(WiPC/IFEX) – The following is a WiPC report about women writers in prison on the occasion of International Women’s Day, 8 March 2001: International PEN Writers in Prison Committee International Women’s Day 8 March 2001 Women Writers in Prison – 2001 When Flora Brovina, the Kosovo-Albanian doctor, women’s rights activist and writer, was released in […]
(WiPC/IFEX) – The following is a WiPC report about women writers in prison on the occasion of International Women’s Day, 8 March 2001:
International PEN Writers in Prison Committee
International Women’s Day 8 March 2001
Women Writers in Prison – 2001
When Flora Brovina, the Kosovo-Albanian doctor, women’s rights activist and writer, was released in November after 20 months in Serb detention, the international human rights community celebrated. On her return to Kosovo, she was met by cheering crowds, and the world media recorded her as she stepped from the police van and into the arms of her friends and supporters. Brovina was just one of a number of high profile writers to be freed in recent months, some after many years in prison.
But that sense of euphoria has been tempered by the marked increase in the numbers of writers detained in 2000 compared with the previous year. The writers’ organisation International PEN monitors and campaigns on attacks against writers world-wide. An analysis of PEN’s records shows that between December 1999 and December 2000, there was an increase of 25% in the numbers of writers in prison, from 174 in 1999, to 215 at the end of 2000.
There are relatively few women on PEN’s records. Of the 784 cases it recorded up to December 2000, ranging from long-term imprisonment to threats, only 66 were women. While on the surface this may be viewed as a positive indicator, in fact it is expressive of the extent to which women’s writing is suppressed.
The causes of this are many, and are linked to social issues that deny women the opportunity to play a full and equal part in society. They range from the extreme suppression of women’s rights, to lack of access to leading positions in the media; from low literary rates to simply the burden of providing for and looking after a family.
International PEN is focussing on six women in prison or facing imprisonment, in Iran, Cuba, Turkey and China, whose cases serve to illustrate the problems faced by writers today.
In Iran, Shahla Lahiji and Mehrangiz Kar, both of whom have published extensively on women’s issues, are among five writers sentenced for their part in an academic conference held in Berlin in April 2000. Three are detained, serving sentences of four to ten years. While Lahiji and Kar are both free pending an appeal of their case, there is a very real threat that they too will be imprisoned for equally lengthy periods.
In Cuba, more than 200 people were arrested in a crackdown on events marking 10 December, Human Rights Day. All but one person, Julia Cecilia Delgado, are free. Ms Delgado, director of the Gertrudis Gomez de Avellaneda library, part of a network of independent libraries which have included censored books, is serving a one-year sentence. Although details are sketchy at present, her conviction on charges of “disrespect” are linked to her complaints that she had not been allowed to see her family when she was arrested with the other protestors.
China’s crackdown on the Falun Gong movement in 1999 has led to the most widespread civil disobedience movement since the 1989 pro-democracy movement. Of the many Falun Gong members arrested, Gu Linna stands out. An award-winning journalist for her reports on poverty, state reforms and the ecology, she is an outspoken and active member of Falun Gong. This led to her arrest in 1999, and subsequently a heavy four-year prison term.
Rape is just one of the means of torture used in prisons world-wide, against both women and men. The stigma attached to rape makes it particularly difficult for its victims to report and thus to bring their persecutors to trial. One person to have done that is the Turkish journalist Asiye Güzel Zeybek.
Arrested in February 1997 because of her connections with the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party, she remains in prison without trial, itself in contravention of Human Rights standards, four years later. In October 1997, she launched a rape complaint against eight policemen, which came to nothing when it was decided in November 2000 not to continue with the prosecution. Zeybek has written a harrowing account of her ordeal in a book published in Turkey in 1999.
Case Backgrounds
CHINA: Gu Linna
Journalist and writer Gu Linna is serving a four-year prison sentence for her membership in the banned Falun Gong movement. She was arrested on 25 November 1999 following a press conference she had helped organise in Beijing on 28 October 1999. She and fifteen other Falun Gong practitioners detained with her were preparing another conference in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou at the time of their arrest. The conferences were an open challenge to the authorities, who in October 1999 had declared Falun Gong to be an “evil cult”. On 14 June 2000 Gu Linna was tried in secret under “special arrangement”, in violation of Chinese legal procedures, and sentenced under Article 300 of the Criminal Law to four years’ imprisonment for “undermining the implementation of the law using an evil cultist organisation”. The trial took place without the notification of Gu Linna’s lawyer and relatives.
Gu Linna’s outspoken and active involvement with Falun Gong has brought her into conflict with the authorities on several occasions. She was sacked from her job as a radio broadcaster following a programme about Falun Gong broadcast on 23 April 1999. In spite of the increasing interest of the security forces, she continued openly practising Falun Gong, participating in a peaceful demonstration in Beijing on 25 April 1999 and actively campaigning for the release of leading Falun Gong practitioners who had been arrested in the government’s attempt to crush the movement. On 26 July 1999 Gu Linna was herself detained in Beijing and taken to Shijiazhunang for questioning about her involvement with Falun Gong. She was placed under house arrest until 13 September 1999, when she was fined and released for lack of evidence.
Gu Linna, 40, worked until April 1999 as director of the economics program of the People’s Broadcast Radio Station of Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province. In her prize-winning journalism she explored such topics as the fight against poverty, the reforms of state enterprises, and ecology. She also writes short stories, essays and poems that focus on the psychological impact of social reform on Chinese women.
Of course, everyone has the freedom not to listen and the freedom to refuse to publish [our statements], but I think I also have the right to tell the truth.
