13 March 2001
HIGHLIGHTS WOMEN WRITERS IN PRISON
To mark International Women's Day on 8 March, the Writers in Prison Committee (WiPC) of International PEN released a report on women writers in prison. The report notes that one of the most encouraging events of the last year was the November release of Flora Brovina, the Kosovo-Albanian doctor, women's rights activist and writer, after 20 months in Serb detention. However, WiPC says that the euphoria surrounding the recent release of Brovina and other high profile writers is tempered by the 25 percent increase in the number of writers detained, from 174 in 1999 to 215 at the end of 2000.
There are relatively few women on WiPC's records: of the 784 cases it recorded up to December 2000, ranging from threats to long-term imprisonment, only 66 were women. This may seem to be a positive indicator, but WiPC says it actually illustrates the extent to which women's writing is suppressed. The factors involved range from extreme suppression of women's rights to lack of access to leading positions in the media, from low literacy rates to the burden of looking after a family.
WiPC's report focuses on five women whose cases illustrate the problems faced by writers today. In Iran, Shahla Lahiji and Mehrangiz Kar are among five writers sentenced for participating in an academic conference in Berlin last April. Currently free pending an appeal of their cases, they could face lengthy prison sentences. Julia Cecilia Delgado, director of an independent library in Cuba, is serving a one-year sentence for "disrespect" following a crackdown on events marking Human Rights Day on 10 December. In China, Gu Linna, an award-winning journalist for her reports on poverty, state reforms and ecology, was sentenced in 1999 to four years in prison for her involvement with the Falun Gong movement. Turkish journalist Asiye Güzel Zeybek, in prison without trial since 1997 because of her connections with the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party, has courageously spoken out about her ordeal as a victim of rape by police officers.
For the full report, and addresses to write appeals on these cases, visit http://www.ifex.org/alerts/view.html?id=8317.
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