Published by Swedish PEN • Since 2011

Sweden

Less free as a transgender in Sweden than in Iran

The author and film director Ramesh Safavi was born as a boy in Iran. She lives in Stockholm after having undergone sex reassignment therapy. The author and critic Lina Kalmteg has interviewed her about writing and being trans gender in Iran and about life in exile.

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Iran

Sweden

November 29 2018. #27 2018.

NSA’s espionage can aid dictatorships

At one point it looked like a number of totalitarian states and systems would succeed in closing the door that the internet had opened for freedom of speech. This was met by a new wave of “hacktivism” and software for activists. And with Edward Snowden's disclosures, attention is now turned to the surveillance activities of the NSA.

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Sweden

May 6 2014. #13 2014.

Mats Johansson: “Erbey risks becoming a new Dawit Isaak”

One of the charges brought against the Kurdish writer and lawyer Muharrem Erbey, imprisoned without trial since the Christmas of 2009, is that he gave a lecture in the Swedish Parliament where he supposedly “slandered the Turkish state”.

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September 22 2011. #2 2011.