Posted
March 8th, 2010
by
8 March 2010 – International Women’s Day
2010 marks the 50th Anniversary of the Writers in Prison Committee (WiPC) of International PEN, which has since 1960 helped many hundreds, if not thousands, of writers attacked for expressing their ideas and speaking their minds. Throughout the year PEN members will be celebrating the courage of these writers and the work of the Committee. Central to the campaign are 50 emblematic cases of writers for whom PEN has campaigned in the past half century. Among them are fourteen women who have suffered imprisonment and even death for their writings. To read more about the campaign go to: Because Writers Speak Their Minds – 50 Years of Defending Freedom of Expression
Today, 8 March 2010, to mark International Women’s Day, the WiPC celebrates and commemorates all women writers, past and present, who have suffered arrest, attack and even murder for having spoken out.
Among the first cases worked on by PEN’s WiPC was that of Musine Kokalari, who, by the time the Committee was established in 1960, had already been imprisoned for 14 years. She was the first woman writer to be published in Albanian but fell foul of the authorities in 1946 and was sentenced to 20 years in prison. She was released into a job as a street sweeper in 1964 and died in 1983. All her work had been destroyed and PEN hopes to be able during this anniversary year to publish a piece for the first time in over 60 years.
Women’s rights activists have found themselves at the forefront of the struggle for free expression. One of those is Nawal El-Saadawi, known internationally for her feminist writings and an outspoken critic of the Egyptian government. Saadawi was imprisoned between 1981 and 1983 and has over the years since received death threats, had her books banned and harassed by the authorities. Less well known but nonetheless influential, was Alaíde de Foppa de Solórzano a leading Guatemalan writer and activist who ran a weekly feminist radio programme in the late 1970s which, among other issues, highlighted the oppression of Mayan women. She was among the 45,000 people who disappeared during the internal armed conflict in Guatemala in the 70s and 80s. She was last seen in December 1980, 30 years ago.
Another woman writer who was among the thousands who disappeared in the Americas during the same period was Alicia Partnoy. She, however, survived her ordeal and returned after six months in prison where she was beaten and tortured, to tell her story. She now lives in the USA.
Nien Cheng also wrote a searing account of her own imprisonment in China in Life and Death in Shanghai. In 1966 Cheng was accused of being a spy for the UK and incarcerated for six and a half years. During this time she was subjected to interrogation, torture and solitary confinement. In October 1978 government officials apologised for Nien Cheng’s wrongful arrest and imprisonment. In 1980 she left China the USA. She died in 2009 aged 93.
In the Americas today, outside of Cuba, there are few countries that imprison writers, but since the 1990s there has been an alarming and consistent pattern of murders, particularly of journalists who disclose corruption. Today Lydia Cacho, a Mexican journalist and campaigner against child sex abuse, lives under constant threat. She was briefly detained in 2005 and although she was eventually acquitted of defamation of a businessman she implicated as being involved in child pornography rings, the threats continue.
In the 70s and 80s, as today, women in Iran found themselves the target of oppression. Shahrnush Parsipour has had the dubious honour of being imprisoned both under the Shah in the mid 1970s, and by the Revolutionary Guard in the early 1980s. Parsipour, like many other writers who survive prison, find themselves in exile. Poet Maria Elena Cruz Varela left Cuba in 1994 after two years in prison and now lives in Spain. Martha Kumsa, an Ethiopian journalist and Oromo rights activist is now in Canada after nine years imprisonment without charge during which time she was subjected to physical abuse and torture by prison guards. The controversial Bangladesh author, Taslima Nasrin, who fled death threats and a trial for her “blasphemous” writings in 1994, remains unable to return to her home country and continues to write challenging articles for which she is still threatened. Sihem Bensedrine, a journalist and activist from Tunisia has suffered endless harassment, brief arrest and threat for over a decade, and now lives outside her country, returning as often as she can to maintain her work as an advocate and activist for democracy and human rights in Tunisia and the broader Arab world.
For decades, writers in the Soviet Union were sent in their thousands to gulags, prisons and psychiatric units. Among them was Irina Ratushinskaya, whose poetry smuggled from prison has become a standard text for the study of the literature of incarceration. She was freed in 1986 after four years hard labour and came to Britain. She has since been able to return to Russia. The fall of the Iron Curtain brought new dangers. Where in the past imprisonment had been used to silence critical voices, it is now the gun. Since 1992, 52 journalists have been killed in Russia, including nine women. In 2006, Anna Politkovskaya, a courageous journalist who covered all kinds of dangerous assignments, from Russian army human rights abuses in Chechnya, to local corruption, was herself assassinated
One the world’s longest serving political prisoners is the Burmese writer and opposition party leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, held under house arrest for 14 of the 21 years since she was first arrested in 1989. In February 2010 the Supreme Court in Burma rejected an appeal by Aung San Suu Kyi against an extension of her house arrest.
