Postcard Welsapar

Postcard Welsapar

Ak Welsapar (born September 19, 1956 in the Turkmen SSR , Soviet Union ) is a Turkmen writer and journalist.

He graduated from Lomonosov University in Moscow with a master's degree in journalism in 1979 and a master's degree in literary theory from the Maxim Gorky Institute of Literature in Moscow in 1989 . He writes in Russian, Turkmen and Swedish.

In 1982 Welpasar became a member of the Soviet Union of Journalists and in 1987 of the Soviet Union of Writers. After he denounced ecological problems in Turkmenistan in several articles, he was expelled from both associations in August 1993.

Because of these critical articles, however, the global public became aware of the enormous ecological problems in Central Asia . Journalists from all over the world interviewed him and also used the results of his research for their own reports. The shockingly high rate of mother-child mortality has been attributed to soil poisoning caused by massive overfertilization of chemicals and pesticides. The Soviet regime had for decades a cotton - monoculture located in Central Asia. Carelessly, profound ecological damage was caused and accepted in the entire region, which ultimately led to the Aral Sea drying up .

Welsapar's article and interviews with him appeared in well-known newspapers and magazines around the world between 1987 and 1994, including the Washington Post , the International Herald Tribune , The Independent , Asahi Shimbun , Dagens Nyheter , the Moskowskije Novosti and Hürriyet .

The Turkmen government tried to silence Ak Welsapar. When that failed, he was declared "Public Enemy Number One". Every step he took was observed, interrogations took place several times, house arrest for long periods was ordered, writing was banned, his published works were confiscated from bookshops and libraries and publicly burned. His family was also put under massive pressure: his wife lost her job as a teacher and the ten-year-old son had to leave school.

As a result of this overwhelming harassment, Welsapar and his family left their homeland in 1993 and went into exile in Sweden .

Ak Welsapar became a member of the Swedish Authors' Association in 1996 and has been an honorary member of the international PEN club since October 1993 .

Works

• A long journey to nearby, 1988
• This Darkness is brighter, 1989 (Index in Turkmenistan, published in Sweden 2004)
• The Bent Sword Hanging on the old Carpet, 1990
• Mulli Tahir, 1992 (Index in Turkmenistan)
• The Revenge of the Foxes, 1993
• The Round House, 1996
• Longing for Another Sky, 2005
• If I only were a White Bird, 2006

swell

• David Remnick, Washington Post Foreign Service, THE VAST LANDSCAPE OF WANT: POVERTY IN THE USSR 3/3, in a series Tuesday, May 22, 1990.
• Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire, a book that won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 1994 (see 1994 Pulitzer Prize).
• World Literature Today , Sept-Dec 2004
• Human Rights Developments (English)