Three journalists in exile in Switzerland tell their stories

(From left to right): Perihan Kaya, Najibah Zartosht and Saddam Hamed Abu Asim. SWI swissinfo.ch

In many countries, press freedom and journalists face far greater threats than in Switzerland. But for those seeking refuge here and looking to continue their careers, the challenges are considerable. Three journalists living in exile in Switzerland share their stories.

They have fled persecution, war or repression. Once granted the right of residence, most journalists living in exile in Switzerland are safe to report more freely on their home countries than they could while there.

However, many lack a platform or channel through which to reach their audience. Moreover, the barriers in the local labour market mean that their journalism often becomes a labour of love without income – or they must give up journalism altogether.

Swissinfo met three journalists living in exile in Switzerland.

Najibah Zartosht, Afghanistan

Based in Switzerland, Najibah Zartosht runs Afghanistan’s Women Voice. The online magazine reports on the situation of women under the Taliban regime. Benjamin von Wyl / SWI swissinfo.ch

Najibah Zartosht has been editor-in-chief of Afghanistan Women’s Voice since the end of 2021. From her small flat on the outskirts of Zug, she coordinates the editorial team of the online magazine, which has an unprecedented aim: to report on the situation of women since the Taliban took power in August 2021 from a secular, feminist perspective. She hopes to reach an audience in Afghanistan, a country where girls are denied education beyond primary school and, later, employment in almost all professions.

‘Borrowed IdentityExternal link’ is the title of an article which, through a single life story, illustrates how misogyny in Afghanistan has left its mark on a person’s life.

The story reads like a piece in The New Yorker – 30,000 characters long, in the narrative journalism tradition, in which Benazir describes how violence and discrimination led her to live as a boy. Benazir’s voice, the article says, carries the weight of what it means to be a woman in Afghanistan: sacrifice and endurance. “We should not allow these voices to be silenced. A voice is meant to be carried forward,” the text urges.

‘It’s not normal’

“The most important thing for me is to fight against this creeping normalisation,” says Zartosht. “It’s not normal: when women aren’t allowed to go to school, when girls are forced into marriage, and when suicide is their only way out.” She wants to resist the notion that the situation in Afghanistan is considered normal.

Behind Afghanistan Women’s Voice is a team from the diaspora that works alongside journalists in the country. As editor-in-chief, Zartosht herself earns nothing; the staff on the ground, meanwhile, are paid by a Swiss association.

The project gives Zartosht an impetus and a media outlet. Otherwise, her life in Switzerland is, in many respects, just beginning. While she taught economics at Kabul University before fleeing in 2021, she is now studying again herself in Switzerland. Although she once unlocked an piece of global culture for others – she translated Franz Kafka’s love letters into Farsi – she and her husband are now striving to familiarise themselves with everyday life in central Switzerland and integrate into society there.

Whether she will one day be able to work as a journalist in Switzerland remains to be seen. However, by bringing content day after day to a public under dictatorship, she is ahead of most journalists in democratic countries.

Facebook is an important channel for reaching Afghan society, both within the country and for the diaspora. However, the audience knows that it is better to keep quiet on controversial topics. “We hardly get any reactions on Facebook to articles about the regime and its actions,” says Zartosht. “But when we report on cultural topics, many more people comment and react.”

Zartosht explains that men who are clearly members of the Taliban frequently contact Afghanistan Women’s Voice via Facebook chat. Beyond that, however, the Taliban does not reach them in their Swiss exile.

In Kabul, by contrast, the Taliban tortured Syed Nemat Ziat, an Afghanistan Women’s Voice journalist. In Iran, another journalist has experienced a similar fate at the hands of the regime there.

Read the opinion piece on press freedom:

Perihan Kaya, Turkey

Perihan Kaya was recently sentenced to a prison term in absentia in Turkey. For her, there is no turning back now. Aylin Elci / SWI swissinfo.ch

If the Turkish authorities had their way, the Kurdish-Turkish journalist Perihan Kaya would not be in Geneva, but in a Turkish prison. In early 2026, a court sentenced her in absentia to a prison term for allegedly disseminating terrorist propaganda. According to international press freedom organisationsExternal link, the prosecution cited eight Facebook posts from 2015 and 24 undated Tweets as evidence.

