Celebrating Human Rights Day 2015
In the lead up to Human Rights Day (December 10) we’ve made a selection of articles, Op-Eds and interviews on the refugee crisis and with writers in exile to highlight the plight of refugees seeking sanctuary in Europe and beyond as well as the experiences of writers who have been forced into exile.
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10 December 2015 - As PEN Centres around the world today mark Human Rights Day we celebrate our long tradition of giving protection for writers at risk and urge the international community to uphold their humanitarian and legal obligations to protect people facing persecution.
2015 has been marked by one of the greatest refugee crisis since the Second World War. Compelled by persecution and war, over 900,000 people have risked their lives to cross the Mediterranean Sea in search of sanctuary. Over 3,500 have died making this journey.
‘Throughout this year, the world has watched in horror as this human nightmare has unfolded amidst a rise in polemic, violent speech aimed at some of the world’s most vulnerable people. While some governments have been exemplary in providing sanctuary, others have responded to this crisis by shutting down borders and increasing restrictions on freedom of expression such as through the radical expansion of surveillance,’ said Jennifer Clement, President of PEN International.
‘PEN’s Charter makes our obligation to populations at risk clear – we cannot separate our decades-long experience in protecting persecuted writers from our broader humanitarian mandate aimed at creating peace, dialogue and protecting those most at risk.’
Throughout this year, PEN has been campaigning at the national, European and global level for a more coordinated, humanitarian approach to providing safety to those at most risk.
In April, a delegation of PEN members met with the President of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz, to present a petition signed by over a thousand writers asking European member states to meet their humanitarian obligations to protect refugees through common, humane asylum laws. In October, at PEN International’s 81st Congress in Quebec, delegates passed a resolution calling on all nations to meet their humanitarian and legal obligations to those fleeing persecution.
While people in Europe and around the world have demonstrated extraordinary solidarity with asylum-seeking families as they make their journeys across the continent, European institutions and governments have remained divided and chaotic in their response to this humanitarian crisis.
‘PEN’s expanding programme of protection work with writers at risk shows the urgent need for expanded visa and sponsorship programmes, scholarships, and other ways for writers facing persecution to enter other countries legally. They should also have the freedom to express themselves in their adopted countries. Furthermore, family reunification must become an accessible option for many more people than is currently the case,’ said PEN’s Writers in Prison Committee Chair, Salil Tripathi.
’The lack of legal routes to find safety in Europe is at the heart of this problem,’ said German PEN President Josef Haslinger.
’Thousands of refugee parents are risking the lives of their children on unsafe smuggling boats primarily because they have no other choice. European countries – as well as governments in other regions, especially North America and the Gulf States – must make some fundamental changes to allow for larger resettlement and humanitarian admission quotas.’
On International Human Rights Day, PEN reiterates our call to the international community to:
Substantially increase the number of refugee resettlement spaces;
Develop refugee determination processes that are timely, fair and treat every claimant with dignity;
Refrain from violent policies and practices that aim to deter or prevent people from crossing their borders;
Provide more funding to support countries hosting the largest numbers of refugees fleeing conflict, including Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey
Call on refugee-hosting communities and governments to facilitate access to basic social services for asylum seekers and refugees;
Take all possible measures to combat xenophobia and anti-refugee sentiment;
Address the inadequacy of legislation to deal humanely with individuals caught in crisis
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When I was reading the life history and works of famous exiled writers such as James Joyce, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o and the poets like Nazim Hikmet, Mahmoud Darwish, Abdellatif Laâbi, and others I used to think maybe exile could have turned me into a better writer. Of course later I was forced to leave my country. From my short experience, I am learning that being in “exile” is neither exotic nor a source of inspiration for good writing, as I used to imagine. Rather, it is a state of perpetual limbo punctuated by solitary walks, the sense of loss, and being haunted by unsuccessful attempts to write.
For half of my life I have been writing and reading, and in the four years since I escaped my country, my work has been an experiment in how to express my resentment for Eritrea's ruling regime, and an attempt to capture the dire situation that my friends and family are trapped in.
Back there, in what was once my home, it was impossible to bypass stringent censorship. With such stern repression and crude attempts to control the minds of their citizens, like many writers I was reduced to sharing my work with just a handful of trusted readers, many of them my close friends.
In most of the short stories I wrote in Eritrea I attempted to unfollow conventional styles. How can a poem written in the usual stanza structure describe the penitentiary state of nearly four million people which has more than 360 prisons and 10,000 prisoners of conscience? Similarly, a straight narrative story trying to describe my small country – in which around 5,000 of its productive population flee each month, risking “shoot-to-kill” policy – falls short.
Experimentation emerged for me as a bold form of defiance in a place where art and culture has been on the front line of the battle for human rights.
Let me set the scene. With institutionalised fear imposed by the police state, artists in Eritrea have lost their ability to be critical, contemplative, or challenging. The censorship unit of the Ministry of Information requests prior approval of all material, even nightclub posters. It has even become common practice for censors to suggest stanzas to be added in, lyrics to be changed. Many books, even translated ones, are told by the censor office to delete pages or remove chapters.
This has become Eritrea's new normal.
Eritrean singers – most of them army conscripts – have only one way of making a name for themselves. Unless they continuously sing praise or patriotic songs, they are ignored. Failure to praise the system is considered as a lack of cooperation or even straight out dissent.
This is how the Eritrean regime ensures that art and culture reproduces the narrative it has set out for the country.
Their laws and rules silence talented artists, or coerce them into being accomplices to the regime's repressive activities.
Combined with the lack of access to information, stringent control of online media and pervasive collective surveillance, Eritrea has now topped the list of the world's most censored countries, followed closely by North Korea.
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It has been four years since I left my home in Eritrea, and in this time I've passed through many strange and complex psychological states.
