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- Custom Article Title: Vaclav Havel and Nobel Laureates Call for the Release of Imprisoned Burmese Writers
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- Article Title: Vaclav Havel and Nobel Laureates Call for the Release of Imprisoned Burmese Writers
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Fourteen Nobel Literature Laureates – along with Vaclav Havel, former President of the Czech Republic and renowned playwright, and Jiri Grusa, acclaimed Czech writer and President of International PEN – have urged Senior General Than Shwe of the Burmese Military Junta to release Nobel Peace Laureate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and other imprisoned Burmese writers. These include 74-year-old editor U Win Tin, who is serving twenty years’ hard labour, and poet and journalist U Aung Myint, who was condemned to twenty-one years’ imprisonment. In a letter delivered to Burmese embassies in Bangkok, Berlin, London, New Delhi, Tokyo, Washington DC and other cities on April 13, Havel and the Laureates wrote:
We are profoundly disturbed by the open, unchecked, and accelerating suppression of the internationally acclaimed peaceful movement for democracy in the Union of Myanmar, and by the denial of the freedom of expression – and in many cases physical freedom – to our fellow writers. We are urgently concerned for the welfare of all who are currently prosecuted simply for exercising their essential right of freedom of speech and expression.
The following Nobel Laureates for Literature joined in the appeal: J.M. Coetzee, Naguib Mahfouz, Seamus Heaney, Nadine Gordimer, Kenzaburo Oe, Wole Soyinka, Toni Morrison, Wislawa Szymborska, Czeslaw Milosz, Y.S. Naipaul, Gunter Grass, Claude Simon, Jose Saramago and Imre Kertesz.
The appeal also states that the detention of these writers is a roadblock to any significant progress or transition to democracy in Bunna:
If a single political prisoner, if writers, journalists and other citizens cannot discuss the future of their country without fear, all announcements of political reform lack credibility. All historical experience teaches us that freedom of speech and free and open public debate cannot stand at the end of a road to democracy, but must be at the very beginning of any meaningful reform.
The appeal was launched jointly by International PEN President Jiri Grusa and former Czech President Havel at the opening ceremony of the One World International Human Rights Film Festival at the Archa Theatre m Prague on April 14. A short documentary on the attack last May on Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and the National League for Democracy (NLD) was premièred at the festival.
For further details contact: www.pen.org.au.
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