News » Melbourne PEN

PEN Statement on Death Threat to Salman Rushdie

Jan 212012

PEN International is appalled to learn that the author Salman Rushdie has once again been the subject of a death threat; we condemn this criminal attempt to silence an international exponent of free speech.

Rushdie was warned of the threat to his life shortly before he was due to attend the Jaipur Literary Festival, Asia’s largest event of its kind. The author had intended to discuss one of his earlier novels, the Booker-prize winning Midnight’s Children. The threat caused Rushdie to withdraw from the festival.

A brief statement was issued by the writer explaining that he had been warned by intelligence sources that members of Mumbai’s criminal underworld had put a price on his head. He said that he was unwilling to risk appearing at the festival, where there would be some risk to his family and other festival attendees.

Rushdie was the victim of an infamous attack on free speech over the publication of his book The Satanic Verses (1988), when the Ayatollah Ruohollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for Rushdie’s death, forcing him to remain in hiding for many years.

Inaugural Asia Pacific Poetry Festival in Vietnam from 2 February

Jan 192012

Nearly 80 poets from throughout the world will gather in Viet Nam next month to take part in the first Asia Pacific Poetry Festival.
The opening ceremony of the five-day festival will be held in Ha Long City on February 2nd, in the northern province of Quang Ninh, which was recently recognised as one of the world’s natural wonders.
“We decided to hold the First Asia Pacific Poetry Festival in Quang Ninh because the province is a traditional land of poetry as well as for its natural beauty,” said Nguyen Quang Thieu, Vice-chairman of the Viet Nam Writers Association (VWA).
During the event, the poets from 27 countries and regions will meet and exchange ideas with Vietnamese poets and readers.
Participants will visit Thay Pagoda in Ha Noi where they will also listen to a Zen poem recital read by the Buddhist monks and poets.
Prominent and globally acclaimed poets are scheduled to attend the festival, including Canadian Susan Blanshard, a member of International Pen Women Writers’ Committee; Chinese Tian Xiao Hua, a Vietnamese literature researcher and translator; Israeli Naim Araidi, a founder of International Poetry Festival in Maghar; and Japanese Ban’Ya Natshuishi, director of the Modern Haiku Association.
Also set to attend are Kim Jung-hwan and Ahn Kyung-hwan of South Korea, who are well known in Viet Nam for their contributions to promoting literature exchange between the two countries.
Kim was one of the first Korean poets to establish relations with the VWA. He also translates Vietnamese poems into Korean. Ahn translated the popular poems Prison in Diary by Ho Chi Minh and General Vo Nguyen Giap’s Unforgettable Months and Years for the South Korean readers.
Poets from Australia, the US, Cambodia, Indonesia, Thailand and Singapore are set to attend the festival with their foreign counterparts and about 40 Vietnamese poets. Guest and host will be invited to events for the upcoming Vietnamese Poetry Day which falls on the 15th day of the first lunar month.
VietNamNet/Viet Nam News

At least 4 writers released in large scale amnesty in Myanmar

Jan 172012

International PEN warmly welcomes the positive developments in Burma that has led to the releases of poets, writers and journalists Win Maw, Nay Phone Latt, Zaw Thet Htwe and U Zeya in recent days, in addition to the 2011 release of Zarganar and the lifting of restrictions on Aung San Suu Kyi. However it remains deeply concerned for the continuing plight of at least five writers who remain detained in Myanmar, and continues to call for the immediate and unconditional release of all those who remain detained in Myanmar in violation of Article 19 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, protecting the right to freedom of expression.

At least four writers are now confirmed to have been freed in a presidential amnesty announced on 12 January 2011 which according to Burmese state media included 651 prisoners. However, at least five writers are believed to be amongst an estimated one thousand political prisoners who remain detained for their peaceful dissident activities and writings. They include Aung Than, Zeya Aung, Maung Maung Oo and Sein Hlaing who were sentenced to between 7 and 19 yrs in prison for the publication of an ‘anti-government’ book of poems entitled Dawn Mann (The Fighting Spirit of the Peacock), and editor Nyi Nyi Tun who is serving a thirteen sentence for his critical reporting.

Tracey Rigney at Melbourne PEN International Women’s Day Event, 18 March

Jan 112012

Every year, the Melbourne Centre of PEN International celebrates International Women’s Day. This year, Tracey Rigney of the Wotjobaluk and Ngarrindjeri peoples, a playwright (Belonging) and film-maker (Endangered) who writes with an idiosyncratic voice, surefooted storytelling, and humour that shakes out complexities of identity and culture will discuss her work. Excerpts from her play Slow Awakening will be read.

3pm Sunday 18 March 2012

Wheeler Centre

Free

Booking information coming soon.

PEN International deeply saddened by death of Václav Havel – a constant champion for freedom of expression

Dec 202011

Václav Havel, dissident playwright and poet, honorary president of Czech PEN and statesman, who died on 18 December 2011 aged 75, will be remembered by all at PEN for his remarkable contribution to literature and his outstanding commitment to freedom of expression.

