During the last year, PEN Canada has continued to defend writers who are targeted for peaceful dissent. Last February Eskinder Nega became the fifth winner of our One Humanity Award to secure an early release from prison. He was freed from an 18-year sentence. This year, the Azerbaijani blogger Rashad Ramazanov and the Turkish writer and artist Zehra Doğan – both honorary members of our centre – were also granted early releases.
Our most recent One Humanity Award was given, for an unprecedented second time, to Nasrin Sotoudeh, the Iranian lawyer currently serving a 38-year prison sentence and facing the prospect of 144 lashes. Accepting the award on her behalf, the human rights defender Nazanin Afshin-Jam MacKay read a message from Nasrin, which ended: “The Middle East and my country, Iran, need freedom of expression. By this I mean that uncensored words must be allowed to develop in a free environment [and, to] create such conditions, one needs to learn and receive support from other societies.” Nasrin thanked PEN Canada “and all its members for their support” and sent her “most sincere gratitude from the women’s section of Evin prison.”
In September we staged a protest outside the Russian consulate to mark the 100th day of Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov’s hunger strike. (Sentsov broke the strike 45 days later, after his jailers threatened to force-feed him.) In September 2019, Oleg was one of 35 Ukrainians who transferred from Moscow to Kiev in the first prisoner swap between Russia and Ukraine.
In February 2019, at a patrons’ salon, Randy Boyagoda and Catherine Porter discussed how novelists and memoirists negotiate the grey area between fact and fiction in an age of “fake news.” In April, our gala celebrated the life and work of Margaret Atwood and Graeme Gibson – co-founders of our centre. Rick Mercer emceed an auction of an autographed pilot script of The Handmaid’s Tale, an annotated first edition of the novel, and the chance for a book club to host Ms. Atwood after the release of The Testaments, her long-anticipated sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale.
In August 2019 we built on the success of our 2017 security workshops for community radio journalists in Guatemala by enrolling three journalists in further training by Global Journalist Security. We are also working to increase our engagement with indigenous writers and developing a pilot program that helps exiled writers compile basis-of-claim statements for their refugee hearings.
PEN Canada has maintained residencies for exiled writers at George Brown College and the Humber School for Writers. Last year we established Canada’s first City-of-Refuge in Surrey, British Columbia – in partnership with Simon Fraser and Kwantlen universities, the City of Surrey and the International City of Refuge Network (ICORN). Our emergency fund also provided assistance to endangered journalists and their families.
Our RBC New Voices program and Ken Filkow prizes celebrated emerging literary talent and recognized Canadians who have defended freedom of expression.