The freedom to write

Every now and again I’m reminded of how lucky I am to be able to write what I want, more or less, about whatever interests me. That unfortunately isn’t the case for everyone across the globe.

I recently heard four writers speak in Brussels about their personal experiences in their native countries of Syria, Zimbabwe, Afghanistan and Serbia and why they have sought refuge in other nations.

Syrian poet Faraj Bayrakdar explained how we was sentenced to 15 years in prison for, as he put it, being against the Ba’ath principles of Freedom, Unity and Socialism. The irony of being put in prison for opposing freedom was not lost on him. As he said though, “the freedom within us is larger than the prison that holds us”.

After being released in 2000, he travelled regularly to Europe and always returned trouble-free to his homeland. The situation changed, however, while he was in Sweden. He heard how many writers and journalists had been arrested for signing the so-called Damascus Declaration, which called for Lebanon and Syria to set up embassies in each other’s countries. His friends back home warned him not to return as he would either be arrested or “an incident” would be arranged. “For the first in my life I felt that my life was in danger”, he said.

He still lives in Stockholm, writing poetry and speaking out in favour of freedom: the freedom of expression and the freedom to be silent.

Zimbabwe’s Chenjerai Hove read out two of his poems, written in English, about the death of Ken Saro-Wiwa, a writer and activist who was executed by the Nigerian government in 1995. Hove made the point that freedom after expression is just as crucial as being allowed to express oneself. As the authorities told him, there’s no problem in having the books published. The difficulties come afterwards, Hove said, giving as one example that the state might buy all his books and then throw them into a lake.

Afghanistan’s Kamran Mir Hazar said he had been detained several times in what he termed an “Afghan guantanamo” for writing articles about war crimes and corruption by high-ranking officials on his website kabulpress.org.

Dejan Anastasijevic, the first Serbian journalist to testify against Slobodan Milosevic at the Tribunal in The Hague, also spoke about Afghanistan. During the war in Afghanistan, the Arabic-language news network Al-Jazeera was blown up in the name of the “war on terror”, and there was no protest from journalists, Anastasijevic said. He warned of how the independence of journalists is being eroded and how the current financial crisis “will be used by enemies of the freedom of expression as a cover”, how the publications that survive will no longer be independent but be run by governments or banks.

“The fight for freedom is never over”, Anastasijevic said.

The writers were speaking at events organised by the Brussels international literature house Passa Porta, together with Shahrazad - Stories for Life, a place where writers persecuted and silenced in their own homelands can tell their stories, and PEN, a worldwide authors' association that stands up for free speech and opposes any form of censorship.