Kaya has not just been pursued by litigation since she began reporting for a Kurdish news agency in 2006. Even before that, she spent eight months in prison for placing herself as a human shield between Kurdish guerrillas and the Turkish army.

As a journalist, Kaya reported on protests, the border conflict between Syria and Turkey in Şırnak, and the regular clashes between the Kurdish PKK and the Turkish army.

Following the failed coup against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in 2016, legal proceedings against journalists reporting on Kurdish topics became increasingly frequent. Kaya knew even then that she had to leave. After her father’s death in 2022, she left Turkey.

She fled to Switzerland via the Balkan route. “It felt as though I was faced with a choice between different kinds of death: either I stay in my country and rot in prison, die while fleeing, or I reach a safe place and am separated from my loved ones,” says Kaya, who has not seen her family for four years. But there is no going back; according to the organisation Reporters Without Borders, 174 journalists have been arrested in Turkey over the last ten years, with seven already arrested in 2026 alone.

‘Becoming an asylum-seeker is terrible, especially for women’

“Becoming an asylum-seeker is terrible, especially for women,” she says, after having been abused by the Croatian police. To secure her right to asylum as a victim of political persecution, she had to take her case all the way to the Federal Administrative Court, because Switzerland wanted to return her to Croatia under the Dublin Regulation.

She has now been recently granted a residence permit in Switzerland but has not yet been recognised as a refugee – and challenges remain. “The biggest advantage of living in Switzerland is that I wouldn’t be thrown in prison, but the biggest problem is: who will publish my work?” asks Kaya. Since her arrival in Switzerland, she has only worked sporadically as a journalist, for example for the Kurdish-Turkish media portal Nupel Media, based in Germany.

She has not yet gained a foothold in Swiss media, in part due to the language barrier. Nevertheless, Kaya is determined to continue working as a journalist: “I must write to live; it is my responsibility.”

Saddam Hamed Abu Asim, Yemen

Saddam Hamed Abu Asim has also conducted research into the situation of Yemeni journalists in exile. Vera Leysinger / SWI swissinfo.ch

In 2014, the Houthi militia captured the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, where Saddam Hamed Abu Asim was living. After that, the freelance journalist came under increasing threat, receiving anonymous calls, and the security authorities came to his neighbourhood asking after him. He decided to flee and made his way via Saudi Arabia to Bern in Switzerland.

“I looked for a job and realised how difficult it is,” says Abu Asim. At first, it was down to the language barrier, but his German is good now. Nevertheless, he struggled to break into Switzerland’s crisis-hit journalism industry.

He has well and truly grappled with the question of what it means to work as a journalist in the diaspora. After his escape, he went back to university to study Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Bern. In his master’s thesis, he looked at the situation of Yemeni journalists in exile.

In it, Abu Asim describes, for example, the situation of Samah Al-Shaghdhari, who was maligned by the Houthis and has been living in Germany since 2016, where she writes for the multilingual news platform Amal News. Her articles have titles such as ‘Volunteering is fun and helps with integration’, and, as Abu Asim writes, she is “one of the few female Yemeni journalists who still makes a living mainly from journalism”.

‘We know the local society’

Abu Asim finds it incomprehensible that European media doesn’t show more interest in drawing on the experiences of journalists in exile. He sees the Netherlands as a positive exception, where various exchange projects bring together journalists who have fled their country with local media professionals.

Through his experience as a journalist in Yemen, Abu Asim says he has gained expertise that he would like to contribute to Swiss journalism. “We come from Yemen, we know the local society – we can support other journalists with their research and in dealing with war and crises,” says Abu Asim.

Due to a lack of prospects in the sector, he now hardly works in journalism. Abu Asim currently holds a post in the communications department at an embassy of an Arab state in Bern.

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Edited by Meret Michel. Adapted from German by Katherine Price/ds