How ICORN, a Norway-based network of safe cities, is helping the persecuted

A young Asian man strings a fretless instrument, strumming effortlessly as a soft, sweet sound tumbles out of his hands and fills up the tiny cubicle where a small group has gathered to listen to him. Hamid Sakhizada, a musician from Afghanistan, does not look up until his fingers have teased a lilting melody out of the dambora, an instrument that looks much like the ektara that the Bauls (a community of wandering minstrels) play in India and Bangladesh.

Sakhizada is far from home. At the Frankfurt International Book Fair, where he is playing to a small audience inside its red and white themed pavilions, the sounds of his instrument are as exotic as the stories his songs carry. Sakhizada belongs to the Hazara community, an ethnic minority in Afghanistan where he was living with his wife until 2016. He ran a music school in Kabul, but in June 2015 the Taliban kidnapped two of his students, Arif Shadab and Dilshad Baba. Shadab was released, but Baba was killed. Some months later, Sakhizada’s house was broken into and his life threatened. That is when he and his wife turned to ICORN (International Cities of Refuge Network). Sakhizada now lives in Norway.

“ICORN is a network of cities committed to freedom of expression,” says Elisabeth Dyvik, programme director at the organisation. It extricates people, such as Sakhizada, out of dangerous situations and rehabilitates them in a safe city. It has a network of 70-plus host cities all over the world. The city administrations and the ICORN Secretariat, headquartered in Norway, work together to support the persecuted individual for two years till he or she assembles a life. Some countries offer citizenship and the city then becomes a permanent home, while some function as temporary stopovers to a final destination.

Hamid Sakhizada, musician belonging to the hazara community, an ethnic minority in Afghanistan. Photo: Hamid Sakhizada/Facebook. 

The organisation was born out of a need to provide safe havens in an unsafe world. And its need is being felt now, more than ever before. As countries narrow their understanding of nationhood and governments get increasingly authoritarian, all forms of creative expression are under threat. The growing insularity of vision among global leaders impacts everyone — not just artists, writers, singers, teachers and the like whose lives are on the line but also ordinary people, who suffer an indefinable loss of ideals and ideas when their governments clamp down on free speech.

Dyvik says that those who seek support have either been stopped from working for the poor, women, minority groups or LGBTQ communities or for exposing corrupt practices and heinous crimes by the powerful. Everywhere it is those who dare to speak truth to power who are being targeted, either in the name of religion or for national security. The largest group of applicants for residencies with ICORN are journalists, she says.

Iman al Ghafari, a Syrian academic, Poet and writer who with the help of Icorn has found a home in Sweden.

ICORN is like a vessel. It takes a troubled writer, artist or journalist from the heated pot and gives them a chance to live a normal life,” says Ahmedur Rashid Chowdhury, who introduces himself as a “little magazine” editor and book publisher from Bangladesh. He published the two Bangladeshi bloggers, Avijit Roy and Ananta Bijoy Das, who were hacked to death by Islamic fundamentalists in 2015. The same year, Chowdhury was attacked too, after which he approached ICORN.

Chowdhury lives in one of the cities of refuge in Norway, and is reinventing his publishing house Shuddhashar as an online magazine. He says that his life in exile is still not clear to him. “I feel like I am constantly shovelling snow from my path, even as the snow keeps falling to cover my way.” His life in a new country is not all smooth sailing but he is safe; more importantly, he does not have to stay silent.

A library in Trondheim, which has hosted guest writers. Photo: Javad Montazeri/ICORN

Everywhere, the exiled artists say, they are up against fundamentalists who exercise their bigoted power in the name of religion. Syrian academic, poet and writer Iman al Ghafari, who taught American poetry, drew the ire of self-styled religious preachers in her country for teaching Sylvia Plath and lesbian poetry to her university students. Routinely attacked, she was forced to flee and with the help of ICORN has found a home in Sweden.

The impact of such intervention is immeasurable — more than saved lives and safe locations, it restores courage and hope in communities. ICORN says its motto is “Safe not silent”, which encourages those whom it protects to continue their protest and pursue their art in their new homeland. Through such people and their work, the hope is to create an enlightened people and through them, a humane and strong polity. As Chowdhury explains, “We need to make people aware of the instruments of democracy. It is necessary to talk about women’s rights and freedoms, LGBTQ rights, and the right to believe or not to worship. For a healthy human ecosystem, we need this diversity.”

The city of Stavanger, where ICORN is headquartered. Photo: Tor Ketil Solberg/ICORN

Freedom of expression is an expendable commodity for most regimes today. They use numerous methods to silence people. Slander, defamation, violence and abuse, imprisonment and even killings. The persecutors could be anyone — religious fanatics, governments, business corporations or just “the moral majority”, as Dyvik puts it.

When people apply for residency, the first step is risk assessment. This involves a background check to understand the nature and extent of the threat to the applicant as also what is the safest way out. Dyvik explains that many are in some way managing the risks themselves, but several are in dangerous situations and need a security plan. The team assesses specific needs and works with partner organisations to facilitate their move. “Once the writer/artist has safely arrived in one of our member cities, we follow up with security assessment locally,” she says.

An ICORN network meeting in Rotterdam this year. Photo: Mohsen Hosseini/ICORN

ICORN has a distributed funding model. Each city funds the artist/writer they host, including grants, travels, insurance and activities. They also fund the administration of the residency locally. ICORN has a small international secretariat that is mostly funded by international donors, such as SIDA (the Swedish International Development Agency) and the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Just as the work is most relevant today, it is also harder to sell than ever before, says the founder of an NGO working for refugee rights in India. With religious and social prejudices on the rise, it is difficult for people to support such work openly.

Dyvik says that the growing need to keep artists safe has meant that they need to both deepen and widen the programme. So they are collaborating with universities and other institutions to ensure the well-being of their people, who she calls human rights defenders (HRDs). Plus, there are city-led associations aimed at helping with the transition.

Starting life anew in a new country with a skeletal support system can be daunting. Safety extracts a huge price. Financially, in terms of the cost of living in the cities of refuge and given that most of them had to leave everything behind as they fled their persecutors. And emotionally — with the irreversible loss of homeland.
 

Safety net
 

What: ICORN is a network of cities committed to freedom of expression. It helps persecuted artists, academics, writers and activists find safe spaces to live in where they can pursue their work, without fear or censorship.

When: The ICORN Secretariat was established in Stavanger, Norway, in June 2006 at the Stavanger Cultural Center, Sølvberget.

Partners: The Secretariat works closely with PEN International and its Writers in Prison Committee, which evaluates the authenticity of authorship and artistic production as well as declared danger. It also interacts with local initiatives in the member cities, national arts councils, and internationally with a wide range of arts and literature festivals, residency networks and so on.