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Theme: Bangladesh

84 bloggers on the death list

Bangladesh was founded as a secular state – but the former regime established Islam as the state religion. This doesn’t tally, and the double ledger has resulted in a tug-of-war that leads ultimately...

Text: Ratan Kumar Samadder December 17 2015
Article

The crisis in Bangladesh — and what can be done

The situation for secular intellectuals in Bangladesh is worsening by the day. According to the American human rights defender Michael De Dora, hopes cannot be pinned on civil society and...

Text: Michael De Dora December 17 2015
Article

Daring to know – the story of Mukto-Mona

The very popular blog Mukto-Mona (free thought) was the victim of an Islamist terrorist attack this year that left four of its writers dead. The blog was a successful experiment in freethinking and...

Text: Siddhartha Dhar December 17 2015
Fiction

The provoking cartoonist

For 31-year-old cartoonist Arifur Rahman, drawing proved a life-threatening activity in Bangladesh. In 2007, he was arrested and tortured for six months for having blasphemed against Islam. In 2010 he...

Cartoon: Arifur Rahman December 17 2015
Article

A feminist’s observations

What’s it like to write about feminism and women’s issues in Bangladesh? Author and blogger Marzia Prova has fought long and hard to get to write openly about sex, rape, equality, menstruation and...

Text: Marzia Prova December 17 2015
Fiction

Avijit’s killers

Anisur Rahman, poet, critic and playwright, was guest writer in Uppsala from 2009 to 2011. This newly written poem was composed in response to the murder of the very well-known author and blogger...

Text: Anisur Rahman December 17 2015
Fiction

Letter to my dear friend

On February 26th the blogger Avijit Roy was murdered on his way home from a book fair together with his wife. The writer Shabnam Nadiya, who was a childhood friend of Roy, here writes an open letter...

Text: Shabnam Nadiya December 17 2015

Theme: Europe

Article

Backing into the future – on the new Spanish ”gag law”

In the wake of the sharp protests against various “austerity politics”, the Spanish government has in recent years carved away at civil rights and freedoms, writes teacher in International Law at the...

Text: Margalida Capellà i Roig October 13 2015
Article

A prisoner’s freedom, a society’s captivity

Writer and human rights lawyer Muharrem Erbey served almost four years in a Turkish prison without trial. Once released, he saw the world with new eyes – and noted how the limits of freedom of speech...

Text: Muharrem Erbey October 13 2015
Fiction

Who can I turn to, my friends?

Putin’s brutal reprisals against dissidents has had a devastating effect on opposition journalists and authors in the country – today, the democratic resistance movement is weak and fragmented, and...

Text: Arkady Babchenko October 13 2015
Article

Europe's last dictatorship

Belarus is described as Europe’s last dictatorship. The country has had the same president for twenty years and is the only one in Europe still employing capital punishment. The regime has also...

Text: Dmitrij Strotsev October 13 2015
Fiction

A cauliflower for Ida

Press and speech freedoms in Ukraine have seriously deteriorated as the conflicts besetting the country have intensified. Many newspapers have been forced to close after pressure from Russian...

Text: Lyuba Yakimchuk October 13 2015

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