Posted
January 4th, 2011
by
This year is the 50th anniversary of the WiPC. The international WiPC committee was founded by novelist Storm Jameson from English PEN, and others, at the Rio de Janeiro congress 60 years ago, and Rosamond Lehmann became the first chair of English PEN’s WiPC. It has grown immensely – like the mustard seed, into a tree with many branches. There are over 60 WiPCs in PEN centres around the world. It is a time to celebrate and commemorate 50 years of solidarity and struggle of the WiPC; I want to thank our friends at Index on Censorship, Jo Glanville and Natasha Schmidt with whom we are collaborating on a special issue of Index’s magazine, Beyond Bars, to be launched on 16 December at Free Word Centre. There are great contributors, such as Margaret Atwood and William Boyd. Do come along, also do buy one of our 50th Birthday mugs and take a free bookmark. The design on the mugs is inspired by the marks made by prisoners on the walls of their cells – 50 marks for 50 years.
From Africa we have Philo Ikonya, President of Kenyan PEN, coming to speak at the launch. Philo is in exile in Norway, with charges against her still outstanding after her exposé of alleged corruption in the Kenyan government. I am delighted to announce that we have just heard that the British Embassy in Oslo has granted Philo her visa.
Our anniversary has been marked by a number of 50th anniversary events, in Paris at the Shakespeare & Co Literary Festival, where Chip Martin and I talked about the WiPC, at the Richmond Literary Festival where Moris Farhi made a moving speech and the King’s College London PEN centre performed extracts from ‘Another Sky’ on the Day of the Imprisoned Writer. And just recently Maureen Freely, Jo Glanville, Natasha Schmidt and I spoke to an audience of students at Warwick University. This is part of English PEN’s aim to take the PEN message to young people, to the regions – even across the Channel.
2010 has been a year of contrasts, of highs and lows. There has been much to celebrate this year, in particular the release of Aung San Suu Kyi in November, and in Cuba the release of 15 journalists imprisoned since the Black Spring of 2003. On the other hand, however, the theme of the recent PEN congress at Tokyo was the aggression of autocratic governments who, as they flex their economic muscles, defy calls for Human Rights.
Witness China, boycotting the award ceremony for Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo, dissident writer and former president of the Independent Chinese PEN Centre, now imprisoned for leading the democracy movement in China and signing Charter 08 calling for free expression in his country. Neither Liu Xiabo nor his wife will be allowed to attend the ceremony. Instead he will be represented by an empty chair, the first time this has happened since the Nazis refused to allow an imprisoned German author to accept his award in 1936.
Witness Russia, where President Putin is triumphant after the FIFA vote. There are even suggestions that The Sunday Times and Panorama were wrong to publicise alleged corruption in FIFA, since this may have cost England her bid for the Word Cup. But a free press can never censor the truth.
These are dark days for democracy; the need is greater than ever for English PEN to stand by the principles of its historic charter, to be a beacon of freedom; to stand shoulder to shoulder with writers in prison, writers murdered with impunity, persecuted – and tortured.
I give you only one example: Lydia Cacho, Mexican writer and winner of this year’s PEN/Pinter prize for a writer of courage in the international category. She was not able to come to London to receive her prize because she was in hospital suffering from the after effects of torture. PEN could not even announce her illness for fear that she would be kidnapped from hospital; Lydia is even now receiving death threats for her revelations about sex trafficking.
This is why we at PEN do this work: because we are safe and they are not. Because they are in prison and we are not, and we are humbled by their courage.
It is also why at the Tokyo Congress Jonathan Heawood and I set the wheels in motion to form a new European PEN network of centres who want to collaborate in defending writers under threat. The response has been very encouraging. France, Germany, and many other countries have responded, and we plan to meet in Brussels in March 2011 to discuss how we can support cases of imprisoned writers at Strasbourg.
I am also thrilled that the WiPC proposal for a permanent memorial in London to the imprisoned writer looks as if it may come to fruition with the generous agreement of sculptor Anthony Gormley who has proposed a sculpture of the empty chair. It is hoped this will be sited at the British Library. The chair is a powerful symbol of the writer as Witness, as prisoner – as outcast. It reminds me that on Aung San Suu Kyi’s 64th birthday earlier this year her photograph was displayed on the placards at an English PEN demonstration in London and on the very same day the same photograph stood on the empty chair in Paris as we talked about our Campaign for Burmese Writers.
Of course, none of the WiPC’s achievements would have been possible without the vision and common purpose which distinguishes the PEN team; I want to pay tribute to Lisa and Jonathan’s dynamic leadership and their constant belief in our international work. In particular I want to thank the wonderful WiPC committee for their support, which I so greatly value and appreciate. Without Neil McKenna, Ania Corless, Naomi May, Melissa Benn, Trevor Mostyn, Eva Hoffman, Moris Farhi, Salil Tripathi, Val Warner, and so many others who gave their time, energy, skills and loyalty, on missions, at demos, signing petitions, writing to prisoners, meeting ambassadors…I could go on and on…None of this would have happened. It has been a privilege and a pleasure to work with them. I also want to thank our fantastic team in the office, the irreplaceable Rob and Cat. Finally, it gives me great pleasure to hand the torch over to the new chair, Salil Tripathi. It could not be in better hands.
Carole Seymour-Jones
6 December 2010
If you are interested in becoming more involved with the work of the Writers in Prison Committee please contact cat@englishpen.org
Originally posted with the url: www.englishpen.org/writersinprison/bulletins/caroleseymour-jonesfarewellspeechdecember2010/
