Kabul’s flight: hundreds of people run on August 16, 2021 alongside an American military plane.
Keystone
Four years ago, the Taliban took power in Afghanistan. Thanks to a rescue operation carried out by the German Swiss Pen Center, 91 threatened intellectual personalities and their families have since found refuge in Switzerland. A book brings together their experiences.
When the Taliban entered the Afghan capital on August 15, 2021, it was absolute chaos that broke out: “Whoever was in Kabul that evening, when the city fell, never forget the panic that took hold of the inhabitants. The shots of shots and the cries of triumph were so deafening that the whole city trembled. ”
This is what the journalist Shir Aqa Shayan Fariwar writes, installed today with his family in the canton of Thurgovie. He is one of the 91 writers who were able to flee with their loved ones to Switzerland and other European countries thanks to the support of the Pen Center.
>>Listen to the subject of the SRF:
In a recent work – “Paths through dark times” (Paths through obscure times) – These people evoke the reasons why the takeover of the Islamist Taliban represented for them a deadly danger.
“We were brought back to the rank of pets”
This collection of texts brings together personal stories, tests and poems that illustrate how much the taking of power has turned the life of the authors, and in particular that of the authors. “From this moment, we were brought back to the rank of pets,” wrote the activist for women’s rights Qudsia Shujazada, who now lives in Basel.
The Swiplus App: centralized and free access to the most important information from Switzerland, especially for the Swiss abroad. Download now!
Behind this book and the rescue operation is the writer Sabine Haupt, professor emeritus of literature at the University of Friborg. Former member of the PEN, she had already committed herself for years for writers persecuted around the world. The first calls for help from Afghanistan had reached him in the spring of 2021, when it was expected that a change of power would follow the withdrawal of American troops.
Salvation in Switzerland
It is by chance that Sabine Haupt hears on the radio that a spectacular action of the International Cycling Union, based in Aigle, had saved 38 Afghan sports by bringing them to Switzerland. “I then said to myself: what cyclists managed to do, we, writers, may also do it.”
>> Kabul’s leak, SRF 2021:
With the support of recognized Swiss writers and writers, she sends a letter to the State Secretariat for Migration (SEM) to request humanitarian visas intended for her colleagues in danger. But the SEM delivers these visas with a lot of reserve. In 2022, 1759 Afghan nationals requested it: only 98 obtained it.
A successful sponsorship model
One of the conditions essential for the granting of a humanitarian visa is the existence of a link with Switzerland – a criterion rarely fulfilled by Afghan intellectuals and intellectuals. Sabine Haupt therefore asked Swiss writers so that they can be made of their counterparts.
“What is beautiful is that real friendships were born from this sponsorship system,” she explains. “Many Swiss writers now help Afghan families seek accommodation or set up other steps.”
>> Interview de Sabine Haupt, SRF:
Some of these Swiss Marraines have also contributed to the new book, delivering their external gaze to exile and flight. A work that testifies to solidarity, without obscuring the difficulties or the path strewn with bureaucratic pitfalls linked to this extraordinary action.
Translated from German using an automatic translator/DBU
