Banned, Censored, Harassed and Jailed

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34 Writers From 19 Countries Receive Hellman/Hammett Grants
(New York, July 22, 2008) – Thirty-four writers from 19 countries
received Hellman/Hammett grants this year in recognition of the
courage they showed when facing political persecution, Human Rights
Watch said today.

The Hellman/Hammett grants, administered by Human Rights Watch, are
given annually to writers around the world who have been targets of
political persecution. The grant program began in 1989 when the
American playwright Lillian Hellman willed that her estate be used to
assist writers in financial need as a result of expressing their
views.

“The Hellman/Hammett grants aim to help writers who dare to express
ideas that criticize official public policy or people in power,” said
Marcia Allina, who coordinates the Hellman/Hammett grant program.

Governments have used military and presidential decrees, criminal,
libel, and sedition laws to silence this year’s group of Hellman/
Hammett award winners. They have been harassed, assaulted, indicted,
jailed on trumped-up charges, or tortured merely for providing
information from nongovernmental sources. In addition to those who are
directly targeted, many others are forced to practice self-censorship.

Hellman was prompted by her experiences during the anti-communist
hysteria of the 1950s, when she and her long-time companion, the
writer Dashiell Hammett, were questioned by US congressional
committees about their political beliefs and affiliations.

Nearly 700 writers have received grants over the 19 years of the
program. The Hellman/Hammett funds, announced each spring, have
distributed some $3 million to date. The Hellman/Hammett program also
makes small emergency grants to writers who have an urgent need to
leave their country or who need immediate medical treatment after
serving prison terms or enduring torture.

Some of this year’s recipients have asked to remain anonymous because
of possible continuing danger to them and their families. Among those
are three Iraqi writers and one from Cameroon, China, Uzbekistan, and
Vietnam.

Short biographies of those who can be safely publicized follow:

Kamram Mir Hazar (Afghanistan), 32, poet, essayist, journalist and
blogger, was picked up outside the Kabul office of Internews Network
on July 4, 2007 and held in incommunicado detention for five days
under conditions that he likened to Guantanamo. After his release, he
was kept under surveillance. He and his wife, Zahra, began living at
the Internews offices to ensure their safety. He was taken into
custody again in August 2007, and was questioned and released the same
day. In fear of further harassment, Mir Hazar fled to India and
applied for resettlement through the UN High Commission for Refugees.
He now lives in Jessheim, Norway.

Eynulla Fatullayev (Azerbaijan), journalist and outspoken critic of
the Azerbaijani government, wrote in various independent newspapers
including the two largest, Realny Azerbaijan and Gundelik Azerbaijan,
both of which he founded and headed as editor-in chief. He also wrote
for the weekly magazine Monitor, whose editor was murdered in March
2005. All three publications have now been shut down. Fatullayev was
convicted in September 2006 and April 2007 on charges of criminal
libel and insult. In October 2007, he was convicted again, this time
on charges of terrorism, inciting ethnic hatred, and tax evasion. The
terrorism charges stem from an article he wrote criticizing the
Azerbaijani government’s foreign policy. He is currently serving an
eight-and-a-half-year prison sentence.

Ganimed Zahidov (Azerbaijan), editor-in-chief of Azadlig, often
criticized high-ranking government officials and as a result was
subject to harassment, threats, and physical attacks. Officials
brought numerous law suits against him personally and against his
paper, resulting in hundreds of thousands of US dollars in fines. He
was arrested in November 2007 and sentenced in March 2008 to four
years in prison on hooligan charges which local and international
observers consider spurious.

Sakit Zahidov (Azerbaijan), 49, journalist, poet, and satirist, uses
the pen name Mirza Sakit. He is Ganimed’s brother. His poems, which
often refer to government corruption, have been published in Azadlig,
several other papers, and collected in two books. On June 23, 2006,
one week after publication of his second collection, Zahidov was
detained on spurious drug charges and sentenced to three years in
prison.

