From this month's editor

New Internationalist, Oct, 2002

AT the moment Fatma Kayhan, a journalist from Kurdistan, is with us on a work placement in the Oxford office of the NI.

Like us, she is used to working for a collective, independent publication. In her case it is Roza, the first Kurdish-language feminist magazine in Turkey.

But unlike us, her work has led to spells in detention and prison -- and finally flight from Turkey for alleged crimes against state security.

In Roza, Fatma ran stories about rape and sexual abuse of Kurdish women by the Turkish military. If she goes back she faces a probable three-and-a-half year prison sentence. Turkish jails are not known for their observance of human rights.

The presence of Fatma in our office drives home a truth that should be at the heart of any thinking about migration and asylum. But for chance of place, time, politics or even a change in the weather, anybody can become a refugee. You, me, Fatma, anyone.

Refuge is precious -- and the chance to offer it is precious too. Amid the barbed wire, intelligence systems, infrared devices and draconian policies designed to keep out illegal aliens', that awareness is hard to find today. But it's there, driving all the groups and individuals who are acting to defend this most basic human right.

Vanessa Baird

for the New Internationalist Co-operative