by: Alison Flood
Nine hundred writers around the world were harassed, imprisoned, murdered or
“disappeared” last year, according to PEN International. On Monday, the writers’
organisation has selected just five of them, from a teacher and poet currently
serving a 20-year prison sentence in Iran to a Paraguayan writer who has just
been sentenced to jail for allegedly plagiarising a novel, and has asked its
free members to stand in solidarity with their silenced colleagues.
Her lawyer, Mahnaz Parakand, has written in the introduction to a book of poetry by Sabet, published during her incarceration, that he first met her on a hot summer’s day, in the presence of two women guards, handcuffed to a companion. “It was obvious that the Bahá’í prisoners had been deprived of fresh air and daylight for a long time; their entire beings seemed thirsty for the energising heat and light of the sun. However, despite all their hardships, their will remained unbroken and they were determined to give up their lives, if necessary, for their beliefs,” Parakand, a member of the Centre for Human Rights Defenders, has written of his encounter with the married mother of two adult children.
Sabet began writing her poetry while incarcerated. “You end one of your poems saying that ‘You can’t see the sorrow after lights out,’ and that you therefore ‘long for the dark, total black-out.’ I hope, for your dear sake, that the end of your sorrow is near but not as that ‘total black-out’ you speak of: instead, as a resolution of freedom, as the free sunlight that is every person’s natural right, a right no one is entitled to take away,” Manguel writes to her.
Offering his solidarity to the poet, Manguel reminds her of the “vast and honoured company” of imprisoned writers of the past, from Boethius to Cervantes, telling her “that generations of readers to come will remember your name as they remember theirs, long after the names of your jailers have been swept off the memory of the earth”.
According to PEN International’s statistics for last year, they knew of 900 writers at risk in 2013. Of that total, 283 were either detained or already serving long-term prison sentences, 39 had received death threats and 33 were subsequently killed.
“Where we can they are being sent to the writers directly,” said PEN International spokesperson Sahar Halaimzai of the letters. “And in cases where this is not possible they will be sent to their friends and family.” PEN International is calling for the immediate and unconditional release of all five writers, and for the charges against them to be dropped.
“November 15 is a day of action and acknowledgment,” said Marian Botsford Fraser, chair of PEN International’s Writers in Prison Committee. “It is PEN’s way of saying to all of our 900 imprisoned, harassed, murdered and disappeared writers: you are not silenced. You are not forgotten. We stand with you and fight for you.”
Harnessing its greatest
asset – its authors – PEN is planning to publish an open letter to each of the
five imprisoned writers every day this week, in the run up to the 33rd annual
Day of the Imprisoned Writer on 15 November. It has begun the exercise with the
award-winning Argentina-born author Alberto Manguel’s open missive to Mahvash
Sabet, who has been detained in Iran since 2008 as one of a group of seven
Bahá’i Faith leaders. Her
sentence, said PEN, which is calling for her release, relates to her “faith
and activities related to running the affairs of the Bahá’í community in Iran”,
and she has received “appalling treatment and deprivations during pre-trial
detention”.
Her lawyer, Mahnaz Parakand, has written in the introduction to a book of poetry by Sabet, published during her incarceration, that he first met her on a hot summer’s day, in the presence of two women guards, handcuffed to a companion. “It was obvious that the Bahá’í prisoners had been deprived of fresh air and daylight for a long time; their entire beings seemed thirsty for the energising heat and light of the sun. However, despite all their hardships, their will remained unbroken and they were determined to give up their lives, if necessary, for their beliefs,” Parakand, a member of the Centre for Human Rights Defenders, has written of his encounter with the married mother of two adult children.
Sabet began writing her poetry while incarcerated. “You end one of your poems saying that ‘You can’t see the sorrow after lights out,’ and that you therefore ‘long for the dark, total black-out.’ I hope, for your dear sake, that the end of your sorrow is near but not as that ‘total black-out’ you speak of: instead, as a resolution of freedom, as the free sunlight that is every person’s natural right, a right no one is entitled to take away,” Manguel writes to her.
Offering his solidarity to the poet, Manguel reminds her of the “vast and honoured company” of imprisoned writers of the past, from Boethius to Cervantes, telling her “that generations of readers to come will remember your name as they remember theirs, long after the names of your jailers have been swept off the memory of the earth”.
According to PEN International’s statistics for last year, they knew of 900 writers at risk in 2013. Of that total, 283 were either detained or already serving long-term prison sentences, 39 had received death threats and 33 were subsequently killed.
On Tuesday, Life of Pi
author Yann Martel will release an open letter to Azimjon Askarov, a human
rights journalist from Kyrgyzstan’s Uzbek minority who has been sentenced to
life imprisonment. PEN
has said that the charges against him, of organising mass disorder and
complicity in the murder of a police officer, are politically motivated, to
prevent his reporting, and that he received an unfair trial, and was being
tortured and ill-treated in detention.
“Where we can they are being sent to the writers directly,” said PEN International spokesperson Sahar Halaimzai of the letters. “And in cases where this is not possible they will be sent to their friends and family.” PEN International is calling for the immediate and unconditional release of all five writers, and for the charges against them to be dropped.
Wednesday will see
Argentinian writer Luisa Valenzuela write to the Paraguayan author Nelson
Aguilera, who received a sentence of 30 months in prison on 4 November for
allegedly plagiarising a novel. Aguilera has been accused of plagiarising Maria
Eugenia Garay’s 2005 novel El túnel del tiempo (The Tunnel of Time) in his 2010
novel for children Karumbita: La patriota (Karumbita: The Patriot), but PEN says
that at least six independent experts have found the similarities between the
works “cannot
be described as plagiarism”.
Later in the week, open
letters will be sent to the Cameroonian poet Dieudonné Enoh Meyomesse, who is
serving what PEN calls a
politically motivated seven-year sentence, and who is in poor health, and to
Chinese journalist Gao Yu, who “disappeared” in April, and who remains detained
pending trial, her exact whereabouts unknown amid “serious
concerns for her well-being” from the writers’ organisation.
“November 15 is a day of action and acknowledgment,” said Marian Botsford Fraser, chair of PEN International’s Writers in Prison Committee. “It is PEN’s way of saying to all of our 900 imprisoned, harassed, murdered and disappeared writers: you are not silenced. You are not forgotten. We stand with you and fight for you.”
from: Guardian
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