UTV
April 9 2010

‘You are free to write, others have not been so lucky’

For 50 years PEN’s Writers in Prison Committee has been campaining on
behalf of writers who have been imprisoned for speaking their minds

Friday, 09 April 2010
Tags: International News

"You’re free to write," read the email that stood out from the others
in my inbox. I clicked on the message. Its’ words struck home: "Others
have not been so lucky".

The email was an invitation to participate in a project to mark 50
years of the International PEN Writers in Prison Committee.

Choosing to participate caused me to stop and think, properly for the
first time, about the writing freedom I take for granted every single
day.

Since 1960, the PEN Writers in Prison Committee has been campaigning
for writers who have been threatened, suppressed or imprisoned for
their work. The most famous include Wole Soyinka, Vaclav Havel and
Salman Rushdie, who have all had to weigh their words in fear.

The committee was formed at a PEN meeting in Rio De Janeiro, after
researchers passed round a list of 56 writers imprisoned in Albania,
Czechoslavakia, Hungary and Romania.

PEN centres began to spring up in countries where writers had been
imprisoned because they spoke or wrote their minds. Fifty years on,
there are more than 70 centres worldwide and together they support
around 900 persecuted writers, editors and journalists each year.

To mark 50 years of defending freedom of expression, PEN’s Writers in
Prison Committee is running a year-long campaign ` Because Writers
Speak Their Minds.

One strand of this campaign highlights the cases of 50 writers PEN has
campaigned on behalf of in the 50 years that the committee has
operated. Each of the oppressed writers, who include Mamadali
Makhmudov from Uzbekistan, poet Angel Cuadra from Cuba and Bangladeshi
novelist, poet and journalist Taslima Nasrin, has been paired with a
writer from writing group 26, of which I am now a member.

The task? Write 50 words, no more, no less, inspired by the life and
work of the writer.

These pieces are being posted each day online in the run up to, and
during, the Free the Word! Festival, held 14-18 April.

Not all of the campaigned-for writers are still alive. The writer I
wrote about was Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant d****. d**** was
shot dead in January 2007 outside his newspaper Agos, a bilingual
Armenian-Turkish newspaper.

He was among a number of high profile writers charged under Article
301 of the Penal Code, accused of "insulting Turkishness" in his
writings. He had received numerous death threats.

What can you say in 50 words? Not much. But hopefully 50 words a day
for 50 days, will highlight freedom taken for granted, and freedom
lost.

¢ Some of the writers that the committee has supported over the years
will be celebrated at the 50th anniversary of PEN’s Writers in Prison
Committee at the London School of Economics on Friday, 16 April

¢ Follow 26:50 at 26-50.tumblr.com

¢ Free The Word festival blog: freetheblog.typepad.com

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