“Václav Havel was the most courageous fighter for the freedom of speech. He trusted and believed in the ‘power of the powerless’ in the most democratic sense. So many spiritual seeds were planted by him all over the world. He changed the paradigm of global society with his fight for democracy and freedom of speech.” – International Secretary of PEN International, Hori Takeaki

In 1994, Václav Havel, then President of the Czech Republic, addressed the Prague World Congress of PEN International saying:

“Let us admit that most of us writers feel an essential aversion to politics. By taking such a position, however, we accept the perverted principle of specialization, according to which some are paid to write about the horrors of the world and human responsibility and others to deal with those horrors and bear the human responsibility for them.”

Marian Botsford Fraser, Chair of the Writers in Prison Committee, was at the Congress in Prague and recalls an extraordinary meeting attended by writers such as Ronald Harwood, Arthur Miller, Tom Stoppard and Havel himself. She remembers his call to PEN members to do “something less conspicuous…create…if I may use the word, a somewhat conspiratorial mafia whose aim is not just to write marvellous books or occasional manifestos, but to have an impact on politics and its human perceptions in a spirit of solidarity…to help open its eyes.”

Havel’s spirit of solidarity remained constant. One bitterly cold day in the first week of January, 2010, Václav Havel, and two of his fellow dissidents walked down a snow-edged street in Prague to deliver a letter to the Chinese Ambassador. Surrounded by a crowd of journalists and photographers, they rang the bell several times. No one came to the door, so they left their letter in the letterbox.

The letter from Havel and his friends, co-signatories of Charter 77, requested a fair and open trial for the Chinese writer Liu Xiaobo, sentenced on December 25, 2009 to 11 years for being the co-author of Charter 08. It said, “…We are convinced that this trial and harsh sentence meted out to a …prominent citizen of your country merely for thinking and speaking critically about various political and social issues was chiefly meant as a stern warning to others not to follow his path.”

Vaclav Havel himself chose, despite threats and imprisonment, to speak out, to take a path of conscience and commitment to freedom of speech. He was an inspirational and remarkable man; his legacy – and spirit of solidarity – is a gift to us all.

Our thoughts are with his wife Dagmar, all his friends and family and with our colleagues in Czech PEN at this time.

Call for papers – Australasian Association for Literature 2012 Conference: Literature & Censorship

Dec 142011

The Australasian Association for Literature is calling for papers for its 2012 conference addressing the long and traumatic relationship of literature and censorship.

Dates: 10-12 July 2012

Venue: University of New South Wales Canberra, Australian Defence Force Academy, Northcott Drive, Campbell, Canberra, ACT.

Keynote speaker: Peter McDonald (Oxford University)

Literature and censorship have been conceived as long-time adversaries, each opposed to the precepts of the other. This conference seeks to understand the degree to which they have been dialectical terms, rather, each producing the other, coeval and mutually constitutive. In 1994, Michael Holquist declared “To be for or against censorship as such is to assume a freedom no-one has. Censorship is. One can only discriminate among its more or less repressive effects.” Articulating what was then a new poststructuralist take on censorship, Holquist posited it as not only inescapable but definitive; in fact foundational to speech itself.

After the opening of the USSR’s spekstrahn, the enormous collection of literature forbidden under the Soviets, containing more than one million items, this push to redefine censorship so expansively has encountered cogent criticism. German scholars describing the centralised control of East German print publication, for example, have wanted to insist on the substantive difference of pre-publication state censorship from such mundane forms of speech regulation in democracies. Work on South African apartheid censorship and the operations of censorship in colonial countries is also demonstrating its formative role in the institutional structures of literature beyond the metropole. Is literature ever without censorship? Does censorship need the literary? In a globalising era for culture, does censorship represent the final (failed) version of national control?

Offers for papers considering all aspects of literature and censorship are welcomed, but could address:

Censorship and colonialism
Comparative national censorships
Obscenity and empire
Literary sedition
Beyond the literary: The censorship of popular and pulp titles
Censorship histories of the book
Publishing, library and self-censorship
Literature, censorship and the law
Blasphemy, religion and literary censorship
Obscenity and the literary regulation of sexuality
The limits of expression and the definition of offence
Censorship and translation
Political censorship “post-ideology”
Censorship after the book

Please submit titles and abstracts for proposed papers by Friday February 24, 2012 to Shirley Ramsay. More information about the conference can be obtained from conference organiser Nicole Moore.

2011 prison census: 179 journalists jailed worldwide

Dec 132011

The Committee to Protect Journalists has posted its 2011 census.

Imprisonments jump worldwide, and Iran is worst

Stark regional differences are seen as jailings grow significantly in the Middle East and North Africa. Dozens of journalists are held without charge, many in secret prisons.

For details of individual cases, click here.

Liu Xiaobo – Nobel Peace Prize winner, writer, former PEN president, prisoner. Take Action

Dec 092011

10 December 2011 (International Human Rights Day) marks the first anniversary of the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to our colleague Liu Xiaobo, former president of the Independent Chinese PEN Centre (ICPC). One year on, he and over thirty other writers remain in prison in China, and many more suffer ‘soft’ detention, surveillance, and censorship. PEN International demands their immediate and unconditional release, and calls upon its members to use this anniversary to publicise the deteriorating human rights climate in the People’s Republic of China and to express solidarity with their imprisoned colleagues.

