'I shall never be silent,' says Bangladeshi exile Taslima Nasreen

''Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in,'' wrote the poet Robert Frost.

His words do not apply to exiled activists such as Taslima Nasreen, the Bangladeshi writer who fled her homeland three years ago because of the threat to her life by an Islamic fatwa.

Nasreen is unable to return to her country because she could be killed for having criticised religious laws and for speaking out on behalf of women. She says the government also has made it clear that she is not welcome back, but the 34-year-old writer says being forced to live in exile will not keep her silent.

''I shall speak out from my heart. I shall never be silent,'' she said during her keynote address at the recent three-day 'P-7' conference in Brussels, organised by the European parliament's green parties to highlight the plight of seven of the world's poorest countries, including Bangladesh.

The conference put forward alternative proposals for sustainable development, and part of the discussion centred on improving the situation of women in these countries.

''Without human rights for women, there cannot be any development, sustainable or otherwise,'' Nasreen said, citing cases of violence against women in Bangladesh.

''Islamic law is a major obstacle for the development of women,'' Nasreen declared. ''Islamist groups have attacked development NGOs (non-government organisations) working with women because they claim that these NGOs distract women from their social role. But one of her co-panelists, Faiza Jama Mohamed of Somalia, said that it was the ''misinterpretation of Islam'' that was to blame for the oppression of women in some countries, not the religion itself. Nasreen disagreed.

''There are some laws based on religion that don't give women any rights,'' she said. ''My view is that Islam and fundamentalism oppress women. The rules say that a woman who commits adultery should be stoned to death, and the fundamentalists do this. Moderates are against this so that means they aren't following the religion.''

Bangladeshi officials in Brussels, meanwhile, described government initiatives to end discrimination against women in labour and education, saying that quotas had been established to make sure that women were well-represented in certain areas. But Nasreen said these rules are not being implemented.

''The mullahs who issue fatwas against women aren't being punished,'' she said in an interview. ''I cannot return to Bangladesh.''

Nasreen has won various prizes in India and Europe, including the 1995 Sakharov prize from the European parliament, but she said that not being able to return home has made her ''very depressed'' and has affected her writing. ''I have to deal with that; I have to continue,'' she said.

She writes in Bengali, but several of her books have been translated into different languages. It was her Lajja (Shame), which described the travails of a Hindu family in Bangladesh after the demolition of the Ayodhya mosque. The book has been banned in her homeland.

Nasreen's plight is often compared with that of Salman Rushdie, the prize-winning writer who still lives in hiding because of the fatwa issued against him for his novel, Satanic Verses.

Nasreen says that Rushdie has been very supportive of her and that they have exchanged letters although she has not received the critical acclaim for her work that Rushdie has. Some critics maintain her writing does not rise above the average, although she is widely admired for her courage in continuing to speak out against injustice to women.

UNI