Shahrazad - Stories for life

Guest writer, Stockholm City of Refuge 2008 - 2009

Li Jianhong is a freelance writer and journalist from Shanghai, China. She was very active in her homeland, advocating freedom of expression and edited an independent website. Li Jianhong is member and active in Independent Chinese Pen's Writers in Prison Committee and was a member of their Women's Writers Committee. She was harrassed and put under house arrest in China and came as an ICORN guest writer to Sweden. It was though impossible for her to return to China, since the Chinese government would not let her re-enter into the country. She was forced to go back to Sweden. She now works for Independent Chinese Pen's Writers in Prison Committee.

Guest writer, Norwich City of Refuge 2008

Jiao Guobiao worked for many years as a journalist for the Chinese Cultural Newspaper and then moved on to the position as Associate Professor of Journalism at Peking University. He has published extensively, both books and articles. After having written a critical article of the communist propaganda which was published overseas, he got severe problems. He was put under house-arrest and under close surveillance and got dismissed from his work. After an invitation to Germany, he came to Norwich as the city's first ICORN guest writer.

Amin Ghazaei from Iran is an activist of the leftist student movement in Iran and a writer and journalist with a broad curriculum of articles in different Iranian journals.

For his political activities and writings, he was arrested 2007 by the Iranian government, interrogated and tortured. Next to his political engagement, he is accepted as one of Iran's prominent theoreticians in the fields of philosophy, feminism, and Marxism, where he has written and translated an acknowledged portfolio of books and papers. He is curretly the ICORN Guest Writer in Amsterdam City of Refuge.