The first few months, I couldn't believe that I had really left, and that I was finally living in a safe place. Whenever I talked to friends or sat for casual chats I continued to censor myself, and kept my guard up.
It took me two years to fully conquer my fear. Then I entered a stage where I was angrily obsessed with home and was geared towards talking back, to challenging the regime from afar.
Now, things have changed again. Today, I try to reflect on the mechanisms that continue to keep the whole population zombified. Slowly the country has grown so distant to me. Each day my attempts to connect back result in another class of unsettled feelings of solitude and helplessness.
Now I picture the country in different shapes. Sometimes I see it as old-time sweetheart and remember it with nostalgia. Other times I see it as an open and giant prison.
Even though I believe I am in a secure space, I feel eternally tied to my home country. Each day I am reminded of being out of place. Carrying the badge of “legal alien” or “asylee” – not to mention the acute lack of familiarity and sense of belonging – I keep telling myself that I have a better home waiting for me, perhaps somewhere else.
But with every change of address, city and zip code, the concept of “home” also becomes more fluid. Now “home” has been reduced to my mailing address. Although exile guarantees security and safety, as a writer I've found that it does not necessarily present the best opportunity to produce better work.
The new space is a source of disillusionment. The new freedom to write and the sudden abolishing of the censorship yoke, might give momentary high, but for me it remains characterised by estrangement.
Abraham Tesfalul Zere is an exiled Eritrean writer and journalist who was one of the founding members of PEN Eritrea where he currently serves as Executive Director. Zere left Eritrea in 2012 and is now based in Ohio, USA.
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PEN International is deeply concerned by the detention of Kurdish-Iranian journalist Behrouz Boochani, who has been held in Australia’s offshore Immigration Detention Centre on Manus Island, in Papua New Guinea for the past two years. He has sought asylum is Australia since July 2013. On 17 February 2013, officials from the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps ransacked the Varia offices in Ilam and arrested 11 of his colleagues. Several were subsequently imprisoned.
Mr Boochani was in Tehran that day and so avoided arrest. On hearing of the arrests, he published the information on the website Iranian Reporters, and his report was widely circulated. Mr Boochani feared for his safety and went into hiding eventually deciding to flee Iran on 23 May 2013.
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I moved from Eritrea to the United Sates in 2005, to work in a department of literature in an American university. I had moved to Eritrea from the Netherlands in 2001, on invitation by the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences of the then operative University of Asmara, to set up a department of Eritrean languages and literature. When in 2008 my case was considered for an “early tenure” in my new department in America, I was asked by the department chair to write about the nature and significance of my scholarship, to be included in the tenure file in behalf of the candidate’s narrative. In preparation, I read a few exemplary statements by colleagues, who successfully went through the often complex process of tenure, and was most impressed by their endurance and achievement; but, more importantly, I was also envious and somewhat overwhelmed by the steady purpose and scholarly focus of my colleagues, especially the ones whose narratives exuded confidence and continuity. What was my narrative? Rather than by stability and continuity, my own life and work were, and continue to be, more characterized by geographical dislocation and cultural rupture, so I started my story for the tenure process with the following ellipsis by Edward Said.
Identity—who we are, where we come from, what we are—is difficult to maintain in exile … we are the ‘other’, an opposite, a flaw in the geometry of resettlement, an exodus. Silence and discretion veil the hurt, slow the body searches, soothe the sting of loss. (Edward Said, After the Last Sky)
Said was, of course, a colossal thinker and writer. When referencing to him, I was thus aware that it was not to line up my own humble contribution to culture criticism and world literature with his. Yet, whether as a researcher, teacher, writer, activist-scholar, or tout court a diasporic citizen, my life reveals the paradoxes so aptly and beautifully evoked by the Palestinian-American scholar Said in the epigraph.
For me, the impulse to reflect on paths taken (and not taken) began early on in life. Growing up in a large family, my life has been shaped by the memories of an intelligent mother, the humor of a hard working father, and the poetic wisdom of a grandmother. Those influences have also been sustaining inspirations in my professional work as a researcher, serving as stable reference points to fall back on at times needed. As I ponder more on the trajectory of my academic life, however, it is evident, too, that my vision, ideas, and pedagogy are inescapably connected, formed, and at times wholly informed by my migratory experience.
Our decisions can never be pinned down to any one cause, because a network of factors is always at play. Nonetheless, there are several memorable moments when the paradoxes of exile played out more prominently than other factors. In 1991, when Eritrea declared its independence from neighboring Ethiopia, I had applied from the Netherlands, where I was living at the time, to go to the United Kingdom to pursue a PhD in literature at Warwick University, where I was accepted. However, drawn by the wide-ranging sense of optimism reigning in the country at the time, I traveled to Eritrea a year later, and I gave a public talk on the freedom of the writer. At that time, it was hard to shout louder than the euphoria of the hard-won freedom that was resonating everywhere, inside as well as outside in the Eritrean diaspora communities. While my call for the freedom of speech and more opening for free thinking was favorably received by many, it was also taken as slight note of pessimism by some and as unfounded gesture of concern by others. Admittedly, the lecture written hastily in my mother’s small kitchen, was more about my own anxieties and, perhaps, less of a criticism about the possible directions the new country would seem to take. In other words, it was a cautionary tale learned from the experiences of other African countries that ended up substituting external or colonial oppression with internal dictatorships by post-independence governments. Looking back at what transpired later in Eritrea with the clampdown of free speech, however, the lecture, sadly, appears to have been pertinent and vital at pointing some of the dangers the country’s population and its writers are now facing.
