Greeting Statement By Anthony Appiah, President of PEN American Center

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Dear ICPC Members and Supporters, Dear Friends and Colleagues,

Greetings and good wishes from New York!

I address you as the President of the PEN American Center, but above all as a colleague in a great multi-national community of literary men and women, who recognize the importance of literature for people of every nation. Your work for free expression in China has the support of readers and writers of many nations, in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas, through the international PEN Family. We are all proud of the work you do. We have tried in every way we can to support it. We will continue to do so.

We are also immensely proud of the courage of your colleagues who are now in prison for their work in our common cause. I think especially of your former President, Liu Xiaobo, whom we had the honor of nominating for the Nobel Peace Prize. When he was first imprisoned we said that we would not forget him. We have kept our word. With other members of the PEN Family we have worked to keep his name and his case in front of leaders in many nations. We ask our governments to remind the Chinese government often that they, like every government, have an obligation to respect the human rights of everyone within their territories; rights that Liu has been denied. We remind the media in our society that he remains in prison and that his wife Liu Xia is kept—in breach of China’s own laws—from living a normal life. Because you, our friends at the ICPC, keep us in touch with what is happening in China, we recognize that it is important to insist—as Liu himself would, too—that he is one among far too many victims of Chinese repression. We remember all of them, supporting in particular our ICPC colleagues who are in prison—Shi Tao, Yang Tianshui, and Zhu Yufu—or under effective house arrest, like Ye Du and Teng Biao, or denied the right to speak their minds. We will continue to do so.

Our work for free expression in China does not arise from negative feelings about China. Far from it. We are all aware of the tremendous advances in material living standards in China over the last few decades. Like you, we have watched with enormous satisfaction as hundreds of millions of people have been taken out of poverty. As a literary organization, committed to the global sharing of the literary cultures of all societies, we begin with the profoundest respect for China’s literary traditions. We have a deep desire to know more about what writers in Chinese and in China’s many languages—the Zhōngguó Yǔwén (中国语文)–are saying today. In silencing China’s writers, the government of the PRC is not only denying Chinese people access to these treasures, they are limiting all of us, inside and outside China, who want to read their work. As the Preamble to the Chinese Constitution rightly says: “The future of China is closely linked to the future of the world.” We too believe, as it also says, in “peaceful coexistence in developing … cultural exchanges with other countries.” We have written regularly to the Chinese President and to other officials to ask them to change their policies and to live up to the promises of free expression laid out so clearly in Article 35 of the Chinese Constitution. We will continue to do so.

Nor do we limit our criticisms to the government of China. We have been working, for example, to get our own government to face up to the horrors of the illegal torture it has inflicted in many places since the terrorist attacks of 9/11. This is because the principles we believe in are universal principles. Each society has to find its own way to respect those principles in its own law and institutions. We do not believe that anyone should dictate to the United States or to China how each of us should do this. But we do believe that people of every nation have the right to demand—as fellow human beings—the protections of these fundamental rights for all men and women, at home and abroad. We have made this demand, as I say, of our own government and of dozens of others. So have the other more than one hundred other PEN Centers. We will continue to do so.

My colleagues from PEN American Center and PEN International who are with you today represent just some of the great PEN family. As you know, they have just returned from a visit in solidarity with Chinese writers under threat. I would have been with them—and with you—if I could have. But the Chinese consulate in New York denied me a visa. And so I must hear of their work and of their meetings with you in Hong Kong, like other members of our association, when they return. But you should know that they took with them to Beijing the same strong commitments of our support that I make to you today. That support will be firm and unwavering. We will continue to work alongside you in the struggle for free expression in China, as we work alongside all the PEN Centers, for free expression in our own country and in theirs.

Anthony Appiah
President of PEN American Center