New Guest Writer arrived in Tromsø
Jahangir Alam Akash is Tromsø’s new guest writer. Accompanied by his wife Farhana and four year old son Fiman, 37 years-old Jahangir Alam Akash reached Norway’s safe shores on 18th May 2011.
Akash is a writer, journalist and human rights activist with more than 20 years experience as an investigative journalist. He has worked for the newspaper Sangbad and was Chief of Bureau of the now closed-down television channel CBS News in Bangladesh. He has focused on reporting issues such as corruption, extra judicial killings, Islamic militancy, press freedom, and minority oppression.
Akash has published several books, among these Struggle for Peace (March 2010) and the latest Pain (January 2011). Pain is an extensive compilation of the several deaths in custody and numerous cases of rapes, beatings and land and property thefts of the minority population by the Bangladesh government. He is the former Secretary General for the Rajshahi Union of Journalists, and today edits the web magazine Euro Bangla.
Akash has been a front figure in Bengali human rights organizations like Justice Foundation, Bangladesh Institute for Human Rights and Taskforce Against Torture. He has received awards for both his literature and his work for human rights.
Akash has been threatened, jailed, tortured and persecuted in his home country since he started working as a journalist and human rights defender in 1989. In 2009 he was brought out of Bangladesh in an urgent action by Amnesty International and Reporters without Borders and has since been hosted by safe houses in Germany and Austria.
