade that one of Ms Nasreen's works had fallen foul of the country's laws.

'Untenable' ban

A magistrate's court in Bangladesh even gave her a one-year prison sentence on a charge of writing derogatory comments about Islam in her books.

"The political parties [in Bangladesh] use religion for their own interests and whenever they find any criticism about religion, they can't tolerate it, so they ban the book," she told the BBC Bengali Service in August 2002.

Even in India, Ms Nasreen's work was banned after Muslim groups protested.

In 2003, her autobiography "Dwikhondito" (Split into two), was banned by the Communist government in West Bengal state where a quarter of the population is Muslim.

Ms Nasreen has said she wants to continue living in Calcutta

Two years later, a court in West Bengal lifted the ban saying it was "unjustified and untenable".

In September 2005, she was given a one-year Indian visa and permission to stay in Calcutta. Since then she has been living in the city after getting her visa extended.

Ms Nasreen has always said she wants to make Calcutta, capital of West Bengal state, her home even though the European Union has offered her refuge.

"East [Bengal] has already closed the doors to me... so I want to stay in West Bengal where I feel at home," she said once. East Bengal covered what is now Bangladesh.

Though many Indian writers have criticised the quality of Ms Nasreen's work, they have consistently supported her efforts at staying on in the country.

In April 2005, a group of Bengali writers, poets and intellectuals openly supported her plea for Indian citizenship.

"Like us, she is a Bengali, and she only writes in Bengali. She cannot enter Bangladesh, so her only option is to live amongst Bengalis in Calcutta if she has to exist as a writer of some consequence," said writer Shib Narain Ray.

That might become difficult with the recent riots in Calcutta with a fringe Muslim group saying that she should leave the city.

Ms Nasreen has been threatened by Muslim groups outside Bengal too.

In August, Muslim protesters attacked her during a book launch in Andhra Pradesh state in southern India.

Ms Nasreen, who backed into a corner, said the attack was barbaric but pledged she would not be cowed.

[knuppeltje]

ben zelf te oud denk ik :traan1:

Neu hoor- alleen ietsie-pietsie kneuzig. :wink:

[Umarvlie]

Neu hoor- alleen ietsie-pietsie kneuzig. :wink:

Heh... en niemand om mij te knuffelen :(