Before traveling to Eritrea in 1992, I had other plans to research, but after the visit I made a commitment to myself to work on Eritrean literature. Entering the PhD program in Leiden University, I embarked on an ambitious and largely unchartered area of Eritrean literature, to study the 100 years of oral and written history of Tigrinya literature in Eritrea. It was an ambitious project, complicated by the scantiness of references, and hard to get primary sources. I was nonetheless very aware of the importance of researching especially literatures and cultures of historically marginalized societies, and also saw the research as a contribution to the so needed cultural empowerment of the Eritreans and peoples of the African continent at large. Additionally, the research on Eritrean literature was a milestone in terms of academic advancement and in terms of enabling to create linkages, connections, and personal friendships with many Eritrean writers, poets, journalists, and critics of different backgrounds and experiences. The challenge and the joy of being able to research and write the first postcolonial history of an African-language literature continue to inform my theoretical work and constitute a high light in my academic career.
My engagement with Eritrean writing literature and culture led to my employment at the University of Asmara, Department of Eritrean languages and literature, where I worked from 2001 to 2005. Knowing that we were working under a delicate political environment following the Eritrea-Ethiopia border war (1998-2001), my colleagues and I first focused on building and helping set up a research culture at the department and college levels. This included the founding of a new journal, the Journal of Eritrean Studies; organizing on-and-off campus lectures and seminars; writing a full-fledged curriculum for Eritrean literatures and languages, alongside the department of English. At the political level, things weren’t going well in Eritrea, however. Just about a week after my family and I resettled in Eritrea in 2001, we were greeted by the shocking news that the once vibrant newspapers were banned; reformist opposition government officials were jailed, and the constitution dismantled. The general political oppression and the human rights situation continued declining dramatically during those four years of my tenure at the university. Among other dire measures, the University of Asmara itself was ordered by the government to halt enrolling new students after 2002 and was effectively dismantled by Presidential order in 2006. It remains closed to this day. The closure of the university naturally had huge consequences for the students and faculty, and many of them have left the country since then in search of education, employment and better opportunities for their families. It was a sad end to all of us. I left the country in June 2005, to work in the English Department at Ohio University. I knew moving to America would entail changing or re-defining my area of research and teaching approaches. It indeed came with its challenges, but also new opportunities. While continuing work on the Horn of Africa, my interest has expanded to researching about South African literature and other African writers in the diaspora. New doors for research and teaching continue to open up, including on new writings and theories originating from significant geographies across the globe. While my tenure has afforded me the opportunity to publish several books, I have also been able to organize international scholarly gatherings, including the annual conference of the African Literature Association. There is thus every reason for celebration. And yet, the experience of changing places, and the attendant adjustments needed to survive (and sometimes thrive) as an exilic subject do implicate there is a heavy price to pay. To amplify the same point with a variation of words by Edward Said, there is always a haunting sense of loss, often beside embarrassment, even when one does his best to hide the hurt.
Ghirmai Negash is a Professor of English & African Literature in Ohio University, USA and the current president of PEN Eritrea in exile.
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In the lead up to Human Rights Day (December 10) we've made a selection of articles, Op-Eds and interviews with writers in exile to highlight the plight of refugees seeking sanctuary in Europe and beyond as well as the experiences of writers who have been forced into exile. The Europe I dream of by Josef Haslinger, president of German PEN, is the first in the series.
“The era of confrontation and division of Europe has ended. We declare that henceforth our relations will be founded on respect and co-operation. Europe is liberating itself from the legacy of the past. The courage of men and women, the strength of the will of the peoples and the power of the ideas of the Helsinki Final Act have opened a new era of democracy, peace and unity in Europe. “
These sentiments, which have such an anthemic ring that they might be a political paraphrase of Schiller’s “Ode to Joy”, really were a chorus of jubilation. They go back exactly 25 years, and are enshrined in the Paris Charter of November 1990. This document was signed by the heads of state or government of 35 nations, among them all the countries of Europe including ex-Yugoslavia, as well as the former Union of Socialist Soviet Republics, the United States of America and Canada. It not only declares that the Cold War is over but also contains a comprehensive commitment to human rights, democracy, the rule of law and peaceful co-operation. This invocation of a new age of democracy, peace and unity mirrors the short-lived euphoria after the fall of the Iron Curtain. We were so impatient back then, so tired of the time-worn narratives of the Twentieth Century, that we imagined we were entering a new century ten years too early. Half a year later, following the declarations of independence of Croatia and Slovenia, the Balkan wars began. We succeeded in chucking away the new century before it had even begun. And from then on there was one war after another. Sometimes more quickly, sometimes more slowly, sometimes more openly, sometimes more blushingly, we threw our gains away. And meanwhile a new Iron Curtain was gradually going up along Europe’s outer borders – one that was now welcomed by the very European countries that had just escaped from its predecessor. They did so because its purpose was not to shut people in but to keep others out.
Since then Europe’s asylum policy has been hallmarked by constant wrangling in which member states have sought to palm refugees off on one another. To breathe some order into this madness, an agreement was signed in Dublin. This allowed member states to disclaim responsibility and shunt refugees around Europe like so much human cargo. For most of the refugees the journey ended where they crossed the European border, in countries that were totally overwhelmed, and where asylum seekers were locked up even if they were minors. European asylum policy was a policy of exclusion, of a lack of solidarity and – after the Dublin Convention – of an unjust division of the effort and expense involved in taking in refugees that was henceforth set in stone. Once the people finally washed up in countries that were unable to get rid of them because of the agreements in place, the bickering began at domestic level, between regional and local authorities. For decades now, we have been treated to the spectacle of this shameful political game in which the winner is the player who shows the most disregard for international treaties and human rights obligations. The warnings of the UNHCR that food rations in the refugee camps would have to be cut, and food assistance withdrawn altogether from tens of thousands, went unheard – until the refugees set off on their journey.
What is currently pushing European leaders into nervous discussions is not the plight of the refugees but their own plight in the shape of their inability to cope with the crisis. The refugees’ privations have led mainly to defensive measures that have been so protracted and so systematic that there is no longer any legal means for these people to reach Europe. We have offered no alternative to the Mediterranean boat people, thousands of whom have drowned, other than to abandon all hope of a better life.
