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| India-Pakistan | |
| India vows to protect Taslima Nasreen | |
| 2007-11-29 | |
| India said on Wednesday it would continue to host and protect a controversial Bangladeshi Muslim woman writer, Taslima Nasreen, who has fled from city to city since her radical Islamist critics stoked violence last week. Taslima’s fate, who had been in the eastern Indian city of Kolkata since 2003, has become a hot political issue for New Delhi with the Hindu nationalist opposition accusing the government of pleasing the Muslim minority by trying to get her out of the country. But Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee said that historically, India had never refused shelter to those who had sought the country’s protection. “While guests are in India, the union and state governments provide them protection,” he said. “This will also apply in Taslima Nasreen’s case.”
Sentiments: Wednesday’s assurance that India would continue sheltering her came with a warning. “It is also expected that [she] will refrain from activities and expressions that may hurt people’s sentiments,” he said, an apparent reference to the outspoken Taslima. Nasreen fled Bangladesh for the first time in 1994 when a court said she had “deliberately and maliciously” hurt Muslims’ religious feelings with her Bengali-language novel “Lajja”, or “Shame”. | |
| Posted by:Fred |