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• Dina Meza, whose physical safety as a journalist has been threatened in her native Honduras; • Fazil Say, who caused a stir when he sent out tweets deemed to be “religious defamation”; • Zahra Rahnavard, held under unofficial house arrest because of her husband’s political activism; and • Kunchok Tsephel Gopey Tsang, a journalist currently serving a 15-year sentence for allegedly “disclosing state secrets.” • Rodney Sieh, the publisher and editor-in-chief of Liberian newspaper FrontPageAfrica, jailed for failing to pay libel damagesPolitical activists and writers on Canadian soil may be far less threatened than many of their international cohorts, but today is an opportunity for Canadians to reflect on the prisoner as author. According to the University of Ottawa’s Justin Piche, prisoners are doubly marginalized individuals. “First, these authors are marginalized by structures of domination (e.g. class and race) that shaped the circumstances leading to their forced confinement in human warehouses,” he writes in an upcoming article for the academic journal Qualitative Inquiry. “Second, these authors are marginalized in academic worlds and literary spheres where their contributions to knowledge are seldom recognized.” Imprisoned to silence their dissenting voices, authors such as those featured by PEN are being penalized for excercising their right to free expression.
Get involved
In Toronto? Join PEN Canada and mark the day with a live painting to honour writers Nurmuhemmet Yasin, Eskinder Nega and Dina Meza. Visit Pen International for ways to get involved and help bring about change to the systems that oppress and confine writers all over the world.Miles Kenyon is a radio and digital journalist based in Toronto.
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