Anyone unwilling to entrust themselves to human traffickers and travel illegally has had no chance of making it to Europe. Take the Syrian journalist Thaer Al-Nashef who now lives in a Salzburg refugee camp. He fled to Egypt eight years ago to escape his impending arrest by the Assad regime. For seven years he strove in vain to enter Europe legally, until he understood that, “evidently you only get asylum in the EU if you have crossed the sea and come close to drowning.”
Let’s be honest, it was a cheap trick. On the one hand, the EU upheld the much vaunted “European values”, the Convention on Human Rights and the Geneva Refugee Convention, to which all member states continued to subscribe; on the other, every effort was made to prevent those for whose protection the conventions had been signed from ever falling within their ambit. If the politicians had had their way there would actually have been a “European fortress”, from which member states could occasionally emerge to enjoy the smug satisfaction of a humanitarian halo by letting in so-called “quota refugees”. Wherever possible, these would be people who would “fit in”, as has constantly been demanded. In other words, they would be Christians – despite the fact that practising Christians have long been a minority in Europe.
But the trick did not work because the refugees were not deterred by closed outer EU borders, barbed wire fences, and well equipped land and seaborne border forces. True, they were no longer able to manage the trip without help. The policy of complete lockdown and the interdiction of all legal escape routes to Europe created a burgeoning escape facilitation business, worth billions of euro every year. It was only logical that combating this industry soon became the prime objective of European asylum policy.
This, in turn, prompted the people smugglers to hike their prices, and the exploitation of refugees’ distress became ever more brazen. It was the longstanding efforts of interior ministers to bolt the door on refugees that spawned the – without doubt unscrupulous – human trafficking trade in the first place and caused it to flourish.
Even a year after the boat disaster off Lampedusa, when over 300 migrants drowned in the Mediterranean, there was no sign of any change in European asylum policy. There was still no legal means for refugees to reach Europe, and on the EU’s outer borders they continued to be treated like enemies who must be repulsed. This went on until last spring, when there were a number of shipwrecks within a short space of time, and a new outcry in the media. In the Press and on posters there were collages depicting people with outstretched hands drowning in the sea.
That brought the European ministers of the interior back into the picture. They conferred about new measures, and came up with the bizarre idea of sending armed frigates to the coast of Africa to destroy any boats that could be used to ferry refugees. This plan was a non-starter for many reasons. At this time, at the instigation of the German PEN Centre, 1,200 European writers signed a petition appealing to their governments and the European institutions to create lawful escape routes for people in desperate straits. People who are in immediate danger should be able to establish direct contact with the embassies of European nations in their country of origin, so that they can apply for humanitarian visas, the petition says. As the European writers’ appeal put it, Europe should see itself as a common protective area, driven not by national interests but by a spirit of solidarity and a sense of responsibility.
The petition proposes the creation of a European refugee fund, paid for by member states according to their means, so as to ensure that the treatment of refugees is not exposed to the vagaries of short-term shifts in public opinion, and instead permit the application of mandatory European asylum laws.
These demands went unheeded by European heads of state and government, but found a hearing in Brussels. Those who are today clamouring for a common EU asylum policy, as though its absence were a failure on the part of Brussels, should remember that they themselves blocked such a policy on the European Council. Now the refugees have overwhelmed the old system. On all sides we hear the metaphor of a torrent that is swamping Europe. And the response calls to mind attempts to divert a flood away from one’s own territory. Floodgates are opened and closed regardless of whether a neighbouring country will be inundated as a result. Our South-East European neighbours have become people trafficking states that are arguing about who is passing the buck to whom. The Austrian electorate are just as unenthusiastic as their Hungarian, Serbian, Croatian, Macedonian and Greek counterparts about this “flooding“, and the politicians of all these countries periodically go in front of the microphones and try to sooth voters’ nerves. “Don’t worry,” they say, “Hardly any of them are applying for asylum. Fortunately they all want to go to Germany.”
Others say Germany itself is to blame. Merkel should not have announced that Germany would offer sanctuary for war refugees from Syria. But it was not just Angela Merkel who said that, it was all the heads of state and government who signed the Geneva Refugee Convention in 1951 and the Protocol in 1967. The German chancellor only let her remark slip when she saw that other countries were walking away from the Dublin Convention. The alternative would have been to announce that Germany was going to seal off its borders and organise mass transports back to the refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey. That would have been completely unthinkable for Germany. Angela Merkel took the only correct course of action: she reminded her own country – and hence its neighbours, as well – of its duty.
The failings of the past, which included thinking that we could shirk our contribution to the aid efforts in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey, have created a new reality on the ground. This cannot be wished away by racist demonstrations and maverick voting behaviour. Europe will not go under if it accepts two million refugees, but it will have perished if it throws its shared humanitarian principles over board. Europe must step up to the challenge of becoming a functioning immigrant society in which migrants are not endlessly cooped up in camps but are given a chance to stand on their own feet and make something of their lives as soon as possible.
In the present situation the most helpful step would be the introduction of properly conducted asylum procedures that meet common European standards. In the long run, it will certainly be an illusion to think that the migrant flows can be stemmed by drawing strict distinctions between: people who are persecuted for political, religious or ethnic reasons, and who are alone entitled to an open-ended right to asylum; war and civil war refugees who only enjoy “subsidiary” protection and can be sent home when the conflict they have fled is over; and lastly, economic migrants, who are seen as little better than common criminals. It is as though it were a crime for someone to set out on a quest for the means of survival.
The climate change caused by industrial countries’ CO2 emissions has so far mainly led to internal migration in the countries where the worst poverty is concentrated, but the more severe the problem becomes, the more this will change. Do we want to let the economic migrants starve on the way to Europe?
