Süddeutsche Zeitung 20.04.2007

Alex Rühle visits the Goethe Institut in Kolkata and is utterly persuaded of the benefits of foreign cultural policy. "The Goethe Institute's terrace is a kind of cultural agora. The entire city comes here. In the garden cafe, actor Anjan Dutt wrote his first play in the 1970s. The Bangla Band Bhoomi was founded here. In the guests' coming and going, one notices what a tight network the institute has created over the years, one that goes beyond cultural circles. The social theorist, mystic and urban utopian Venkateswar Ramaswamy, who runs a school in the Muslim slums of Howrah, takes a seat, watches the German visitor tip his sugared tea into the bushes and says with a sardonic smile, 'Careful what you're doing there, those who commit too many sins are reborn in Calcutta.' 'Now you sound like Günther Grass,' says Subramanian Raman. Raman once arranged an apartment for Grass, he's been working at the Goethe Institute since 1975."


Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 20.04.2007-04-20

Algerian writer Habib Tengour is dissatisfied with his government's response to the bomb attacks in Algiers last week. “You cannot exorcise the evil spirit by holding laudatory speeches about the beneficial effects of national reconciliation and the president’s ability to think in the long term, nor indeed by chanting the mantra ‘But that is not the real Islam!’. Since the student revolts of November 1986, Algeria has been in a state of civil war, and the events of last week are a further episode in this crisis. The facts are plain, and it is better to look them in the face than to try to disguise them with fine words. Why claim that everything is perfectly alright, that the Algerians are reconciled with one another and with themselves, when everyday life offers [them] nothing but worries, fears and weariness of life? Particularly for young people an abyss is appearing where the future should be. They sing about nothing else but escaping from this hell. In that situation the paradise promised to ‘martyrs’ might well seem a desirable option."


Frankfurter Rundschau 20.04.2007

Harald Maass, China correspondent of the FR, reports how impossible it is or journalists to report from Chinese-occupied Tibet. “As we leave our hotelin the old town in the morning, a man in a red jacket follows us. We turn into side-streets, change direction. A second, and then a third man start following us. One of them is speaking into the collar of his brown jacket. After a couple of minutes we realise we are surrounded by secret police. Whenever we talk to a Tibetan, a man approaches him shortly afterwards in order to sound him out. Even in the restaurant informers at the next table try to listen to our conversation. The next day the surveillance becomes closer still. We think about taking the bus to Shigatse. Scarcely have we boarded a taxi when our car is stopped by a police check.”


Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 20.04.2007

The police is beating people up, journalists are being killed and Putin says nothing. Julia Voss summarises the situation following the most recent violent excesses by the police: "Putin has been silent on matters of violence, terror and murder in Russia thus far, indifferent to how solid the aggressor was. In the recent demonstrations, it was the police who charged; the murderers of 21 journalists in Russia remain unknown. But the government that remains silent as violence escalates in the country, is still to blame."


Die Welt 20.04.2007

Intolerance, violence and hatred are everyday feelings in the Islamic world, writes Berlin author Zafer Senocak, following the murder of three Bible publishers in the Turkish city of Malatya (more). This is a tragedy that grips secular Turkey as well: "In Turkey, nationalism filled the emotional vacuum left by religion a long time ago. Here and there it forms an alliance with the crude remains of a faith that is above all xenophobic and inhumane. That is the diabolical spirit out of which abhorrent crimes are committed against people of other faiths. Although these crimes are committed by individuals or small groups of radicals, they are nourished and supported by a widespread prevailing mood, a pogrom mood, a esult of repressed guilt -- a moral catastrophe." (3 features by Senocak here)