Some of you have probably read my blog post about the poetry event “Words for the Silenced” which I published about two weeks ago. My post was an invitation to a poetry human rights event and more importantly shares the stories of four writers: Ahmed Mansoor (UAE), Ashraf Fayadh (Saudi Arabia), Galal El-Behairy (Egypt) and Nedim Türfent (Turkey). All four are in prison for their words, two of them are punished for their poetry (Ashraf Fayadh and Galal El-Behairy), Ahmed Mansoor is punished for his human rights work and Nedim Türfent for his journalism. All four write poetry.
The event “Words for the Silenced” took place on 4 March at the Poetry Cafe in London and it was very special for me, because campaigning for these writers is important to me and it is wonderful, if many many emails, WhatsApp messages and Twitter Direct Messages finally result in a moving evening, in which poets, writers, artists, journalists and human rights activists show solidarity and bring us closer to the four writers and their work, by sharing their stories, but also by sharing works written for and by these four writers.
I was quite nervous before the event, whether everything would work (including the video clips) and whether we would have an audience. I was delighted that so many people came and it is wonderful that we got a lot of enthusiastic feedback about the event – by participants and by members of the audience.
I want to indulge a little bit and share in this post a series of tweets about the event which include photos and videos. I hope you like them. The tweets are from the account of the Amnesty Group Westminster Bayswater, because the event was a joint event of this Amnesty Group and Exiled Writers Ink . Most of the photos and all of the videos were taken by me. The photo of Albert Pellicer was taken by Ricardo Esteban Pineda, the photo of the audience and the photo of Ramy Essam were taken by Fatima Hagi and the photo of Fleur Brennan and Amir Darwish was taken by a member of Amnesty International UK North Africa Team:
I hope events like this help to bring attention to the plight of so many prisoners of conscience and that more people decide to continue to speak up for them and take action for them.
Bill Law published his presentation about Ahmed Mansoor in the Fair Observer. I hope the article will be read and shared widely.
I want to end with a quote from his article because it is a perfect summary of my sentiments as well:
“We in the West must not be silent in demanding that the UAE government release Ahmed Mansoor. It is already a deep stain on the UK that we have accepted so many gross violations of human rights in Egypt, in the UAE, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia in return for trade deals and weapons sales. We must demand that Alistair Burt, the Middle East minister, and Jeremy Hunt, the foreign secretary speak up, and that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office condemns the crackdown on dissent in the UAE and other Gulf states.
Ahmed would want me to mention Alya Abdulnoor, a young woman dying of cancer, chained to a hospital bed and refused permission to spend her last days at home. He’d want me to mention Dr. Nasser bin Ghaith, a distinguished economist serving 10 years, and the lawyer Mohammed al-Roken, and the many other prisoners of conscience cruelly held in jail in the UAE. He would want me to speak of the Bahraini opposition leader Sheikh Ali Salman and the human rights activist Nabeel Rajab, and thousands of other political prisoners and protesters held in Bahrain’s Jau Prison; and of Loujain al-Hathloul and dozens of other women activists held in Saudi jails, subjected to appalling abuse.
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