The expression “economic migrant” ceases to be a relevant legal term where countries are unable to assure their own citizens’ subsistence. We could hold serious negotiations on a more just distribution of the world’s riches. That would be a possible means of preventing migration. However it is more likely that we will go on ignoring the problems of the so-called “economic migrants” for as long we can – just as we simply wanted to lock out the millions of refugees under way from Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria until they suddenly turned up on our doorstep. The old notions of nation states and homogeneous cultures still haunt people’s minds, but even before last summer these were mere phantoms of the past and were divorced from reality.
At present there is a lot of talk of the fears that the migrants arouse among the host populations. Unquestionably, there are fears that are deliberately stoked for ideological reasons, but the main anxieties are rooted in real life: people are afraid of growing criminality and of dropping down the social ladder. In principle, there are effective remedies for both worries. The answer is not to send a therapist round. As regards the former fear, it is to ensure that immigrants gain entry to our society as quickly as possible and are not sidelined in ghettos. The way to deal with the latter concern is for governments to throw off the fetters of international finance and start paying attention to the needs of the disadvantaged again. The call for this is being heard loudly and clearly in a number of European countries.
Now is the time to consider a common European policy that regards immigration not as a nightmare but as a development opportunity for our borderless association of states. Now is the time for Europe to learn to take its place in the world. And that includes going beyond providing the USA or Russia with military back-up assistance, and embarking on a systematic peace policy of our own that has more to offer the people of the Middle East than weapons, bombs and refugee camps.
Francois Hollande was right to speak of a war after the Paris terror attacks. That war has been going on for the past 15 years. People in Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon have no illusions about that, and in Syria they will soon have been aware of it for five years. We are only prepared to acknowledge this reality when it occasionally spills over on to the continent of Europe. The conflict has a military arm which has not paused since the Christian West took it upon itself to export freedom and human rights by force of arms, of all things. And it has a civilian component which makes itself a part of the war economy when it places itself in the service of the efforts to ward off refugees and of surveillance of the home population. This is just what the holy warriors of Islamic fundamentalism want: to drive a wedge between the populations of Christian and of Muslim descent. When people take to the streets in German cities week after week to protest against the alleged “islamicisation of the West” and shout “We are the people”, and when Czech, Hungarian and Polish government ministers, and Austrian, Dutch and French opposition figures see no room for Muslim immigrants, they are willing accomplices of the islamist hate preachers. They become the living proof that the West is conducting a war of cultures, and that when it talks of liberty it means only its own freedom and not that of others.
The Europe I dream of would return to the point reached in 1990, when a fresh start was made and for a few months peaceful co-operation between the major powers appeared possible. The Europe I dream of would show it deserved the Nobel Prize it won three years ago for its contribution to peace, reconciliation, democracy and human rights by turning its face towards the world instead of curling up and showing its spikes.
Translation from German: Roy Fox.
The Europe I dream off was the contribution of Joseph Hastlinger to the Euromagreb Meeting of Writers gathering in Sidi Bou Saïd from 16th to 20th October, invited by the EU Embassy in Tunisia.
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To mark Human Rights Day, English PEN's Dr. Olumide Popoola and Annie Holmes have dedicated a PEN Atlas to the Refugee Crisis with a special dispatch from Calais, where they worked with refugees living there to create a new short story collection. breach will be published by Peirene Press in August 2016.
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Emma Wadsworth-Jones from PEN International spoke to Betre Yacob Getahun and Zerihun Mulugeta, two Ethiopian journalists living as refugees in Kenya, to get a first-hand perspective of what forced these writers to flee their countries and of their lives as writers in exile.
Both Getahun and Mulugeta recall the narrowing space for freedom of expression in Ethiopia. As Getahun explains,
“The government works day and night to silence journalists, bloggers and those who express their views, and to shut down those remaining private media outlets. It continues to persecute, intimidate, and arrest journalists and bloggers on false charges… writing the truth or speaking one’s own mind has become a crime in Ethiopia; and independent reporting is seen as an act of terrorism.”
Indeed, Mulugeta emphasises that:
“Freedom of expression and terrorism are now defined as two sides of the same coin. Terrorism is a new political approach to crush freedom of expression. I myself am a good example; I was accused of being a terrorist. In Ethiopia, being a free journalist means that, in one way or another, you are an adversary of the regime. In Ethiopia, free journalists have only three options; jail, exile or working as part of the regime’s propaganda machine.”
Since 2009, the Ethiopian state has increasingly utilised its Anti-Terrorism Proclamation No. 652/2009 to arbitrarily arrest, prosecute and detain independent journalists and opposition activists. Actions classified as ‘terrorist’ by the law would often not even be considered crimes outside of Ethiopia. In 2014 alone, PEN International monitored 21 cases in Ethiopia, 14 of whom are print journalists or bloggers that are currently held for supposed terrorism offences
Knowing full well the dangers faced by journalists and human rights defenders in Ethiopia, and the lack of support available to them in the form of local networks on the ground, both Getahun and Mulugeta chose to take up their profession regardless, writing articles covering the social, political and human rights landscape in Ethiopia, and working with international organisations like Human Rights Watch to expose human rights abuses in the country. In January 2014, they established the Ethiopian Journalists’ Forum (EJF), an organisation dedicated to working for the rights of journalists and press freedom in Ethiopia.
Getahun recalls that he first began facing serious challenges when he began reporting on the political and human rights situation in the country.
“Since 2012, I have experienced several problems because of my profession. I have been intimidated, threatened, and warned so many times because of my writings and reporting. I have been frequently accused of working with outlawed groups considered as ‘terrorist’ by the government, foreign powers, and human rights organisations to elicit violence, commit terrorism, and overthrow the government, and threatened to stop writing on political and human rights issues. I have frequently been labelled as a terrorist and criminal by state owned media, including Addis Zemen, the biggest newspaper in the country. On the top of that I have been under surveillance.”
