Exile like a 'slow death': Taslima

Bangladeshi feminist writer Taslima Nasreen, who fled her country 16 years ago because of threats from Muslim extremists, said  that her life in exile was like a "slow death". Nasreen, who lives in the United States, was on a brief trip to Delhi to renew her Indian residential permit. "I am not keeping well," the 47-year-old told AFP.

"Sometimes it seems I am facing a slow death, standing at a bus stop to shuttle between Paris and New York, London and Washington," she said.Nasreen was forced to flee Bangladesh in 1994 after radical Muslims accused her of blasphemy over her novel Lajja (Shame), in which a Hindu family is persecuted by Muslims.She spent the next 10 years in western Europe and the United States before India granted her a temporary residential permit in 2004. She moved to Kolkata in the state of West Bengal, adjoining Bangladesh.

But seething resentment by Muslim hardliners at her presence in the city exploded into full-blown riots in November 2007, which resulted in the army being called out.

Full report here  AFP