Chheang Bopha and Duong Sokha (Cambodia), 28 and 27 respectively,
reporters at Cambodge Soir, Cambodia’s leading French language daily
newspaper (http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2008/07/22/
cambod19420.htm). They quit in 2007 to protest the dismissal of a
colleague who was fired for writing about a report by Global Witness,
an international environmental organization that documented the
alleged complicity of top government officials in illegal logging.
Striking Cambodian staff elected Sokha as their spokesperson to demand
that the fired journalist be reinstated and editorial independence be
guaranteed. The owners responded by closing the paper and reopening it
several months later under new editorial management. Most of the
former employees returned to work without reassurance of editorial
independence, but Sokha and Bopha refused despite intense pressure to
do so. Instead they joined with other journalists to start an
independent internet publication written in Cambodian and French Ka-
Set (http://www.ka-set.info).

Ricardo González Alfonso (Cuba), 48, head of the Manuel Márquez
Sterling Journalists Association and correspondent for Reporters Sans
Frontières, was the editor of De Cuba, the first independent magazine
to appear in Cuba since Castro came to power. González was arrested in
Havana on March 18, 2003. Police searched his home and seized a
computer, a fax, a printer, cameras, tape-recorders and a lot of his
writings. He was tried and convicted on April 4, 2003 for “acts
against the independence or the territorial integrity of the State”
and is serving a 20-year prison sentence. He has continued writing
while in prison; a collection of his poetry, Hombres sin Rostro (Men
without Faces) was published in September 2005. In 2004, he was
operated on for gallstones and reportedly suffers from multiple health
problems, including digestive problems, hypertension and hepatitis.

Wael Abbas (Egypt), 32, freelance journalist, covers issues considered
taboo by Egyptian authorities, like reporting on police brutality and
workers’ strikes, documenting human rights abuses, and campaigning to
release political detainees. He uses video footage and colloquial
Egyptian Arabic to reach a younger audience that might find classical
Arabic stilted. Abbas says that the government issued arrest warrants
for him and is trying to ruin his reputation by spreading lies that he
converted to Christianity from Islam and is a homosexual. In 2006, an
assistant minister of interior for legal affairs went on television to
falsely state that Abbas had a criminal record. In 2007, harassment
included suspension of his YouTube account and denial of access to his
Yahoo email, both without explanation.

Nguele Felicia (Equatorial Guinea), reporter and deputy editor,
covered government news for El Diario, a privately owned newspaper
that was shut down by the government due to its objectivity in
reporting government wrongdoing. In 2006, after 17 years on the staff,
Felicia was arrested, tortured and sentenced to eight months in prison
for reporting on a scandal that included the president’s role in
embezzlement of oil revenues.

Luis Alberto Pérez Barillas (Guatemala), journalist, worked at his
hometown radio station and as a regional correspondent for Prensa
Libre, the country’s highest- circulation daily newspaper and its
sister publication Nuestro Diario. In June 2003, after he wrote about
the involvement of ruling FRG party senior officials in the 1978-84
civil conflict that saw the massacre of 200,000 Guatemalans, Barillas
started receiving telephone threats. A week later, a homemade bomb
exploded at his home. He went into hiding, but the threats continued.
He fled to Canada and is studying to improve his English.

Saroop Dhruv (India), poet and playwright, has a PhD in Gujarati
language and folklore. Her writing has been censored because of her
human rights and anti-corruption messages. Dhruv’s plays were banned
after the 2002 Gujarat pogrom in which as many as 2,000 people died.
When she tried to produce a play about the pogrom, the local
government refused to give her a permit for an auditorium.

Fatima Tlisova (Kabardino-Balkaria), journalist, worked for a number
of independent outlets including Novoya Gazeta, the Russian news
agency REGNUM, the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, Radio Free
Europe/Radio Liberty and the Associated Press, covering human rights
violations, torture, detention, the rise of militant Islamic
movements, and abuse of power by the authorities. In 2000, she was
attacked by a gang of youths who did not like the way she was covering
the presidential election. She was attacked and beaten in 2002 and
again in 2004 by unidentified men who said this was “revenge” for
publishing articles in English and assisting foreign journalists.
Similar incidents followed in 2005 and 2006. In 2006, after her home
was broken into, she suffered kidney failure, but doctors were unable
to diagnose the illness and refused to give her copies of the clinical
test results. On returning home, her kidneys failed again, and in
January 2007, she had a heart attack. She recovered quickly whenever
she did not stay at home leading colleagues to conclude she was a
victim of deliberate poisoning and her life was in danger. The
Associated Press, her employer at the time, referred her to the US
Embassy in Moscow. She applied for a visa, was granted refugee status,
and moved to the United States in March 2007. She studied English and
has been awarded a Nieman fellowship at Harvard University for the
academic year 2008/2009.