Women writers under attack today
Women continue to be imprisoned, threatened and killed for their writing today. Of the 900 writers and journalists who had suffered attacks recorded by the WiPC during 2009, 52 are women. Three of them are among the emblematic cases featured in PEN’s 50th Anniversary campaign: Lydia Cacho, Sihem Bensedrine and Aung San Suu Kyi. Here follows outlines of three others.
PEN’s annual Day of the Imprisoned Writer on 15 November 2009 featured Natalia Estemirova, a journalist and rights defender working for the acclaimed rights group, Memorial, in Chechnya, was abducted and murdered, shot in the head and chest in a nearby woodland, on her way to work in Grozny. Estemirova was a close colleague of Anna Politkovskaya, and the two women had collaborated in disclosing abuses.
Parvin Ardalan, a leading and award-winning Iranian writer, editor and women’s rights activist has been under threat since 1997. She has been repeatedly arrested, interrogated and harassed, summoned to court on numerous occasions and has been subject to travel restrictions and heavy surveillance. Ardalan left Iran for Sweden in September 2009, after being invited to give a talk by the Swedish feminist magazine Bang. If she is returned to Iran, the persecution against her would resume. Olaf Palme Award for Parvin Ardalan
Tran Khai Thanh Thuy, a Vietnamese novelist, poet, essayist and editor of the underground dissident magazine To Quoc (Fatherland), has been under heavy surveillance and harassment since September 2006 for her writings published online. She is currently serving three and a half years in prison, whilst her husband Do Ba Tan has been sentenced to two years under house arrest for ‘assault’, despite the fact that they themselves were the victims of the attack.
Recommended Actions
PEN members are encouraged to take action on behalf of the women writers who are under attack today on and following the 8 March 2010 International Women’s Day.
Just one letter of appeal or an article in a local newspaper may make a difference. Whatever you can do matters. As former writer in prison, Nguyen Chi Thien writes: Although in prison, I knew that many writers in the world read my poems and supported me. This gave me consolation and encouragement. I did not feel lonely. Even when I was alone in a dark cell I had more courage, more perseverance in order not to buckle under brutal tyranny.
Please show your support for women writers under attack on and following 8 March International Women’s Day by taking some or all the actions below
SENDING APPEALS
Please write appeals as follows:
Tunisia: Sihem Ben Sedrine
- Calling for an end to the harassment and threats against Sihem Bensedrine and other writers and journalists, and allowing their full rights to freedom of expression and association
Send to:
Minister of Justice and Human Rights
Lazhar Bououni
Ministry of Justice and Human Rights
31 Boulevard Bab Benat
1006 Tunis – La Kasbah
Tunisia
Fax: 216 71 568 106
Burma (Myanmar): Aung San Suu Kyi
- Expressing disappointment that Aung San Suu Kyi’s appeal against her continued imprisonment was turned down and that she continues to be detained;
- Calling for her immediate and unconditional release.
Send to:
Senior General Than Shwe
Chairman, State Peace and Development Council
c/o Ministry of Defence
Naypyitaw
Union of Myanmar
Mexico: Lydia Cacho
- Protesting the ongoing harassment of Lydia Cacho;
- Reminding the authorities of their obligation to protect her and other writers peacefully exercising their right to freedom of expression and to investigate any attacks against them.
Send to:
Lic. Felipe De Jesús Calderón Hinojosa
Presidente de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos
Residencia Oficial de los Pinos Casa Miguel Alemán, Col. San Miguel Chapultepec, C.P. 11850, DISTRITO FEDERAL, México
Fax: ( 52 55) 5093 4901/ 5277 2376
Email: felipe.calderon@presidencia.gob.mx
Russia: Natalia Estemirova
- Calling for a full and impartial investigation into Natalia Estemirova’s murder leading to her killers being brought to justice.
- Calling for the Russian government to take action towards an end to the murders of journalists.
Send to:
Mr Dmitry Medvedev
President of the Russian Federation
Kremlin
Moscow
Russia
Fax: 7 495 206 5173 / 206 6277
Email: president@gov.ru
Vietnam: Tran Khai Thanh Thuy
- Calling for her immediate and unconditional release.
Send to:
His Excellency Nguyen Tan Dung
Prime Minister
Government Office
1 Hoang Hoa Tham St.
Ba Dinh district, Ha Noi
Viet Nam
Fax: 8443 804 4130
Email: vpcp@chinhphu.vn
Please also send copies of your appeals to the Tunisian, Russian, Burmese, Vietnamese and Mexican Embassies in the UK as well as to your own government’s representatives in those countries.
For more advice on writing appeals, raising publicity and other actions on behalf of writers in prison, see Guide to Defending Writers Under Attack
Originally posted with the url: www.englishpen.org/writersinprison/bulletins/fiftyyearsofwomenwritersinprison/
