Persecuted journalist Kambiz Roustayi fled Iran for the Netherlands ten years ago. But the authorities allowed his request for asylum to drag endlessly through the courts. In this legal no-man’s-land, he was forbidden to work yet offered no form of welfare. In short: he was left destitute in one the world’s wealthiest nations.

Last Wednesday, Kambiz chose to end his life in a ball of flames on the Dam, Amsterdam’s most famous square. A few days later, people came to lay flowers at the place where he lay dying. How sad and how ironic that in death he was treated with all the love and dignity that was so long denied him in life.

© www.anniewrightphotography.com