Since China hosted the 2008 Beijing Olympics—games it had secured by pledging to the world to expand protections for the human rights of its citizens—the Chinese government has carried out successive crackdowns on its citizens’ right to freedom of expression, beginning with Liu Xiaobo’s detention on 8 December 2008. Liu was arrested for his role in publishing Charter 08, a document calling for political reform that he and 302 co-signers planned to release two days later, on International Human Rights Day. The document quickly garnered widespread support, and now has over 10,000 signatories from throughout China, many of whom have suffered reprisals.

When the Nobel announcement was made in mid-October 2010, restrictions were tightened further. Liu’s wife Liu Xia, a poet and photographer, was placed under strict house arrest at her home in Beijing, where she remains detained incommunicado and is denied any contact with the outside world. At the December 2010 Nobel Peace Prize award ceremony in Oslo, Liu Xiaobo’s medal and diploma were presented to an empty chair.

In February 2011, another wave of repression swept the country, targeting dissent thought to have been inspired by the revolutions in the Middle East. Police stepped up their harassment of human rights defenders and activists across the country in response to anonymous calls for ‘Jasmine Revolution’ protests. Many were briefly detained, harassed, summoned or place under house arrest, and a number of prominent PEN members in China were amongst those targeted. The level of surveillance many still face remains stifling.

For the past three years since Liu’s arrest PEN International has been involved in a sustained and ongoing campaign for his release and to promote the right to free expression in China. PEN stands firm in its resolve to secure the release of Liu Xiaobo and all writers who remain behind bars or silenced in China today, in flagrant violation of its own laws and the international treaties which it has ratified. Show your support by taking part in at least one of the following actions over the coming days.

TAKE ACTION

Join the online Empty Chair campaign led by the Berlin-Hohenschönhausen Memorial association by placing an empty chair for Liu Xiaobo in front of the Chinese embassy in your country, or in your street, office, library or workplace on 10 December 2011 at 13.18pm. Download a photo to place on your chair. Take a photo of your chair and upload it onto Facebook

Marian Botsford Fraser testifies to the Congressional-Executive Commission on China

Dec 092011

On Tuesday 6 December 2011, the Congressional-Executive Commission on China held a hearing in Washington D.C. on ‘One Year After the Nobel Peace Prize Award to Liu Xiaobo: Conditions for Political Prisoners and Prospects for Political Reform’.

As part of a PEN delegation who visited Beijing in July 2011, Marian Botsford Fraser, PEN International Writers in Prison Committee Chair, testifies to the stark climate for free expression in China and welcomes the strong denunciations of Liu’s imprisonment from a number of distinguished organizations and bodies, including the Commission on China and the United Nations. She asserts:

‘PEN has been doing everything we can to win Liu Xiaobo’s immediate and unconditional release from Jinzhou Prison in Liaoning Province, and secure the right of all Chinese citizens, our writer colleagues included, to express themselves freely without fear of censorship, imprisonment, or harassment. PEN centers around the world have raised Liu’s case with their own governments, urging them to join the international condemnation of this clear human rights violation. Our members have brought his plight and his voice to prominence and into the public eye through readings, rallies, articles, letters, petitions, and events…’

She also bears witness to the courage displayed by many Chinese writers and dissidents:

‘New forms of expression are being found to express bold new ideas throughout the country, despite the government’s heavy hand.’

Watch the hearing here.

Read the full text of Marian’s testimony here.

Melbourne PEN honorary member Seedy Bojang publishes new book

Nov 292011

Gambian journalist and author, and honorary member of Melbourne PEN, Seedy Bojang has published a book that portrays the blows to media freedom and democracy on the African continent. Read more about the book here.

Report on PEN International Day of the Dead activities

Nov 262011

On 2 November 2011 PEN International launched its Day of the Dead campaign commemorating the Mexican writers and print journalists who have been murdered, or who have disappeared, as a result of their work. PEN called on the Mexican authorities to bring to justice those responsible for these crimes, and to bring to an end the climate of impunity in which these attacks and murders take place.

As part of the campaign, writers and PEN members took part in traditional Day of the Dead activities, including the building of personalised, ornate altars. These altars were displayed alongside photographs of the dead and missing journalists during the public readings, vigils, and conferences that were organized by individual centres.

For more information click here.

Reminder: Melbourne PEN card signing for writers in prison 28 November

Nov 232011

Each year International PEN organises a list of imprisoned writers for people to send cards to. Apparently it’s enormously encouraging for people to receive these cards from all around the world. Members of Melbourne PEN and friends will be gathering at the North Fitzroy Star Hotel to write messages of support at 8.30 on Monday 28 November. Meals can be purchased from the bar, and many people will be arriving early to eat or to participate in the AGM, which starts at 7.30pm.

If you are intending to join us and haven’t yet let us know, please rsvp.

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