“I want to be the voice of people like me because they don’t have the opportunity to

tell the world what happened to them.” Yahya Ekhou (29) is an asylum seeker living in Germany. He left home in Mauritania because “the people and the Imams in Mauritania issued a Fatwa” after he wrote a Facebook post suggesting God does not exist. “It’s not easy when some people hate you,” he says. “They demanded your death. It’s something you can’t imagine.” He recalls leaving Mauritania: “I feel I’m free.” But, he says, it’s “hard when you know this last time I will be in my country, this last time I will see my mother… You have to pay for your freedom.” He’s also paid a physical price for expressing his atheism, enduring beatings from those who consider him “evil.” But, Yahya says, “the violence makes you strong.” He wants to continue fighting for the right to express himself: “You attack me because my ideas, maybe you can kill me, but you can’t kill my ideas.” Full Story