Like Salman Rushdie, these writers facing death threats around the world

The attack perpetrated on Friday August 12 against Salman Rushdie, in the State of New York, sheds a harsh light on the fate of many writers threatened with death, who live every moment in fear pegged…

Every day, the same fear of dying.

Under police escort, forced into exile, writers targeted by the government or extremist groups face the daily newspaper in fear of reprisals.

Like Salman Rushdie, attacked on August 12, in New York State, the target of a fatwa since the release of his novel "The Satanic Verses", published in 1988. Portraits of some of them.

Roberto Saviano © AFP

"Free of his word but prisoner of his movements."

This is how the Italian writer Roberto Saviano defines himself, whose name became famous with the publication, in 2006, of his documentary story "Gomorra", which describes in detail the practices of the Camorra, the Neapolitan mafia .

The book has sold over four million copies and has been translated into 42 countries.

This bookstore success, unanimously acclaimed by critics, earned him above all to be the target of terrorist projects of the underworld.

Since October 13, 2006, the Neapolitan has been forced to live under constant police protection.

In 2021, he describes in the comic strip "I'm still alive" his "outcast life", dictated by police contingencies.

From his impeded daily life, the writer claims "a form of resistance.

In this situation, you are not dead.

But we won't let you live either.

You are in the middle." It is in this in-between that he continues to write, at all costs: "Extra pure: Journey into the cocaine economy" in 2014, "Piranhas" in 2016, "Baiser Ferocious" in 2019. The writer is regularly in the media spotlight for his uncompromising stance vis-à-vis Italian politicians. And in particular for his support for Salman Rushdie.

The writer is regularly in the media spotlight for his uncompromising stand vis-à-vis Italian politicians.

And in particular for his support for Salman Rushdie.

The writer is regularly in the media spotlight for his uncompromising stand vis-à-vis Italian politicians.

And in particular for his support for Salman Rushdie.

Zineb El Rhazoui © AFP

Zineb El Rhazoui sees her life as a "walking prison".

Writer and journalist at Charlie Hebdo, she escaped the terrorist attack that killed 12 people on January 7, 2015 because she was in Casablanca at the time of the events.

The Franco-Moroccan author has since lived under the permanent protection of the police.

"This type of threat has changed our lives, those of our children and our families," she testified in Le Parisien in 2019. Often referred to as the most protected woman in France, the forties did not resigned to silence.

The one who first made herself known to the general public as spokesperson for the collective "Ni putes ni submitted" in 2011, made her freedom of speech her standard.

Pushed out for her critical remarks on the financial management of Charlie Hebdo in 2016, she continues to appear in the media, fond of her frank stances, her clashes on television talk shows.

Until the skid.

She claims, in November 2019, on the set of CNews, that the police should "shoot live ammunition" when riots break out in the suburbs.

Read and re-read #SatanicVerses by #SalmanRushdie, one of the finest British writers of his generation.

Let everyone buy their books, let them be in all the libraries of all the houses.

Let this be the product of Islamic hatred: its immortality.

— Zineb El Rhazoui (@ZinebElRhazoui) August 12, 2022

The same year, she triggered a new round of criticism by posing alongside a far-right YouTuber.

Death threats redoubled.

“My daily life resembles that of a confined person”, she describes in a report on TF1 broadcast on August 15.

"All outings must be organised, I am strictly forbidden to take public transport. Naturally, there is also a concern for privacy and freedom."

But when it comes to defending a physically assaulted Salman Rushdie, his shackled freedom finds a valuable escape on Twitter.

"Read and re-read #SatanicVerses by #SalmanRushdie, one of the finest British writers of his generation. Everyone buy his books, let them be in every library in every home. Let it be this,

Orhan Pamuk © AP

"Over the past twenty years, I have had long conversations with writers who have received death threats, including from 'Islamists or Islamic extremists'. […] I am one of 'between them', confides the Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk bluntly in an article in Le Point of August 15, 2022. Placed under permanent escort, he affirms that "whatever the kindness of the bodyguards or the efforts they make to staying out of sight is not a pleasant experience."

Translated into more than sixty languages, Orhan Pamuk can boast of having sold more than eleven million novels and countless literary awards.

Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006, he was ranked the same year by Time magazine in the list of the hundred most influential personalities in the world.

In sum, Orhan Pamuk is considered the most famous Turkish writer in the world.

It is also one of the most endangered.

A protester, he first refused the title of "State artist" in 1998. Then, through his novels and articles, he denounced the current excesses of his country such as the rise of Islamism, social injustices or the lack of freedom of expression.

He is also the first writer in the Muslim world to publicly condemn the Islamic fatwa issued against Salman Rushdie.

He also acknowledges in the press, in 2005, the responsibility of Turkey in the massacres of the Kurds and the Armenian genocide, which earned him death threats and a summons to appear in court: the writer has become the enemy Turkish conservatives.

The Ergenekon network, made up of nationalist militants, army and gendarmerie officers, magistrates, mafiosos, academics and journalists, is accused of having planned his assassination.