Stanislav Dmitrievski (Russia), editor-in-chief of Pravozashchita, a
monthly paper of the banned Russian-Chechen Friendship Society, was
charged in September 2002 under Article 282 of the Russian Criminal
Code for inciting hatred between national groups and attempting to
overthrow the government by publishing statements by Chechen rebel
leaders. On February 3, 2006, Dmitrievski was found guilty at the
Soviet District Court in Nizhny Novgorod of “inciting inter-ethnic
hatred by using the mass media” and was given a two-year suspended
sentence with four years probation. This puts him at risk of immediate
imprisonment at any time.

Mohamed Amiin Sheik Adow (Somalia), 34, was the program director at
Radio Shabelle, a leading Somali news outlet that covered both the
government and the militia during the insurgency in Mogadishu. He was
also a frequent contributor to international news organizations. On
September 17, 2007, Somali Transitional National Government security
forces raided Radio Shabelle and detained 19 staff members. They
attacked again the next day and forced the station off the air. As
program director, Amiin was often quoted about the attacks, which
resulted in his receiving multiple death threats. On October 19, 2007,
Radio Shabelle’s station manager was assassinated outside his home,
and at least seven other journalists were killed during the year.
Unable to work and targeted for reporting on the war, Amiin fled to
Sweden and applied for asylum

Abdullahi Mohamed Hassan (Somalia) co-founded Qaran, one of the
largest daily newspapers in Mogadishu and then set up, Ayaamaha, his
own independent paper. He has been writing about the unjust treatment
of some minority clans in Somalia and criticizing politicians and
traditional elders for failing to address mistreatment to minority
communities. In October 2007, Somali government forces raided his
office and held him in prison for a day. After being released, he
began receiving death threats. Then several gunmen visited his office,
but fortunately he was out and they left. This prompted him to flee to
Nairobi.

Lucie Umukundwa (Rwanda), journalist. On August 14, 2006, while on
assignment at a news conference for Reporters Sans Frontières,
Umukundwa asked the president of Rwanda why journalists were being
harassed. Later that day, military intelligence officials visited her
home. She was not there, so they beat up her brother and threatened
the rest of the family if Umukundwa continued “to snoop around what is
not her business.” She felt she had to go into hiding and fled to
Kampala, Uganda. The military has threatened to kill her if she
returns to Rwanda.

Ulugbek Khaidarov (Uzbekistan), journalist, was threatened and
attacked by Uzbek authorities for many years because he wrote about
political injustices and human rights abuses. After the Andijan
uprising in 2005, he continued writing under pseudonyms for online
publications. On September 14, 2006, he was arrested, falsely charged
with extortion, tried and sentenced to six years in prison. After
serving two months (during which he was tortured), he was released in
response to pressure by international media and human rights
organizations. Within a month of his release, Khaidarov and his wife
fled to Kazakhstan. Still pursued there, they registered with the UN
High Commission for Refugees and were relocated to Vancouver, Canada.

Le Quoc Quan (Vietnam), 36, lawyer, who has written extensively on
civil rights, political pluralism and religious freedom, was picked up
by police four days after returning from a year spent in the United
States on a National Endowment for Democracy fellowship. For several
days after his arrest, his whereabouts were unknown and no charges
against him were publicized. Quan was later charged under Article 79
of the Criminal Code for “activities aimed at overthrow of the
government.” He was released on June 16, 2007. On November 27, 2007,
while trying to attend an appeals court hearing on two fellow
attorneys, Quan was beaten and taken to a local police station to
prevent him from attending the hearing.

