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RIGHTS: Helping the World’s Most Persecuted Writers

Guthrie Gray

WASHINGTON, Feb 6 2007 (IPS) - A survivor of a secret Khmer Rouge prison where 14,000 people were brutally murdered is among the 45 recipients of this year’s Hellman/Hammett grants, awarded each year to individuals who have shown extraordinary courage in the face of political persecution.

Vann Nath is one of only seven survivors of the secret prison, Tuol Seng, or S-21, where he endured torture and near starvation.

A talented artist, his jailers spared his life in order to put him to work painting and sculpting images of the former Cambodian dictator, Pol Pot.

“Vann Nath is an important painter and writer whose memoirs and paintings of his experiences in the Tuol Sleng prison are a powerful and poignant testimony to the crimes of the Khmer Rouge,” said Marcia Allina, who coordinates the Hellman/Hammett programme.

According to Human Rights Watch, which administers the grants, Vann Nath will likely be a key witness in the tribunal being organised by Cambodia and the United Nations for the trial of former Khmer Rouge leaders. He is currently battling serious complications from kidney disease.

He was one of 45 writers from 22 countries who received grants Tuesday. The recipients include journalists, novelists, bloggers, poets, calligraphers, and historians. More than half of the recipients are from China (9), Vietnam (8), and Iran (7).

The programme was founded in 1989 by the U.S. playwright, Lillian Hellman, when she willed that her estate be used to assist writers in financial need as a result of expressing their views. She was inspired by her own experiences during the anti-communist witch-hunts of the 1950s, when she and her long-time companion, writer Dashiell Hammett, were questioned by U.S. congressional committees about their political beliefs and affiliations.

“The Hellman/Hammett grants aim to help writers confront and survive persecution,” said Allina.

Several of the recipients have asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals against them or their families. In the past, it has been difficult to track down some recipients because they have been in hiding, according Allina.

Still, most of the recipients have agreed to publicise their stories. They sketch a troubling portrait of the state of free speech around the world.

One of China’s recipients was Huang Qi, an internet journalist convicted of “inciting the overthrow of the government” for publishing articles recalling the massacre of students on Tiananmen Square on the 11th anniversary of the incident, according to HRW.

Huang Qi served five years in a high-security prison where he was regularly beaten. Released in 2005, he has returned to internet journalism, but he is closely watched by the government, and the content of his website is filtered in China, according to HRW.

According to an annual report released Monday by the Committee to Protect Journalists, China is currently the world’s leading jailer of journalists with 31 media workers behind bars.

Another recipient, 27-year old Roozbeh Mir Ebrahimi of Iran, has worked as an editor and reporter for several newspapers that have been shut down by the government of Iran.

He has written extensively on key human rights cases in Iran, and was detained and held in solitary confinement for 60 days in 2004. In addition, the government has prevented the publication of his two books on Iran’s modern political history.

“The past year was a particularly difficult one for Iranian writers who had to work in an ever more restrictive atmosphere of new publishing rules and policies,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “It is important to draw international attention to their achievements under the current repressive policies.”

Vietnamese dissidents also received a disproportionate number of grants. According to HRW, several of the recipients from Vietnam were detained or otherwise prevented from speaking with foreigners during last year’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Hanoi.

“This is an especially important year to recognise dissident writers in Vietnam,” said Sophie Richardson, deputy director of the Asia division at Human Rights Watch, which administers the annual award. “Vietnam’s emerging democracy movement has become bolder, more outspoken and public, making activists more vulnerable to government reprisals. The Hellman/Hammett awards give these writers international attention and some protection.”

In Latin America, Jenny Johanna Manique Cortes, a journalist from Colombia, received a grant. As an editor for the Bucaramanga newspaper Vanguardia Liberal she discovered that her name was on a paramilitary “blacklist” of journalists targeted for assassination. She is currently in a year-long refugee programme in Argentina.

The Hellman/Hammett grants have distributed more than 2.5 million dollars to more than 500 writers from around the world in the 16 years of the programme’s existence. They typically range from 1,000 dollars to 10,000 dollars.