The attack perpetrated against Salman Rushdie in upstate New York on Friday, August 12th, sheds a harsh light on the fate of many writers on the verge of death who live every moment with fear tied to their bodies.
Every day the same fear of death. Under police escort, forced into exile, writers targeted by the government or extremist groups face the daily for fear of reprisals. Like Salman Rushdie, who was attacked in upstate New York on August 12 and has been the target of a fatwa since the publication of his 1988 novel The Satanic Verses. Some of them are portrayed.
Roberto Saviano © AFP
“Free from his word but captive to his movements.” This is how the Italian writer Roberto Saviano defines himself, whose name became famous with the publication of his documentary story “Gomorra” in 2006, which details the practices of the Camorra, the Neapolitan mafia. The book has sold over four million copies and been translated into 42 countries. This success in the book trade, unanimously celebrated by critics, earned him the target of terrorist projects from the underworld. Since October 13, 2006, the Neapolitan has had to live under constant police protection. In 2021 he describes his “outcast life” dictated by police emergencies in the comic “I’m still alive”. The writer demands “a form of resistance from his difficult everyday life. You’re not dead in this situation. But you’re not allowed to live either. You’re right in the middle of it.” In this in-between, he continues to write at all costs: Extra Pure: Journey into the Cocaine Economy 2014, Piranhas 2016, Ferocious Kiss 2019. The author is regularly in the media spotlight for his uncompromising attitude towards Italian politicians. And especially for his support for Salman Rushdie.
Zineb El Rhazoui © AFP
Zineb El Rhazoui sees her life as a “walking prison”. As a writer and journalist at Charlie Hebdo, she escaped the terrorist attack that killed 12 people on January 7, 2015 because she was in Casablanca at the time of the events. Since then, the Franco-Moroccan author has lived under constant police protection. “This type of threat has changed our lives, our children and our families,” she testified in Le Parisien in 2019. Often referred to as the most protected woman in France, the forties didn’t settle for silence. The woman who first made herself known to a broader public in 2011 as spokeswoman for the collective “Ni putes ni submitte” made her freedom of expression her benchmark. Pushed for her critical remarks on Charlie Hebdo’s financial management in 2016, she continues to appear in the media, loves her outspoken attitudes and her confrontations on TV talk shows. Until skidding. She claimed on the set of CNews in November 2019 that police should “fire live ammunition” if riots broke out in the suburbs.
Read and read the #Satanic verses from #SalmanRushdie, one of the finest British writers of his generation. Let everyone buy their books, let them be in all libraries of all houses. Let this be the product of Islamic hatred: its immortality.
— Zineb El Rhazoui (@ZinebElRhazoui) August 12, 2022
That same year, she sparked a new round of criticism by posing next to a far-right YouTuber. Death threats were doubled. “My everyday life is similar to that of a person who is locked up,” she describes in a report on TF1 that aired on August 15. “All excursions have to be organized, public transport is strictly forbidden to me. Of course, it’s also about privacy and freedom.” But when it comes to defending a physically assaulted Salman Rushdie, his shackled freedom finds a valuable outlet on Twitter. “Read and read #SatanicVerses by #SalmanRushdie, one of the finest British writers of his generation. Everyone should buy their books, have them in every library in every house. Let it be this, the proceeds of Islamic hatred: its immortality.”
Orhan Pamuk © AP
“Over the past 20 years I have had lengthy conversations with writers who have received death threats, including from ‘Islamists or Islamic extremists’. […] I am one of them,” Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk bluntly confides in an article in Le Point on August 15, 2022. Placed under constant escort, he affirms that “regardless of the friendliness of the bodyguards or their efforts to keep out of sight, it is not a pleasant experience.”
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Translated into more than sixty languages, Orhan Pamuk boasts more than eleven million novels sold and numerous literary awards. Winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature, he was included in Time Magazine’s list of the 100 Most Influential People in the World that same year. In summary, Orhan Pamuk is considered the most famous Turkish writer in the world. It is also one of the most endangered. As a demonstrator in 1998, he initially rejected the title “state artist”. Then, in his novels and articles, he denounced the current excesses in his country, such as the rise of Islamism, social injustice and a lack of freedom of expression. He is also the first writer in the Muslim world to publicly condemn the Islamic fatwa issued against Salman Rushdie. In 2005, in the press, too, he acknowledged Turkey’s responsibility for the massacre of the Kurds and the genocide of the Armenians, which earned him death threats and a summons to court: the writer has become an enemy of the Turkish conservatives. The Ergenekon network, made up of nationalist militants, army and gendarmerie officers, judges, mafiosos, academics and journalists, is accused of plotting his assassination. Forced into exile, the author would have settled in the United States in February 2007 to avoid death.
Kakwenza Rukirabashaija © AP
Kakwenza Rukirabashaija decided to leave Uganda after his third arrest when he was tortured. A series of joking tweets, this time targeting President Yoweri Museveni’s “obese” and “grumpy” son, sparked the ire of authorities, the author explains. Weakened, he fled his country in hiding and crossed the Rwandan border on foot before reaching Europe. “I haven’t been safe in Africa since dictators worked together to expel dissidents. Now that I’m in Germany, I feel really protected,” he told AFP. But the writer is not relaxed about that. “I live in a small house by a lake in Munich. My wife and six children stayed in Uganda. They live in fear. The President’s son has threatened to kill my family and relatives if I show my injuries or speak to the media,” he said. Arrested and tortured on numerous occasions in the past, notably for his book The Greedy Barbarian (not in French translated), a critically acclaimed satirical novel that describes an imaginary country plagued by corruption, the author nevertheless intends not to remain silent.In his latest book, Banana Republic: Where Writing is Treasonous (not translated into French), the Published in 2020, he describes his detentions as “inhuman and degrading”. The following year he received the prestigious PEN Pinter Prize, awarded to authors persecuted for expressing their faith. “There is a saying that says: ‘Wound a writer, he will bleed ink. My only weapon is writing’.
Portrait Nasreen © AP
When Salman Rushdie was attacked, the Bangladeshi writer took to Twitter to express concern. Worried for the man, worried for the fate of all the exiled writers who cannot count on seclusion for a little rest. Concerned for himself. In September 1993, a fatwa was issued against Taslima Nasreen by Islamic fundamentalists. His crime? She has written a novel entitled Lajja (Shame) in which she denounces the reprisals being perpetrated against the Hindu minority in Bangladesh. She then found refuge in India. But after a conference in 2007, an Islamist group offered a Rs.500,000 bonus for the beheading. At the end of November 2007 she fled Kolkata after violent demonstrations against her presence.
I just found out that Salman Rushdie was attacked in New York. I’m really shocked. I never thought it would happen. He lives in the West and has been under protection since 1989. If he is attacked, anyone who criticizes Islam can be attacked. I am anxious.
— Taslima Nasreen (@taslimanasreen) August 12, 2022
In the days that followed, she was exfiltrated from city to city for her statements, which were deemed blasphemous against Islam. The power of her works and the pugnacity of her struggle brought her numerous awards, including the Sakharov Prize in 1994 and the Simone de Beauvoir Prize in 2008. In the same year, she became an honorary citizen of the city of Paris, which u. Also in Paris, she received a “universal passport for citizenship” at the UNESCO headquarters. Protected in Europe, she still thinks her place remains in Asia. “By writing and speaking, I encourage women to stand up and mobilize for their freedom,” the activist explains in an interview with Paris Match on June 8, 2018. I am a European citizen, but I moved to India because Women are more oppressed there. so I can act, so I can educate women about their rights and encourage them to fight for them.”