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Theme: Cities of refuge

Editorial

Refuge in resistance to terror

Already in 1997 Jacques Derrida held a prophetic lecture. This was during the International Parliament of Writers’...

Text: Ola Larsmo March 09 2016
Article

What does the work of a refuge coordinator look like?

According to the agreement with ICORN, each refuge city has to designate a coordinator responsible for the project. What does this role entail? Jasmina Rihar, coordinator for Ljubljana City of Refuge...

Text: Jasmina Rihar March 10 2016
Fiction

I will go back to my country one day

Syrian poet Housam Al-Mosilli was forced to flee Syria in 2012 after having been imprisoned and tortured three times. He lived in exile in Istanbul for four years while waiting to find a refuge. On...

Text: Housam Al-Mosilli March 10 2016
Interview

Peace songs for Sudan

Month after month, the Sudanese musician Abazar Hamid submitted his peace and love songs to the government’s music monitoring committee which mostly censored and rejected them. Songs dealing with...

Text: Nicky Armstrong, Christopher Finnigan March 10 2016
Interview

Darkness over Mosul – about journalism and ISIS in Iraq

For Iraqi journalist and writer Nawzat Shamdin, the meaning of the word home has come to be redefined during the two years he has lived in Skien, Norway. For over a decade, through his work as a...

Text: Afrah Nasser March 10 2016
Interview

Refuge writers due to sexual orientation

For Somali writer Ahmed Mohamed, being gay and writing about it in a strongly homophobic environment became more and more dangerous. Finally, through ICORN, he managed to leave and become Skellefteå’s...

Text: Daniel Gustafsson March 10 2016
Poetry

From Havana to Reykjavik

Cuban poet Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo was forced to leave his home country in 2013 after having been denounced as a “traitor” to his country and accused of carrying out “counter-revolutionary” activities...

Text: Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo March 10 2016
Article

The impossibility and invincibility of ICORN

There are today 52 cities of refuge around the world. Helge Lunde, director of ICORN (International Cities of Refuge Network), the organization that coordinates the world’s cities of refuge for...

Text: Helge Lunde March 10 2016
Article

“My city, which is not mine”

The situation for an increasing number of Russian intellectuals became impossible following the murder of opposition politician Boris Nemtsov, who was gunned down in Moscow on February 27, 2015. This...

Text: Anzhelina Polonskaya March 10 2016

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

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