Working for pro-government media outlets, Mulugeta faced a different kind of pressure, the pressure to conform and forego his journalistic principles. However, despite considerable pressure and attempted bribery, he was able to maintain his independence and write about human rights violations in the country. It was not without a price however; Mulugeta was placed under permanent surveillance and recounts that, between November 2011 and June 2012 he was “regularly harassed and threatened … by security officials to reveal information about opposition groups and leaders with whom I was friends or had sought interviews.”
Both continued to receive threats and experience intimidation on the part of the authorities, until in 2014 the pressure reached its peak. As critics of the regime and proponents of an Ethiopian free press, they were both listed as terrorists in the national media.
“I was accused of inciting violence to revolt against the government and conspiring to unlawfully abolish the constitutional system of the country [in my articles],” says Getahun. “I was also accused of working with international organisations classified as ‘terrorist’ by the government. The Ethiopian government lists the name of journalists and politicians in its media when it decides to arrest them, and it is the last preparation. Those listed are always jailed and charged under the anti-terrorism law.”
An official investigation was opened into Getahun.
Meanwhile, much of the harassment and intimidation that Mulugeta faced came from his role with the EJF and his connection to the Zone 9 bloggers, arrested in April 2014.
“As head of public relations for the EJF, I was closely associated with its work and a particularly identifiable figure. Security agents threatened me to try to make me leave the association on several occasions following my appearance on the Amharic service of Voice of America (VOA) alongside the president of the EJF [Getahun] in February 2014. I also lost my job at Sendek newspaper as the management feared that it would be closed by the government if it was seen to be connected with me.”
Fearing imprisonment and possible torture, both fled Ethiopia to Kenya in mid-2014 where they have received refugee status.
When asked about their situation in Kenya and whether they feel safe, Mulugeta responded:
“My life in Kenya has become increasingly dangerous. As you know, in November 2014, I was violently robbed outside my home. Meanwhile the Ethiopian government continues to paint me and my colleagues at the EJF as terrorists. On 29 January 2015, Human Rights Watch launched its world report. Accompanying the Ethiopia section of the report was a video featuring several colleagues from the EJF and myself. The video was featured in a televised BBC report in which a government official offered the right of reply suggests that we use journalism as a cover to incite violence. Pro-government newspapers such as Addis Zemen and Aiga Forum subsequently called for me to be arrested on 7 February 2015.”
Both fear that they will be kidnapped or otherwise formally extradited back to Ethiopia.
“My life in Kenya is full of nightmare,” says Getahun. “It is filled with sadness, hopelessness, desperation, and stress. I always struggle to feel better but am always the same – desperate and stressed. My movement is very limited because of the security problem. I often get to bed when the sun rises and millions wake up, and get up when it goes down. We only leave home when there is something to buy or there is an important appointment.”
He goes on: “my security is still at risk, and I am always worried about it. I have continued to receive threats and warnings, and encountered serious incidents. In addition, the accusations against me have continued. I am also under surveillance. And this all tells me that I might be extradited to Ethiopia or something grave may happen to me anytime.”
Has the UNHCR in Kenya been able to help?
“There are uncountable horrendous problems Ethiopian journalists are facing in exile in Kenya. They have problems ranging from security to financial and psychological. And these coupled with prolonged and ridiculous UNHCR eligibility and resettlement processes and other related challenges complicate their situation and threaten their lives...I have frequently applied to the UNHCR to get protection. But, the organisation has kept silent so far,” comments Getahun.
Mulugeta adds:
“I registered with the UNHCR and received a refugee mandate in March this year, but the resettlement process is very slow. I applied to the UNHCR protection unit, but unfortunately they couldn’t give me any assistance. As a journalist, being a refugee means a lot of hurting, sometimes I ask myself if it would not be better to be imprisoned.”
Locked in their homes, unable to work, Getahun and Mulugeta have had to seek the assistance of international NGOs to provide them with support in order to survive. Getahun explains:
“The financial problem is also another headache for me and my wife. It is always hard for us to pay for house rent and cover basic expenses. There are times we went to bed with empty stomachs. Such situations hurt me further…I have received financial support from some organisations and their support helped me to survive. Without their support I wouldn’t be here.”
Their lack of security also leads to frustrations at their inability to integrate in their host country and contributes to fears that they may be returned to Ethiopia.
Are they able to write freely in exile?
While Getahun continued to write initially, recent threats have made him cautious:
“At the moment it is too risky to keep writing. But, after I get out of here and resettle to a safe place I will keep writing.”
For Mulugeta, the psychological strain has been too much to allow him to write.
“Each and every single day is weighty as a stone. I have come to realise that journalism is dying in my heart. Since I fled Ethiopia, I haven’t been able to write a single story. I am worried about how to continue my career and how to survive… It is difficult to write freely in Kenya. However, thanks to the technology, it is made more possible in third countries. I hope I will continue with my career. I believe it is possible to exercise journalism everywhere.”
Clearly, continuing to write has been a struggle for both journalists, which they feel can only be overcome when they are resettled to a third country further from home. But what are the prospects for resettlement?
While 145 states have ratified the 1951 Refugee Convention, which recognises the international scope of the refugee problem and establishes the principle of mutual responsibility in resolving the situation, statistics provided by the UNHCR in 2013 show that the number of countries offering resettlement has remained stable at 27. The main beneficiaries of this initiative have remained the same since 2009: Myanmar, Iraq, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia and Bhutan. While we can expect Syria to make the list in forthcoming statistical reports, will Ethiopia? Given that in 2013 fewer than 15,000 refugees were resettled from African countries, it seems unlikely.
According to a recent Amnesty International report, nearly one million refugees require resettlement, with the number expected to increase in the future. The international community must respond unilaterally, removing the disproportionate burden from developing countries, and recognise that the current crisis is, in fact, a global issue.
