Receiving this PEN award for freedom of expression from prison may seem like a dark comedy, although knowledge of all the other writers who’ve been in jail provides me a little comfort.” I paid my mortgage through journalism and it was in journalism I met my wife, who’s now reading this to you. “From the time I was awarded a red ribbon in primary school, writing has rewarded me. Computers are forbidden here, as are typewriters,” wrote the author. “I realise now I haven’t used a pen in years.
In a letter sent from prison and read by his wife Dilek Dündar, who said he had now spent 50 days in prison, Can Dündar said that he had written his missive to the audience with a pen. “But when I think on my misfortunes, I feel lucky compared with the three Oxfam/Novib PEN awardees we celebrate tonight, two of whom are imprisoned, and one who was barred from travelling here,” said Chang, going on to read one of Asrat’s poems, The Scourge of War, to The Hague audience. Later, when she came to England, she “finally realised … that I’d always wanted to be a writer”, and she “became a writer with Wild Swans”. “But, even when I was exiled to the edge of the Himalayas, the desire to write never left me … when I was working as an electrician, a barefoot doctor or spreading muck on the fields I was always writing in my head, with an invisible pen, without being able to put pen to paper,” said the author.
Speaking at the awards ceremony, Chang said that when she was a child, “under the tyranny of Mao, all writers were persecuted”, and that “to be a writer was to engage in the most dangerous profession of all: writers were denounced, sent to the gulag, driven to suicide or executed”. Hazek, a former employee of the Library of Alexandria, spoke out about corruption related to the library and was arrested in December 2013, following a peaceful protest about the murder of Khaled Said. Dündar was arrested on 26 November last year and charged with “espionage” and other national security offences, said PEN, and is also on trial for alleged defamation against President Erdoğan. Asrat, said PEN, was arrested at home on 23 September 2001 and his situation is “still unclear”, although he is believed to be detained in the maximum security prison Eiraeiro. The prize goes to writers “who have fought courageously for freedom of expression in the face of great adversity and despite the risk to their own lives”.
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