The attack on writer Salman Rushdie in New York is sadly not unique, although rare. The Pen Club has warned for years about the murder and jailing of writers and journalists. Countless writers have been killed, attacked, or persecuted throughout history. Freedom of expression carries risks. It is enough to see some of the many existing cases that we remember here.
The Egyptian writer is one of the writers who were eliminated because he was seen as an enemy of Islam. Farag Foda, shot dead near his home in Cairo in June 1992 By a member of the Islamic Assembly fundamentalist group. And in October 1994 the Egyptian novelist Najib Mahfouz stabbed in the neck by a fundamentalist In 1988, he was accompanied by another in the heart of Egypt’s capital, as he went to his weekly meeting at a city casino to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. In 1996, Mahfouz was branded a “heretic” and sentenced to death by radical Islamic groups. Since then, he has been practically confined to his home, with sporadic outings controlled by the police, until his death in 2006.
Jihadist fanatics also assassinated From January 7, 2015 to 12 people, mostly from the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo to the workersIncluding some of the publication’s star illustrators such as Chab, Cabou, Honoré, Tignous, and Wolinski. The caricature and satire of Muhammad had caused them to kill everyone they saw in the newsroom that day in cold blood with assault rifles and other weapons.
Shahzahan Bachchu, 60-year-old Bangladeshi editor, poet and blogger who writes on secular issues, He was killed by Islamists in central Bangladesh (India) in June 2018.
In Afghanistan, Pen Club members were killed after the Taliban took over Kabul a year ago. Abdullah Atefi and Dawa Khan Menapal.
But not only the most uncompromising Islamic writers are offended. At least five writers were killed by the ruling Junta Army during a peaceful demonstration in Myanmar (Burma), according to a 2021 report highlighting the killing of poets Myint Myint Zin and K Za Win.
Nedim Yasar, radio announcer and former gang member of Turkish origin Shot dead in Copenhagen (Denmark) in 2018 the day of the premiere of her book about her experiences in the world of gangs.
American-born Russian writer and journalist Anna Politkovskaya was shot and killed in the elevator of her home in 2006.. Internationally awarded, it has documented in detail the major human rights violations committed by Russian troops during the second Chechen war. Every time they gave him an award, he was reminded of the danger posed by Vladimir Putin.
Filmmaker, essayist and writer Pier Paolo Pasolini was also killed. this On November 2, 1975, he crashed into Pasolini with his own car several times. On the coast of Ostia. With his leftist ideology and open homosexuality, he was an intellectual offended by power.
Federico Garcia Lorca, The Granada poet and playwright was forced to leave his home a month after the fascist coup that triggered the Spanish Civil War. A group of guards and Phalangists went looking for him and he was executed along with the other men. His body has not yet been found.
12-13 August 1952 in Moscow Thirteen of the most prominent Yiddish writers, poets, artists, musicians and actors in the Soviet Union were secretly executed in the basement of the Lubyanka prison on Stalin’s orders. Among them was the writer David Bergelson and poets Itzik Feffer and Leib Kvitko.
The list could go on and on, sickeningly, and even more if we include persecuted writers like Roberto Saviano, who has lived under constant escort since 2006, when Camorra revealed his work in ‘Gomorra’.
Source: Informacion