-from Gu Linna’s Statement of Defence 25 April 2000
International PEN considers writer and journalist Gu Linna to be detained in violation of her right to freedom of expression and association, as guaranteed by the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, and is calling for her immediate and unconditional release.
Appeals To
Appeals to:His Excellency Jiang Zemin
State Council
Beijing 100032
P.R. China
(Note: fax numbers are no longer available to the Chinese authorities. You may wish to ask the diplomatic representative of China in your country to forward your appeals.)
CUBA: Julia Cecilia Delgado
On 12 December 2000, after a three-hour trial, librarian Julia Cecilia Delgado was convicted of “disrespect” and sentenced to one-year’s imprisonment. It is believed that her conviction arose from a complaint she made about her arbitrary detention days beforehand, when she was denied the opportunity to inform her family of her arrest.
Delgado (44) is the director of the Gertrudis Gomez de Avellaneda library, part of a network of independent libraries that aims to give the Cuban populace access to books otherwise censored in the island nation. She was one of over two-hundred people arrested in early December, shortly before International Human Rights Day (10 December). The Cuban authorities rounded up those, like Delgado, whom it perceived to be dissidents in a bid to suppress activities marking the day. Whereas most of the detainees were released shortly afterwards, Delgado and others found themselves being secretly tried in closed sessions. She is serving her sentence in Manto Negro prison where she has reportedly started a hunger-strike in protest against prison conditions.
International PEN considers Julia Cecilia Delgado to be detained in violation of her right to freedom of expression and association, as guaranteed by Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and calls for her immediate and unconditional release.
Appeals To
Appeals to:Dr. Fidel Castro
Presidente de los Consejos del Estado y de Ministros
La Habana, Cuba
IRAN: Mehrangiz Kar and Shahla Lahiji
Human rights lawyer, writer and editor Mehrangiz Kar was arrested with publisher Shahla Lahiji on 29 April 2000 for participating in an academic and cultural conference held at the Heinrich Böll Institute in Berlin earlier that month. Entitled “Iran after the elections”, political and social reform in Iran were publicly debated at the conference, which was marked by strong protests by Iranian political groups in exile. It was considered by members of the Iranian judiciary to be aimed at overthrowing the Islamic regime and therefore to be “harmful to national security”. The women were released on bail on 21 June 2000. Three of their male colleagues are now in prison.
Kar, 54, and Lahiji, 59, were tried in closed hearings at Iran’s Revolutionary Court in November 2000, and on 13 January 2001 they were convicted and sentenced to four years’ imprisonment on charges of acting against national security and disseminating propaganda against the Islamic regime. They remain free on bail pending appeal. Kar is now believed to be facing three additional charges at the Civil Court, those of violating the observance of hejab (the full head and body covering required of women), denying the Islamic necessity of hejab, and propagating against the Islamic Republic of Iran. Accusations relating to the observance of hejab are reportedly particularly common against women whom the authorities wish to intimidate and harass.
Mehrangiz Kar was diagnosed with breast cancer following her release from detention, and has undergone a mastectomy and a course of chemotherapy in Iran. She is reportedly in need of urgent medical treatment overseas.
International PEN considers Mehrangiz Kar and Shahla Lahiji to be sentenced solely for the peaceful exercise of their right to freedom of expression and association, as guaranteed by Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Iran is a signatory, and is calling for their convictions to be overturned on appeal. PEN is further calling for all charges against Kar to be dropped on humanitarian grounds.
Appeals To
Appeals to:Leader of the Islamic Republic
His Excellency Ayatollah Sayed ‘Ali Khamenei
The Presidency
Palestine Avenue
Azerbaijan Intersection
Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran
(Note: there are no fax numbers available for the Iranian authorities. You may wish to ask the diplomatic representative of Iran in your country to forward your appeals.)
TURKEY: Asiye Güzel Zeybek
Asiye Güzel Zeybek, 31, editor-in-chief of Atilim before her arrest in February 1997, is accused under Article 168 of the Penal Code of connections with the banned Marxist-Leninist Communist Party, specifically for running and distributing the MLCP journal Isçinin Yolu (Worker’s Path) in 1994. In 2001, four years after her arrest, she remains in prison although no sentence against her has yet been passed.
During a trial hearing on 8 October 1997 Zeybek claimed to have been raped while under interrogation. Her complaint against eight policemen was accepted after a report from the Psycho-Social Traumatology Centre in Istanbul confirmed the attack, but in November 2000 it was decided not to proceed with the prosecution of the policemen. Hers is just one of over 100 accusations of reported police rape of prisoners in Turkish jails. Zeybek is still incarcerated at Gebze Prison. In October 1999 she published a book which gives a graphic account of the abuse she suffered at the hands of the police:
I was thrown on the floor. It was ice cold against my skin, yet I was sweating. My eyes were blindfolded, which stopped me from seeing anything but the feet of some of the men. When I tried to get away they kicked me. When I tried to scream it wasn’t my voice that I heard. They just went on shouting those dirty words at me… They took everything from me, and the only thing I wanted was to die.
International PEN considers Ayise Güzel Zeybek’s four year-prison imprisonment without conviction to be in direct denial of her right not to be subject to arbitrary detention. It calls for her immediate release pending the outcome of her trial. It is also concerned that the prosecution of prison officers accused of her rape was closed without conclusion and calls for clarification as to why the trial against them has ended.
Appeals To
Appeals to:His Excellency Hikmet Sami Turk
Minister of Justice
Adalet Bakaligi
06440 Bakaniklar
Ankara, Turkey
Fax: +90312 417 3954
