I wonder if George Galloway, during his recent campaign swing through Bangladesh, had a chance to inquire about the case of Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury, a Bangladeshi Muslim journalist arrested in November 2003 on his way to attend a writers’ symposium in Israel and charged with espionage and sedition. He faces the death penalty.
According to the writers’ organization PEN USA:
Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury, journalist, columnist, author, political analyst, and editor of Weekly Blitz magazine in Bangladesh, often wrote in his articles that peace was best made through communication to bridge the gap between societies.
At the time of his arrest, Choudhury had just been appointed the International Director of the first Bangladesh chapter of The International Forum for the Literature and the Culture of Peace, an Israeli and international organization that promotes dialogue on the basis of culture. The chapter was to open on December 3, 2003. One of his main goals in opening this chapter was to “establish bridges of culture and people to people relations between Bangladesh and Israel, and to promote the global culture of peace.”
He must be a dangerous fellow.
