Advisory Board Members
Nouhad Fathi Moroccan journalist and feminist activist living in Switzerland Nadia Huberson Swiss-French dual nationality, City Councillor of Zurich Helene Aecherli journalist, speaker and Middle East expert Hamed Abdel-Samad German-Egyptian author Mina Ahadi Chairwoman of the Central Council of Ex-Muslims Germany Ruth Thomas Head of Rituals, Freethinkers Association of Switzerland Thü Hürlimann Designer, Illustrator, Freethinkers Association of Switzerland

Since the arrest of my husband Raif Badawi and my escape with my three children to Lebanon in 2012, Kacem El Ghazzali has been in constant contact with me regarding my husband’s case. He has helped to shed international light on our story, as he was one of the first to highlight the case of Raif Badawi at the Human Rights Council in Geneva, before the case broke out internationally. Kacem never spared us help and advice whenever I needed it. I think the work he does for Arab freethinkers deserves the support of all of us. Ensaf Haidar Saudi Arabian Human Rights Activist

After I was sent to prison on January 1, 2014, I remained isolated from what was happening outside my cell, and this forced isolation lasted for a year. After the Court of First Instance sentenced me to death in December of the same year, the authorities allowed my family to visit me for the first time. It was my sister who visited me. On her second visit she came full of hope.A hope that was missing for a while because local Mauritanian organisations were against my case and because at the time the necessary attention and support from international human rights organisations was lacking. She told me how she received a friendly phone call from a man named Kacem El Ghazzali and how he supported her at a time when I was sentenced to death and did not even have a lawyer.

Kacem El Ghazzali has since been fighting for my freedom at all levels, right up to the United Nations, where he was the first person to publicly communicate my case to the Human Rights Council and other international actors, which had the greatest impact on my case. from that moment on, my case took a different, more positive path. Kacem El Ghazzali continues the fight for my freedom in constant communication with my family and provides assistance at all levels, until the day of my release.

Yet his help did not stop there when I arrived in Europe as a refugee, as I found him again with me at the beginning of my journey: he contacted me less than an hour after my arrival in Europe and he helped me with the first steps of my life in freedom, it is the help without which I would not be where I am now while writing these words.

I truly hope that he will continue his work, because the hope he plants in the hearts of those who long for freedom is invaluable, especially for those of us who will be forgotten on the other side of the world – that is in the Sahel and Sahara region – where many international human rights organisations ignore our existence for lack of geopolitical interests, in such forgotten parts of the world it is only people like Kacem El Ghazzali who see human rights as a vocation and not as a job, who feel and understand our suffering. Mohamed Mkhaitir Blogger and political prisoner. He was sentenced to death after he wrote an article critical of Islam and the caste system in Mauritania.

Exactly four years ago, I came to Switzerland from Bangladesh all alone, with the help of the Swiss Embassy. I had to flee because I was on the blacklist of Islamists as a secular blogger, activist and journalist and my life was in danger. At that time, nine of my blogger friends had already been killed by the Islamists.

I knew very little about Switzerland and at the beginning felt very helpless, sad and lost here. Even the language was an incomprehensible hullabaloo for me at first. The first contact with the Swiss freethinkers took place when I was still living in a refugee home. Andreas Kyriacou had heard from a friend of mine that I was in Switzerland and he visited me in the refugee home.

Andreas supported me with a financial contribution from the Freethinkers and made sure that I was able to leave the refugee home and live temporarily with Daniel Stricker, the then President of the Freethinkers in Eastern Switzerland. When I was later assigned as a refugee to the community of Widnau in the Rhine Valley, a number of Freethinkers there again supported and helped me in many areas. At the moment I live in St. Gallen.

It is hard to explain how incredibly valuable this contact with the Freethinkers was, and still is, for me. In the beginning, these contacts were not so intense, but I no longer felt so alone, and above all I felt understood in my secular world view. All this also ensured that I did not get into a depressive spiral in a totally foreign country without family and without friends.

I am very grateful to all Swiss Freethinkers for everything they have done for me. And I wish that many other secular refugees can get the same, very necessary support and help. For this reason, I fully support the initiative of the Freethinkers to found the humanistic refugee aid organization "secular-refugees.ch" in Switzerland, which can give active support so that apostates feel that they are in good hands in all areas. Azam Khan Secular blogger, activist and journalist from Bangladesch