(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
- You are a classic representative of moral courage: You hold your leaders accountable for the way they govern your country, says Irshad Manji and looks into the eyes of Natalia Novozhilova.
- You overestimate me, Novozhilova answers.
- You are too modest, Manji replies quickly. And with a smile on his face.
In the Castle Park in Norway's capital, Russian Natalia Novozhilova and Canadian-Ugandan-Indian and US resident Irshad Manji walk hand in hand. They have both written for Ny Tid's "Uten grenser" column for almost three years. This is the first time they have met, which happened during the World Forum on Freedom of Expression conference (Global Forum on Freedom of Expression). The conference ended 6. June and gathered over 500 participants from 103 country.
The struggle between the two columnists in Russia and the United States seems totally different, but still they find, after a long and engaged conversation, that they are rather part of the same global freedom of expression struggle. That they can learn from each other's fighting methods. And that what they write in foreign media, such as in Norway and Ny Tid, is crucial for creating change in today's world.
When Manji published the book What Is Wrong With Islam Today ?, The New York Times described her as "Osama bin Laden's worst nightmare». No wonder: With its clear demand for reform, the Muslim, lesbian feminist has declared war on reactionary interpretations of Islam, which she believes are contrary to the unpopular tradition of itjihad, reinterpretation. Novozhilova is the Russian columnist successor to the murdered Anna Politkovskaya (1958-2006) in New Age. Novozhilova is one of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's worst enemies.
The two New Time columnists are both used to death threats. Now they wander peacefully around in the green.
Back to the Soviet
Manji is probably right when she describes her Russian columnist as a representative of moral courage. Novozhilova sincerely writes from a Russia where she puts her own life at risk for the truth. Her phone is eavesdropped, the email read and the blog sabotaged. Fascists call her the enemy of the nation. Still, she continues to write for the few newspapers that still dare to print her articles.
- I am not a professional journalist, says Novozhilova.
- Actually, I'm a chemical engineer. It has to do with the fact that I could never work as a journalist in the Soviet Union. As that union went into the woods, I felt the need to change professions. Informing people about what is happening has always given me a lot of joy.
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia experienced a boom of free and critical newspapers. The Moscow Times was considered for several years in the 90's to be among the world's best newspapers. Since then, says Novozhilova, things have happened.
- Over the last eight years, our government has done its part to bring us down to an animal level. Newspapers and magazines today are reminiscent of those we had in the Soviet Union. The press does not write about what is really happening, only the public version. We're back where we were. It's almost like I'm losing the urge to work. I do not want to be a puppet for the authorities, but to present my opinion, my understanding of the world and what is happening in our country – not just how the Kremlin sees it, she says.
In this situation, a blog is the place where Novozhilova can express himself freely, although it is also not problematic:
- I created the blog a year and a half ago, to be able to publish everything that does not go through the censorship in the newspaper where I work. The reason I work in Tomiks, in the city of Vladimir, east of Moscow, is that it was owned by a person who was a member of a democratic party. Now the party has closed down due to the Kremlin, the owner has become a member of Putin's party, and there has been stricter censorship there, she says.
Novozhilova's blog has more readers than Tomik's subscribers. Unfortunately, no she makes money on it. Among her most ardent readers are the Russian intelligence service FSB – the KGB's heirs.
- Shortly after my blog was created, I learned via a reader that it was on the KGB successor The Federal Security Agency's (FSB) list of blogs that needed to be monitored, and preferably removed. After searching for a while, we found the list online, and we published it. Everyone standing there felt proud.
After publishing a post criticizing Putin and his party, she felt the anger and power of the FSB.
- The blog was attacked by a robot that in two hours wrote 70.000 lines, mostly full of gross swearing, and thus it was completely destroyed. Fortunately, I got help from fellow bloggers to clean up the blog and know how to avoid such attacks in the future.
This is an excerpt from a longer article in Ny Tid no. 23, 12 June 2009.
