Author: Marcus Dam
Publication: The Hindu
Date: March 20, 2008
URL: http://www.hindu.com/2008/03/20/stories/2008032060180100.htm
Controversial Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen
has landed in London.
"I left New Delhi very early in the day
and am now in London, but please don't ask me my destination for the sake
of security - the same reason why I had withheld the date of my departure
prior to leaving the country," she told The Hindu over telephone from
London's Heathrow Airport on Wednesday.
In an e-mail to this correspondent, sent at
11.35 p.m. on Tuesday, she says she was left "with no other alternative
but to leave this country."
She says:
"Even though they [the government] constantly
pressured me mentally to leave the country, I refused to budge. I was determined
I would not leave this country. When they saw it was pointless trying to destroy
my mind, they attempted to destroy my body. In this they succeeded by ruining
my health, which leaves me with no other alternative but to leave this country.
"I am forced to leave India. I used to
call this [the undisclosed 'safe location' in New Delhi where she was put
on November 23, 2007] the torture chamber. I gradually came to realise that
it was the chamber of death instead."
Ms. Nasreen said from London that she was
invited by the President of the erstwhile Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev,
to address the State of the World Forum. She would address it and other seminars
to speak of things "I have not been able to all these months in confinement."