Le Thi Cong Nhan (Vietnam), 29, lawyer, a leading member of a new
generation of young activists who are building organizations inside
Vietnam with links to groups outside. She was a founding member of the
Committee for Human Rights in Vietnam and spokesperson for the Vietnam
Progressive Party, one of several opposition parties that surfaced
during a brief period in 2006 when the Vietnamese government
temporarily eased restrictions on freedom of expression. As a frequent
writer of appeals for democratic change in online newspapers and
blogs, she has been subjected to harassment, intimidation and house
arrest. She was arrested in March 2007, accused of disseminating
“hostile propaganda” and sentenced to four years in prison on charges
of disseminating propaganda against the government under article 88 of
the criminal code.

Nguyen Phuong Anh (Vietnam), 36, is one of the most prolific and
widely read dissident writers in Vietnam today. Formerly a successful
businessman, he owned a 1,000-seat restaurant and a thriving import-
export company. Then he became involved in the struggle for human
rights and democracy and began writing satiric critiques of the
government on Vietnamese websites. He is a staff member of the To Quoc
(fatherland) underground bulletin, which is distributed quietly in
Vietnam and through the internet. As soon as he became an activist, he
was summoned to police headquarters and told to mind his own business.
When he ignored the warnings, full-fledged harassment began. Police
came to his restaurant in uniform, state newspapers reported lies and
the restaurant went bankrupt. Goods imported by his Mua Thu company
were confiscated, all his bookkeepers suddenly quit, the company was
fined for not paying taxes and went broke. Nguyen Phuong lost all his
fortune and is crippled with debt. Along with all this, he has been
repeatedly detained and beaten by the police.

Father Thadeus Nguyen Van Ly (Vietnam), 60, one of the founders of the
underground Tu Do Ngon Luan (Freedom of Expression), is receiving a
Hellman/Hammett grant for the second time. Father Ly has been writing
appeals for religious freedom, freedom of expression and a multi-party
system in Vietnam for more than 30 years, resulting in 15 years spent
in prison since 1977. While in prison in 2001, it is believed that he
was drugged and beaten before a visit by a US congressional delegation
so that his words were slurred and he uncharacteristically admitted to
having committed criminal acts. He was released in 2005 and promptly
returned to advocacy and dissident writing. Father Ly was one of the
founders of the democracy movement in Vietnam known as Block 8406,
named after the date of its inception on April 8, 2006. His latest
arrest in February 2007 led to a prison sentence of another eight
years on charges of disseminating propaganda against the government.

Nguan Xuan Nghia (Vietnam), 58, journalist who also writes novels,
short stories, poems and essays, comes from a family with strong
revolutionary credentials; his father joined the Vietnamese Communist
Party (VCP) in 1936 and his oldest brother was killed in the first
Indochina war. Nguan Xuan Nghia continues to be a member of the
Association of Vietnamese Writers, despite his outspoken position
against the VCP. As a journalist, he wrote for all the main government
papers until 2003 when the government banned him because of his pro-
democracy activities. Since then, he has been arrested, detained and
interrogated multiple times; his house has been searched twice; he has
been denounced at public meetings and socially isolated. On November
27, 2007, he was badly beaten by policemen at the Hanoi court house
when he showed up to demonstrate in support of two fellow dissidents
who were on trial.

Nguyen Xuan Tu (Vietnam), 68, researcher in biology, is one of
Vietnam’s most respected dissident writers. Writing under his pen name
of Ha Sy Phu, he first became known in 1987 for his essay, “Let’s go
forward hand in hand under the guide of Reason.” He continued writing
philosophical essays, satirical pieces and poetry that are published
abroad and clandestinely in Vietnam. Over the past 20 years, he has
suffered repression, social isolation, police interrogation,
detention, imprisonment and house arrest. Because of his widespread
influence on other dissident writers and the democracy movement, for
the past 11 years he has been prohibited from owning a telephone or
using the internet. Despite bad health, he continues to write and
participate in the debate about democracy.

Pham Hong Son (Vietnam), 40, physician, writes articles and open
letters that are circulated by hand in Vietnam and posted on websites
of the Vietnamese diaspora. He was arrested and imprisoned in March
2002 on charges of espionage under article 80 of the criminal code for
writing about human rights and democracy. Released in August 2006, he
immediately resumed writing even though he is under administrative
probation, a form of house arrest. He has been unable to find a job
despite his training as a medical doctor and in business
administration.

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