What can PEN do to help?
Both Mulugeta and Getahun believe that PEN should actively lobby governments and the UNHCR to resettle journalists at risk. Mulugeta recognises the current work of PEN in providing other means of resettlement to exiled writers and journalists, and asks for the development of more scholarship opportunities and programmes. He also sees PEN as having the potential to facilitate training opportunities.
With the growing pressure on readily available support, PEN Centres have a vital role to play bridging the gap by helping provide short- and/or longer-term assistance to writers at risk. Furthermore, as we have seen over the years, PEN members have the ability to welcome their persecuted colleagues, providing much needed psychological support, and aiding their integration into this international community of writers.
(This interview was first published on 20 June 2015 to mark World Refugee Day.)
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On World Refugee Day (20 June), PEN International is highlighting its work to protect writers at risk. Much of this work happens under the radar, and in partnership with the International Cities of Refuge Network (ICORN ), which now has members in over 40 cities in Europe and North America. PEN centres also have a crucial role to play in developing a response to the protection and humanitarian needs of writers at risk and in exile.
The growing number of writers reaching out to PEN and ICORN for protection include creative writers, playwrights, poets, academics, literary translators, screen-writers, publishers and cultural activists, who often fall outside the remit of press freedom organisations. They come from all continents – from countries as far ranging as Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Horn of Africa, Mexico, Honduras Brazil, Russia and Vietnam. In 2013 the number of writers reaching out to ICORN for protection almost doubled. The majority come from Iran – which has one of the highest numbers of imprisoned writers in PEN’s case list - and Syria – where writers are fleeing the ongoing civil war. Some of the most vulnerable are refugee writers living without status and in extreme economic hardship. One such writer is Iranian journalist Sahar Bayati, who spent more than two years without refugee status in Malaysia before being given refuge in Norway.
Sahar Bayati has over ten years’ experience of working as a journalist, interpreter and news editor for various media outlets in Iran, including the dailies Kargozaran, Hamshahri and Tehran Emrooz, and for the news agencies Daypress and Aftab. She first came under pressure in May 2010 when intelligence officers raided the offices of the Daypress news agency in Tehran, where she worked. Daypress is believed to have been targeted for its reporting on high-level government corruption. Shortly afterwards, Bayati was arrested, fired from her job with the daily Hamshahri and later charged with defamation. She was sentenced to three years in prison, suspended on appeal, and banned from working as a journalist for five years.
Bayati continued to try and write under an alias, but it proved too difficult and she decided to leave Iran with her husband. The couple fled to Malaysia on 6 July 2011, where she worked in a freelance capacity for the BBC Persian service, Raha TV (an opposition station based in the UK) and Mihan magazine (based in Malaysia). Her reports include an investigation into the alleged involvement of the Iranian intelligence services in the drug trade and money-laundering in Malaysia. Sahar Bayati arrived in Haugesund city of refuge, Norway, in January 2014 where she is now working on a magazine on freedom in art and literature, as well as writing a collection of short stories and a novel. She continues her job reporting for the London based IranWire (en.iranwire.com).
PEN International spoke to her about her experiences of fleeing persecution and of living as a writer in exile.
Were you aware of the risks involved, working as an investigative journalist in Iran?
Before the 2009 election things weren’t so bad. There were some risky topics but editors were the only ones at risk of arrest. When I began my work it wasn’t too bad, I didn’t consider any risks, but after 2009 [when mass protests at the disputed election result were brutally repressed], everything changed. The government finally understood the importance of journalism and journalists to the Iranian movement. Everything was risky. You wrote about culture, it was risky; you wrote about women, it was risky. The only thing that wasn’t risky was following the party line.
Tell me about your experience of being arrested and sentenced to a 3-year prison term.
I don’t think I was brave, I didn’t feel it – I was scared. The situation suddenly becomes so dark, you can’t imagine your future. You wonder what will happen to you? You can’t imagine it. You think back over your articles – what was it that I wrote? Will I be able to answer their questions? It’s really frightening. You can’t help thinking about the friends and colleagues who have gone before you and sentenced to 10, 12, 15 years in prison. You can’t help but wonder if that will be your fate too. I was scared.
As a woman were you treated differently?
The problem for women in Iran isn’t exclusive to journalists. Iran is a country for men. They are trying to systematically remove women from all public activity and life; just last week women were prevented from attending a national stadium to watch a volleyball tournament. The same applies to football. You’d expect to face the same kind of difficulties at work. In Iran they don’t want women in the professional sphere. Women journalists are respected for sure, but never allowed to take up a leadership position. There is not a single female editor-in-chief of a newspaper in Iran (there might be a few in magazines). It’s simply not allowed.
What made you decide to leave Iran?
After 2009, I worked for nine different media outlets in two years because of government pressure. Two months here, three months there. Many newspapers were closed down, and of those that remained open, no-one wanted to employ me. When I received my three-year suspended sentence I felt suffocated. If I’d written something that they didn’t like I would have been immediately taken to prison to serve out my original sentence in addition to whatever time they handed down for my new ‘offence’. You can’t write anything in that situation. It’s all compounded by the fact that a conviction essentially renders you untouchable; newspaper and website managers won’t work with you for fear of becoming the next target of the regime. I had to leave Iran to continue my work.
You have lived as a refugee first in Malaysia, and now in Norway – tell me about these experiences.
Malaysia was awful - you aren’t welcome there. Your status as a refugee isn’t recognized or protected by the government. It’s a really precarious position.
While I was there I began researching and writing about drug trafficking after I witnessed it first-hand. That just added to the danger.
