Eynulla Fatullayev is deemed a Prisoner of Conscience by PEN and Amnesty International.
This lunchtime, English PEN will be demonstrating for Eynullah Fatullayev, the imprisoned Azerbaijani editor now on hunger-strike. Its a joint action with Amnesty UK, Article 19 and Index on Censorship. Our call for support was printed on the Guardian letters page this morning:
Today at 12 noon, free speech campaigners will protest outside the Azerbaijani embassy in London, calling for an end to the persecution of jailed journalist Eynulla Fatullayev. We urge all Guardian readers who believe in free speech to join us.
Newspaper editor Fatullayev is serving an eight-and-a-half-year prison sentence based on trumped-up charges of terrorism and defamation. In April this year the European court of human rights ruled that he had been wrongfully imprisoned and called for his immediate release.
Fatullayev is now on trial on a new accusation of possessing illegal drugs – a charge widely believed to have been fabricated in order to keep him in prison.
Freedom of expression is the bedrock of human rights, without which other abuses go unheralded and unchecked. Those of us who can speak out must stand up for those to whom free speech is denied.
Kate Allen Director, Amnesty International UK, Agnès Callamard Executive director, Article 19, Lisa Appignanesi President, English PEN, Carole Seymour-Jones Chair, Writers in Prison Committee, English PEN, John Kampfner Index on Censorship, Alan Ayckbourn Playwright, William Boyd Author, Philip Pullman Author
I will be there taking photos which I will post to the English PEN Flickr stream later today.
The letter in The Guardian is an example of a multi-signatory letter, an age old tactic for all types of political campaigner. The prominent names (of which we have many at PEN) make the letter newsworthy and ensure its publication at the most timely point. Other recent examples include our complaint about the UK visa system in The Times, our appeal about Jaballa Matar in the same paper, and more than one complaint about the new law on criminals’ memoirs.
However, opposite our multi-signatory letter is this complaint from Mohsin Khan of Wadham College:
While there have been several timely and crucial multi-signatory letters, we must bear in mind that MPs, celebrities, and chief executives have the contacts and means to get together and compose a press release. If the issue is then deemed important by the national media, it will be picked up in the news section of papers. The joy of the Guardian letters page is that it lets individuals contribute to national discussions when they would otherwise be ignored – and we must safeguard this space.
Guilty as charged, I’m afraid. I do not think this is a tactic that activists will abandon any time soon, so Mohsin must rely on the good judgement of the letters page editors to keep the debate eclectic, and too keep the diverse voices prominent.
