Taslima- hits out at 'state terrorism', seeks escape from death chamber
dr yogesh g patel
Taslima hits out at 'state terrorism'
Arindam Sarkar, Hindustan
Times
Kolkata, March 19, 2008
First Published: 00:41
IST(19/3/2008)
Last Updated: 03:59 IST(19/3/2008)
Before leaving
India on Tuesday, exiled Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasrin said the treatment
meted out to her by the Government of India was nothing less than "cold-blooded
state terrorism to drive her out of the country.
Taslima said she is
planning a lecture tour where she would speak about her days inside a room with
no view and also how she was "treated like an animal". In a no-holds barred
interview, Taslima said that the rulers were as crude as those who are despised
because of their religious fundamentalism. She said she was deprived of human
rights and tortured by the Centre.
"And to expose the mask of this
government, which was out to kill me, I will paste all that I experienced on my
website," said Taslima.
Relieved that her "house arrest in a free
country" was ending, Taslima said that she would write and tell the world about
her harrowing experience in the State of the World Forum, where she has been
invited to speak by the former USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev.
Amnesty
International and International Human Rights Organisation have also approached
her to narrate her nightmarish experience in India, she said. Taslima said she
is planning a lecture tour where she would speak about her days inside a room
with no view and also how she was "treated like an animal".
"Fundamentalists do not torture you to death. They just finish you off.
But the Indian Government slowly pushed me towards death. My terrible experience
has shattered all notions about a secular and democratic India," Taslima Nasrin
told the Hindustan Times.
"For 20 years, I have been hitting out against
fundamentalism. There has been no physical attack on me. But India, when it
failed to break me psychologically, destroyed me physically by denying treatment
to an ill person," added Taslima.
She pointed out that her own country
Bangladesh had driven her out in 1994 but did not inflict psychological or
physical trauma that could lead to the heart and eye diseases. For that matter,
Taslima said in Kolkata too, the state government did not impose a ban on her
movement.
Talking about her dilemma and frustrations, she said she would
very soon write in international dailies on how a handful of hooligans made the
Centre to toe its line and punish an author. The political parties of India are
so secular that they were scared to defend a person who is anti-Islam, she said.
Taslima's six-month residential permit in India is expiring in August.
She said that before its expiry she plans to return here. "Just to check
whether I can stay in Kolkata. If denied I will pack up and leave India for
good."
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