Plea for renewal of Taslima’s visa

People from various walks of life from France and the UK have written a letter to the Prime Minister to request that Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasrin’s visa be renewed.

Excerpts from the letter: We are citizens of the world, intellectuals, writers, attached to women’s rights and to freedom of expression.

Your party leads the largest secular democracy of the Asian subcontinent and even of the world. A rare and precious exception. After years of wandering, Taslima Nasrin, a Bengali writer, found refuge there, at the same time as she rediscovered the pleasure of living in a country where she could be read in her language.
But while she thought herself finally safe, she must once more suffer the hatred and rage of fanatics who will never forgive a woman for being free and for saying so.

On several occasions these last months, tens of thousands of enraged people called for her head and burned her effigies. Your country protected her against death, but no longer wishes to protect her against intimidation.

Full report here Hindustan Times