The Freedom Chat: Bangladeshi Writer Anisur Rahman (audio only)

The Freedom Chat is an ongoing interview series by Sampsonia Way featuring conversations with journalists and other media workers facing censorship and repression in their home countries. In these Q&A’s, conducted via video chat, journalists talk with Sampsonia Way about press freedom, anti-free speech legislation, and exile.

In Bangladesh, which ranks #146 out of 180 countries in the 2015 Press Freedom Index from Reporters without Borders, secularist bloggers are under attack. Sampsonia Way conducted an audio interview with Anisur Rahman about the state of media freedom in Bangladesh and the government’s accountability in the attacks on the bloggers. In 2007, Anisur was one of Bangladesh’s young emerging poets, the youngest member of the National Poetry Council of Bangladesh. He was also an active dissident and a journalist. Anisur left the country in 2008 during Bangladesh’s political crisis, when the constitution was banned and there was no freedom of expression in the country. He achieved permanent residency in Sweden and received support from the Swedish Writers’ Union, Swedish PEN and ICORN.