PEN Haiti to host International Free the Word! Festival, April 20th – 22nd 2012

 

 

 

 

“The writers in Haiti… are increasingly convinced of the necessity to build, nurture and share a critical understanding. In order to better communicate among Haitians. To make ourselves better understood in the world”

 

Jean-Euphèle Milcé, President, PEN Haiti

 

PEN Haiti is hosting its first international Free the Word! Festival from April 20th- 22nd, with a special series of events taking place in the Institute Français (Port-au-Prince) and the Alliance Française (Gonaïves).

 

Free the Word!, PEN International’s network of literary festivals around the world, celebrates the best of contemporary literature and aims to introduce readers to both established and emerging writers. Each festival is rooted in its local culture, but is international in outlook, and seeks to bring together writers from across cultures to share experiences and explore ideas.

 

The programme of events for Free the Word! Haiti will include discussions on issues such as freedom of expression in times of crises (‘La Libre Expression en Temps de Crise’), women’s writing and free speech (‘Paroles de Femmes, Paroles Libres’) and an examination of the work of PEN International in promoting freedom of expression (‘L’engagement du PEN International pour la liberté d’expression’).

 

The festival will also pay homage to murdered Haitian writer Jacques Stephen Alexis (pictured), who was disappeared in April 1966. A leading writer and political activist, Alexis, who was born on 22 April 1922, is today best remembered for his novel Compére Général Soleil (1955), Les Arbres Musiciens (1957) and L’Espace d’un Cillement (1959). For more information about Jacques Stephen Alexis, click here.

 

The festival, which will include a host of Haitian and international writers – including Jean-Euphèle Milcé, Georges Castera, Emmelie Prophète, Evelyne Trouilot, and Roger Bonnair-Agard – is a testament to the resilience and determination of Haitian PEN, whose founder Georges Anglade (pictured here) was amongst those killed in the devastating earthquake which struck the country in January 2010.

 

PEN International will be offering live updates from the festival on our website and via facebook and twitter, using the hashtag #HaitiFreeTheWord.

 

Click here to view the full Programme of Events

 

Click here for an introduction to the festival from PEN Haiti President Jean-Euphèle Milcé, including a history of the Haitian PEN Centre (In French).

 

Click here for a moving Tribute to Georges Anglade from PEN International Vice-President Joanne Leedom-Ackerman.

 

The festival is being organised by PEN Haiti, in collaboration with the American PEN Centre and PEN International. For more information on the festival please contact Paul Finegan at paul.finegan@pen-international.org

 

Haiti Free the Word! has been generously supported by -

 

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

 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 CzechRepublic, 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 Arthur Miller, Harold Pinter, Tom Stoppard, Günter Grass 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 inPragueto 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.

 

Laura McVeigh

Executive Director

PEN International

PEN calls for press freedom at Occupy Sites

Joint statement released with PEN American Center:

New York City, November 15, 2011—PEN American Center and PEN International today condemned restrictions on press coverage of police crackdowns on Occupy Wall Street demonstrations in New York and elsewhere, calling the arrests of journalists, the grounding of media helicopters, and the restrictions on access to the Occupy sites “an obvious abridgement of the First Amendment right of all Americans to monitor official actions that clearly carry their own First Amendment concerns.”
“Whatever the arguments for clearing and cleaning the park, denying the rest of us the opportunity to witness the police action through the independent reporting of a free media simply reinforces the suspicion that the city government is seeking to hide from democratic scrutiny,” said Kwame Anthony Appiah, president of PEN American Center. “It is foolish and dangerous to undermine the faith of ordinary citizens in the impartiality of the police. It is also wrong to deny media access because it runs entirely against the spirit of the First Amendment guarantees that are at the heart of PEN’s mission.”
Early Tuesday morning, police barred reporters from news outlets including CNBC, NBC, CBS, The Wall Street Journal, and Reuters from covering the clearing of Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan, which has been occupied by protesters for almost two months. Freelancers seemed to be particularly at risk; Julie Walker, who is reporting on the protests for NPR, was arrested and released late Tuesday morning, and Jared Malsin, a freelancer for the New York Times, was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct. Others were forcefully removed from the park or handled roughly by police.
Journalists covering Occupy Wall Street protests have been arrested before, but this seems to be the first time the Mayor Michael Bloomberg ordered what amounts to a blockade of the press, saying that it was for their own protection. This morning’s actions mirror the arrests and media blackouts at other Occupy sites around the country, including Milwaukee, Nashville, and Oakland, where a cameraman was attacked and left with a concussion.
“At a time when freedom of expression is under threat worldwide, this denial of media access and restriction on press coverage is shameful and undemocratic,” said Laura McVeigh, executive director of PEN International. “It sends the wrong signal to the American people and to the rest of the world.”
PEN American Center is the largest of the 145 centers of PEN International, the world’s oldest human rights organization and the oldest international literary organization. The Freedom to Write Program of PEN American Center works to protect the freedom of the written word wherever it is imperiled. It defends writers and journalists from all over the world who are imprisoned, threatened, persecuted, or attacked in the course of carrying out their profession. For more information on PEN’s work, please visit www.pen.org

Day of the Imprisoned Writer – November 15

Day of the Imprisoned Writer 2011

15 November 2011 marks PEN International’s Day of the Imprisoned Writer.

The Day of the Imprisoned Writer is an annual, international day intended to recognize and support writers who resist repression of the basic human right to freedom of expression and who stand up to attacks made against their right to impart information.

 

This year we will focus on a number of specific cases from around the world that represent the type of threats and attacks faced by our colleagues. These are:

• Reeyot Alemu (Ethiopia): political columnist who has been held incommunicado and without charge since her arrest on 21st of June 2011. Ms. Alemu is believed to be detained under Ethiopia’s sweeping 2009 antiterrorism law.

• Susana Chavez (Mexico): poet and human rights activist who was murdered on 6 January 2011 in an attack many have claimed was the result of her writing and activism.

• Tashi Rabten (Tibet): poet and essayist, convicted of inciting separatism for a collection of political articles he wrote concerning the suppression of the March 2008 protests in Lhasa.

• Abdul-Jalil Al-Singace (Bahrain): activist and online blogger who has been sentenced to life imprisonment for publicising the deteriorating human rights situation in his home country.

• Nadim Sener and Ahmet Shik (Turkey): journalists who have been detained for writing books and articles disclosing police and other high level links to individuals arrested in the Ergenekon case under which over 200 people are accused of being involved in coup plots.

We will also be using the day to commemorate the 33 writers and journalists killed since 15 November 2010.