Mister Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Madam President of the Congress Party Sonia Gandhi, we write you to implore India to continue to protect Taslima Nasrin.
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.