Fund to rescue threatened scholars worldwide expanding with $10 M gift

[Khephra]

(Some good news for once!)


Fund to rescue threatened scholars worldwide expanding with $10 million gift

By Warren P. Strobel

Knight Ridder Newspapers



WASHINGTON - The professor in the central African nation of Cameroon had been under scrutiny for years. But when his article criticizing the government for thwarting democracy became hugely popular, the real threats began.


The professor says he was summoned to secret police headquarters and forced to read transcripts of his lectures, made by agents who'd posed as students. In a jail cell, he was slapped around and forced to put a pile of excrement into a bucket with his bare hands.


The final straw came when he returned from an overseas trip. Government agents had tricked a relative into accepting a tear gas canister, part of a setup to arrest the scholar and charge him with illegally possessing arms, he says. They stormed the house, missing him only because his flight was delayed.


He fled to the United States, saved in part by the Scholar Rescue Fund, a network that helps find research posts for threatened academics worldwide. The 2-year-old fund, which has helped support more than 50 scholars from 27 countries, is about to be transformed into a more permanent endeavor.

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/9692850.htm