In Norway I am accepted by the government, and feel safe. You can live a normal life as a refugee here. But, any writer who is an immigrant faces problems: when you move to a foreign land you immediately lose your main strength – your language. Language is everything for a writer and it’s also the first thing you lose. You’re writing for a strange culture, you don’t know these people – how do you write for them? You have to start from scratch. I lost all my connections when I left Iran – literally and metaphorically. In a new society you don’t have all the contacts you would normally turn to for interviews that you had in your homeland. It makes it difficult to write. I left my address book in Iran when I fled. I’ve literally lost all my contacts. I tried to get in touch with some, but they won’t work with me because I left Iran. It takes time to adjust to a new people, culture and government. It takes a long time.
Do you feel able to write freely in exile?
I don’t know really. It’s difficult to answer. First you have the language differences, and like I said, a new country is the great unknown. PEN Norway and ICORN have been a great help. Without it, my life would be much harder.
At the moment, I can’t really imagine what my future will be. People tell me that I can write freely in Norway, make a life for myself. I’m not sure yet.
I write in Persian, which is my treasure – I can play with words and explore, whereas in Norwegian I feel like a baby dependent on others. In exile I started writing short stories, and I am now working on a novel. I am also planning to turn my articles on drug trafficking in Malaysia into a book. I had such difficulty publishing them before because the publisher received threats so took them down. So now I’m assuming the risk for myself. I will judge how freely I can write here after two to three years.
How have things changed under President Rouhani, if at all?
Nothing has changed. Foreign policy has changed, but this is just cosmetic. Arrests are continuing, and human rights and women’s rights are still suppressed. Two weeks ago, two more journalists were arrested and nothing is known about them. Several months ago, three other journalists returned to Iran from exile in the hope of a more liberal climate; one of these has been arrested, one sentenced to six years in prison, and one summoned daily for interrogation. There are currently 35 journalists in prison in Iran. Newspapers are still shut down; nothing has changed for journalists, human rights, women’s rights – the list goes on.
What can PEN do to better support writers in need of protection?
You are already doing it! Just take my experience in Malaysia as an example. I was going to have to wait for two years for my appointment with the UNHCR until you wrote a letter. They moved my appointment immediately, and I only had to wait one month.
What we exiled writers really need is a way to publish our work, a network of sorts. It’s something we were talking about at the ICORN AGM. Where do we turn to publish our work? We’re finally safe thanks to ICORN and PEN, but we need more help to be able to continue our work.
Pressure on Iran will also help, and international solidarity. I’d like to see international journalists coordinating one week where they boycott covering Iran in symbolic protest. You know, refuse to write about Iran, reject interviews with officials, boycott press conferences and tell them why – say ‘35 of my Iranian colleagues are in prison’. It would have a big impact. With foreign pressure we could do something. The government can’t lie if no one is listening.
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The international community is currently experiencing the single largest refugee crisis since the Second World War. According to the UNHCR, at least 59.5 million people were forcibly displaced by the end of 2014 – be that internally or seeking refuge abroad – due to conflict, crises or persecution.
PEN International and its partners have seen a corresponding rise in requests for assistance from writers in exile or seeking to leave their countries. Such assistance can vary from short-term grants – provided through the Foundation PEN Emergency Fund – support to asylum claims, or for relocation through placements provided by our Centres or the International Cities of Refuge Network (ICORN). Over a quarter of these requests for assistance come from writers in the Middle East.
In 2014, more than half of all refugees worldwide came from just three countries: Syria (3.88 million), Afghanistan (2.59 million) and Somalia (1.11 million). Writers are amongst the hundreds of thousands to have suffered appalling persecution and trauma in Syria since the start of the uprising in 2011, and are continuing to flee the conflict in large numbers. In 2014, over 25% of a total 14.4 million refugees globally were Syrian. Many are languishing without status and in severe economic hardship and insecurity in the neighbouring countries of Lebanon, Egypt and Turkey.
As individuals flee their homes, they seek refuge in neighbouring countries that, due to a lack of solidarity and support among the international community, are now at breaking point. Turkey, Pakistan, Lebanon, Iran, Ethiopia and Kenya are among the top 10 countries hosting the most refugees. According to the UNHCR, by the end 2014 this same top 10 accommodated 57 per cent of all individual refugees under the UNHCR’s mandate, with eight of these witnessing at times dramatic increases in their respective refugee figures during the year. Almost all of the top 40 host countries for refugees in 2013 were developing countries.
2014 witnessed a shift in the patterns of the main host countries of refugees and their source, according to the latest data. This change has largely been influenced by the conflict in Syria and large-scale displacement across parts of Africa. Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, Europe and the Middle East have shared the burden in almost equal portions.
Sub-Saharan Africa is estimated to be home to some 3.7 million refugees (26% of the world’s refugee population) – the highest level observed since 1996. By the end of 2014, Ethiopia – with 659,500 registered refugees, the majority from neighbouring South Sudan, Eritrea and Somalia – had taken over from Kenya as the host of the largest refugee population in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Over one quarter of the world’s refugee population (3.8 million) also resided in the Asia and Pacific region by the end of December 2014. Of these, over 2.5 million were Afghans residing in Pakistan or Iran.
Last year, Europe was host to some 3.1 million refugees (22% of the total population) – the majority Syrian – with Turkey assuming over half of the burden (some 1.6 million refugees).
The Middle East and North Africa region hosted a similar proportion of the world’s refugees (approximately 3 million refugees), again mainly from Syria (2.2 million). By the end of 2014, Lebanon was host to some 1.15 million refugees – equating to approximately 232 refugees per 1,000 inhabitants – stretching the country’s socio-economic absorption capacity to its limit.
Finally, with 769,000 refugees, the Americas is the only region to have experienced a decrease in its refugee population, hosting the smallest share (5%) of refugees globally; Colombians continue to constitute the largest proportion of refugees in the region.
With the number of refugees increasing year upon year, an even worse picture can only be expected when the final figures for 2015 are released.
