Azerbaijan: Letter from Eynulla Fatullayev

Please find below a letter to English PEN from our Honorary Member Eynulla Fatullayev. Eynulla was unexpectedly released following a presidential amnesty on 26 May 2011 (for more details please click here.)

Huge thanks to everyone who has been involved in the many campaign actions on his behalf over the last few years – our support has clearly meant a great deal to him.

To: All members of PEN.

Dear friends,

Let me express my profound and sincere thanks for all your efforts to liberate me from torture-chamber of the Azerbaijani authoritarianism. With a feeling of profound gratitude I’d like to address my words to writer Eva Hoffman, poetess Alev Adil who visited my parents while I was imprisoned. When I learned about this act of self-sacrifice and care for me, I felt a new burst of energy and tremendous pride. This news impressed me greatly. Believe me, while in prison the people forget tears and smile. However, it is your attention and endeavours to protect my rights that made me smile very often.

With tender feelings and profound respect I appeal to Lisa Appignanesi, Gillian Slovo, Robert Sharp and other members of your, to be precise, our Club that launched a massive campaign in my defence.

I’ve repeatedly declared even in prison I felt absolute liberty. It is the lack of distance and time in prison that adds a feeling of absolute liberty. It is the man who used to live within the framework of well-defined coordinates that is discouraged and frightened. Fortunately, I’m not one of those. To my thinking, self-esteemed people only are in position to feel keenly the strength and grandeur of absolute liberty. For the liberty is a principal pillar on which the human pride rests. The pride is formed over centuries, while it is lost in a twinkling. The point is about the struggle for preservation of liberty and pride.

I’m prone to think that the present-day task of the literature, likewise journalism, is to actualize the contemporary society. Idle talk that the genuine literature does not have to deal with humdrum existence nor solve urgent problems, live today’s passions and look for way into the future, -all these are to liking of those incapable of doing it.

I’d like to once again thank you all for what you have done for me. I believe that we are steadily moving toward the summit. But this is not labour of Sisyphus, we must go on, be strong though we risk falling down, yet, we must go on to reach the summit. The moment of the summit is the moment of truth.

Yours sincerely,

Journalist Eynulla Fatullayev