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Writers’ group slams Iran, China over jailing of intellectuals

Originally published by Monster Sand Critics,30 Oct 2010

Beijing/Tokyo – The writers’ group PEN International on Thursday condemned the ‘outrageous’ jailing of public intellectuals by China and Iran, warning of ‘escalating threats to freedom of expression’ in the two nations.

Following a conference in Tokyo, the group wrote an open letter of protest to the Chinese embassy in Japan and condemned Iran’s sentencing on Wednesday of 35-year-old Iranian-Canadian blogger Hossein Derakhshan to 19-and-half years in prison.

‘This outrageous sentence of a writer for the expression and transmission of his ideas is grossly unjust,’ John Ralston Saul, the president of PEN International, said.

‘This is the new totalitarianism. Instead of banning books, they are attempting to control the internet; what became a mechanism for freedom in its early days is now under attack around the world,’ Saul said.

The Iranian writer was convicted of ‘insulting religion,’ spreading ‘anti-revolutionary’ propaganda, obscenity and other charges.

More than 40 other writers, journalists and bloggers were detained or faced charges in Iran, the group said.

PEN International said delegates from its 86 national centres at the meeting in Tokyo had also focussed on Chinese dissident writer Liu Xiaobo, who was sentenced to 11 years in prison for subversion in December.

It said Liu ‘has come to symbolise China’s systemic repression of its people’s deep yearning for democratic freedoms to match the country’s economic liberalism.’

Liu was the main organizer of the Charter ’08 for democratic reform, which was signed by 300 writers, lawyers and activists and was modelled on the Charter ’77 produced by Czech dissidents.

Many Chinese and international writers and democracy activists have supported Liu’s nomination for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, which is scheduled to be announced on October 8.

PEN International said it had listed more than 40 other imprisoned writers in China, including many from ethnic minorities in the Tibet, Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia regions.

Its petition to the Chinese embassy urged the government to release all imprisoned writers, stop the ‘harassment and persecution’ of writers, lift restrictions on their foreign travel, and end censorship of the internet.

The group said it had also highlighted Mexico as a ‘topic of much concern,’ with many journalists killed over the last four years ‘as a result of the unchecked powers of drug cartels’.

‘In Mexico, words such as kidnapping, torture and summary execution have become commonplace, heard daily, and all these crimes go unpunished,’ Saul said.

The group also criticized the religious justifications for the detentions.

Tehran’s imprisonment of Derakhshan, in part for insults to Islam, ‘is symptomatic of another great concern to PEN International,’ said Marian Botsford Fraser, the head of the group’s Writers in Prison Committee.

‘The right to criticize religion is a right equal to the right to practise one’s religion,’ Botsford Fraser said.

‘When governments attempt to limit the rights of citizens, they are not seeking to protect faith or belief. They are seeking increased power over the citizenry,’ she said.

http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/asiapacific/news/article_1588083.php/Writers-group-slams-Iran-China-over-jailing-of-intellectuals