PARIS: French President Nicolas Sarkozy would like to present Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen, in hiding in India following death threats, with an award in Paris, a women’s rights group said on Thursday.

Nasreen was awarded a prize this month to mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of feminist icon Simone de Beauvoir, along with the Somali-born anti-Islamist activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

“The president said he hoped Taslima Nasreen would come soon” to Paris, to award her the prize “in person”, said Sihem Habchi of the Neither Whores Nor Submissive group following a meeting with Mr Sarkozy. Sarkozy, who is due in New Delhi at the start of a two-day state visit on Friday, is expected to raise the author’s plight with his Indian hosts.

“We have to help Taslima however we can. We needed a strong message from France, the country of human rights, towards Taslima and the Indian government.

That will be done in France, very soon,” Habchi said.

“To receive Taslima here would send a message to women in the world who are fighting for freedom and democracy, in our neighbourhoods but also in Pakistan, Afghanistan and India.”

Nasreen fled Bangladesh after receiving death threats, and has since lived in exile in Europe, the United States and, since 2004, in Kolkata.

Islamists accuse Nasreen, who was born into a Muslim family but now calls herself an atheist, of blasphemy over her 1994 novel, “Lajja” (Shame), which depicts the life of a Hindu family persecuted by Muslims in Bangladesh.—AFP