They came at four in the morning, the way they always do. The lawyer who took my case said it would be quick. It has been three years. What HuMENA does — keeping the file, sending the letters, naming the silence — is what tells my mother I am still on a record somewhere.

Exile is not safety. The same hands that closed our office can reach into Brussels, into Paris, into the small flat where I write at night. Having an organisation that names transnational repression as transnational repression — that does not pretend the threat ended at the border — is the difference between feeling alone and being on a record.

I have stood in courtrooms where the prosecutor had no evidence, only a printout of a Facebook post. I have watched defenders sentenced for sitting in a circle. The work HuMENA carries — the legal briefings, the joint statements, the letters to the embassies — is not abstract. It moves a name from invisible to citable.