She now lives in Norway, after she had to leave her homeland Iran for her own opinion. She was detained for five days, and in Tehran's notorious Evin prison, that is an eternity. Now Asieh Amini is free in a foreign land, and Oxfam-Novib is presenting her with the PEN Award. A great opening for the Writers Unlimited Winternachten Festival, which kicked off with this presentation and subsequent debate.
There were more PEN Awards. The international writers' association (Poets, Editors, Essayists, Novelists), which advocates for persecuted writers, supports writing refugees and persecuted people through the award with a one-off sum of 2,500 euros. The prize has previously gone to Hrant Dink (Turkey), Duong Thu Huong (Vietnam) and Anna Politkovskaya (Russia). Last year, Russian filmmaker Andrei Nekrasov took the award.
Apart from Amini, there are four more winners, but none of them could (or dared) come to The Hague. We list them here:
- Mikhail Beketov, the Russian journalist and former editor of the independent newspaper 'Khimkinskaya Pravda'
- Rachid Nino, the Moroccan editor of the daily 'Almasae' and owner of the 'Massae Media Group',
- Jesus Lemus Barajas, Mexican journalist and writer, former editor of the daily newspaper 'El Tiempo'
- Alhaj Warrag and Abdul-Moneim Suleiman, respectively Sudanese founder and editor-in-chief of the Arabic newspaper 'Ajras el Hurriya'.
We will report on the subsequent debate later. The Dodo Festival Day newspaper will be at Writers Unlimited until 22 January. From Friday 20 January 7pm to Saturday 21 January overnight, we will hold a liveblog at.
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Says : PEN Award for Iranian founder 'Stop Stoning Forever' campaign #wu12 http://t.co/8Ea8DFdS
PEN Award for Iranian founders 'Stop Stoning Forever' http://t.co/iVAmcYiR PEN
RT @culturepress: http://t.co/iKv87fYV PEN Award for Iranian founder 'Stop Stoning Forever' campaign #wu12
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