Imprisoned Writers Day
PEN International has designated November 15 as Imprisoned Writers Day, honoring those around the world who have been locked up for writing truths that authoritarian regimes do not want the world to hear.
This year PEN highlights four writers, María Cristina Garrido Rodríguez in Cuba, sentenced to seven years in prison for participating in a peaceful protest in 2021; Iryna Danylovych, a Ukrainian held in a Russian prison for her reports on occupied Crimea; Go Sherab Gyatso, a Tibetan Buddhist for writings critical of the People’s Republic of China and their efforts to erase Tibetan culture; and Soulaiman Raissouni for his editorials written as editor in chief of a now defunct opposition newspaper in Morocco. All of these writers have reported either torture or mistreatment by the authorities during their terms of imprisonment. Their stories in detail are available here.
It is sobering to realize how powerful writing can be. So powerful that whole regimes, including superpowers, such as The People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation, lock up journalists and even fiction writers whose ideas those governments feel threaten their very legitimacy. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn famously spent years in prison; Primo Levi was imprisoned in Auschwitz for his anti-Nazi activities; Dostoyevsky was arrested and sent to prison for his anti-government writings; and the list goes on—Voltaire, Daniel Defoe, Syrian poet and blogger Tal Al-Mallouhi, South African anti-apartheid writer Breyten Breytenbach, the Iranian feminist Shahrnūsh Pārsīʹpūr…
As you can see, the list stretches back into the far reaches of history. And in some cases, it didn’t end with imprisonment. Socrates was put to death, poisoned with hemlock, for his supposedly subversive teachings to young people. Federico García Lorca was assassinated by fascists in Spain; filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini was abducted, tortured, and murdered in Italy, likely by right-wing extremists.
In the early days of our own republic, political speech, both spoken and written, was viewed as particularly potent. Patrick Henry’s “Give me liberty or give me death!” was taught in elementary school when I was a child. We were taught that Henry’s words were as important as any part of our country’s history.