Australian Author Imprisoned in Thailand

An Australian author and teacher, Harry Nicolaides, has been jailed for 3 years under Thailand's draconian law of lèse majesté - insulting the monarchy. (Do go watch the video footage and see the poor guy shuffling around in chains - completely shameful!)

Nicholaides self-published a novel called Verisimilitude four years a go which sold a total of 7 copies. (The only copy which is still known to exist apparently sits on the shelf of the Thai National Library, freely available to the public!) The book contained a short passage, just 103 words long, which describes the rather flamboyant private life of an unnamed Thai prince.

(I dug around and found the actual extract here if your curiosity is getting the better of you!)

Nicolaides admitted the charge of insulting the royal family, but said he was unaware he was committing an offence.

The writer is by no means the only one to be suffering from this outdated and draconian law which, it seems, is (suprise, suprise) being misued by politicians.

The Australian Embassy more or less ignored the case! I see nothing about Nicolaides plight on Sydney PEN's page (something that does surprise me!).

But PEN American Centre has launched a protest and lists addresses where appeals can be sent.

I join with them in :

• Expressing serious concern about the detention and charge against writer Harry Nicolaides;

• Calling for his immediate and unconditional release in accordance with Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Thailand is a signatory.

Postscript :

Yusof found a PDF of the whole book (complete with library stamp!) - read and enjoy!

You can add your name to a petition to stop lèse majesté in Thailand here.

English PEN Calls for RPK's Release

The English branch of international writers' organisation PEN is calling for the immediate and unconditional release of Malaysian blogger Raja Petra Kamaruddin saying that it is in violation of Article 19 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. RPK was sentenced without trial to two-years in prison on 22 September 2008 under the Internal Security Act (ISA) for his critical writings published online.

(Although was it really that article on Islam that got him detained or his piece linking the wife of a very high profile politician to a spectacularly gruesome murder? I am very confused. I guess we have no way of knowing what the truth is since the case against him won't come to trial.)

PEN also provide a list of contacts to whom you can make your appeal. And should you be so inspired, you can buy a t-shirt to support RPK here.

Tesco in Hot Thai Sauce

Member of English PEN, including authors Mark Haddon, Nick Hornby (right), Joanne Harris, Marina Lewycka and Deborah Moggach have sent an open letter to Tesco chief Sir Terry Leahy protesting :

..."grossly disproportionate" libel actions against critics in Thailand who have questioned the growth of the supermarket chain. ... Siratranont, a former Thai MP, is facing up to two years in jail and a £16.4m libel damages claim for saying that Tesco was expanding aggressively at the expense of small local retailers. He was served with writs for criminal defamation and civil libel. Kamol Kamoltrakul (below) a business columnist, is being sued for £1.6m damages for alleging that Tesco Lotus, the supermarket's trading name in Thailand, had sought to minimise its Thai tax liabilities. Kamol, who was paid £16 for the column, faces bankruptcy if he loses. Nongnart Harnvilai, another columnist, is also being sued for £1.6m after she wrote in a short, tongue-in-cheek article that the company did not "love" Thailand. In the writ, Tesco claimed that the article had damaged its reputation.

It is entirely necessary that journalists and others should be free to ask questions about huge foreign corporation expanding aggressively in their own country. Suing those writer seems to me grossly insensitive, and the amounts involved hugely disproportionate, and I add my voice to those protesting the court actions.

Tesco, of course, has a presence here in Malaysia but doesn't seem to be expanding as quickly - perhaps because of competition from Carrefour and Giant hypermarkets.

Postscript :

Online magazine The FirstPost points out that :

The protest by Hornby et al is not without risk. According to The Bookseller magazine combined sales of their books through Tesco are estimated at £2.5m.

Another Postscript :

If discussing the impact of supermarkets on a local economy were a criminal offence in Britain, hosts of prominent journalists would find themselves in prison.

argues Lisa Appignanesi on the Guardian blog.

Yet Another Postscript :

More about this case and Tesco's reponse in the Times.

Just Be Thankful

... you aren't a writer in these countries.

1) Iran

where according to Saeed Kamali Dehgan in the Observer authors are becoming increasingly disheartened and disinclined to work following the banning of many important contemporary and international novels. (I blogged a short time back about the banning of the Farsi translation of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Memories of My Melancholy Whores.) The crackdown has included Persian books too, with writers finding it very difficult to get the official approval they need to publish.

Worse still:

The novelist Yaghoub Yadali was recently illegally imprisoned for 40 days by the government for several passages from his novel Mores of Unrest, a book which had ministry permission. He was eventually charged with dissemination of falsehood and sentenced to three months' imprisonment, as well as being required to write three mandatory articles. This led to an outcry among many Iranian writers, who believe that the government is invading the imagination

The internet is providing an avenue for authors though:

Reza Ghassemi, an important Iranian novelist based in France, recently published his new novel, The Abracadabra Murmured by Lambs, on the internet in a free ebook PDF format instead of facing government censorship and the formal permission procedure. His enovel has been reviewed and welcomed by the huge Iranian blog community much more warmly than if it had been published on paper.

2) Myanmar

where according to the People's Online Daily, authors have been urged :

... to serve the national interest and educate people with literature as well as to lead people applying modern arts, new thoughts, theories and ideas.

Nothing like using your art to prop up a corrupt regime, is there?

It's worth going back to Aida Edemariam's article here for a more realistic view of how things are. The delights include arrests, imprisonment and harassment.

3) Vietnam

where nothing at all seems to be happening on the literary scene. VietNamNet noted* that its authors seem to be in hibernation. Several prominent writers and poets passed on, which could be one the reasons.

Still government crackdowns on writers doesn't exactly create the optimum creative environment, does it?


To point out the obvious : good writing does not thrive under a totalitarian regime.

* found via Literary Saloon.com

David T.K. Wong Prize Cancelled

Blog reader Janet Tay wrote to tell me that the one of the most important short story competitions, the David T. K. Wong Prize, has been cancelled. English PEN which administers the award cites economic factors and International PEN's long term strategy for the future.

As Janet points out, there really aren't many competitions open to international entries. Let's hope International PEN comes up with something good to put in its place soon!

Throwing Bricks in Brick Lane

I enjoyed Monica Ali's Booker shortlisted Brick Lane very much, and so did the members of my reading group who found themselves sympathetic to this story about Nazneen, a young Bangladeshi woman who comes to London's East End as a result of an arranged marriage.

Now a film is being made of the book, but protests by the Bangladeshi community mean that Brick Lane, cannot be used for the actual filming. The street has been the home of successive waves of immigrant communities, and now is famous for its Bangladeshi restaurants. It was the backdrop for some of the scenes in the novel, but Ruby Films production company, concerned for safety of cast and crew, has taken the advice of the police and decided to shoot exterior scenes elsewhere in the city.

Local business leader, Abdus Salique, is leading the protest, and has threatened to publicly burn copies of the book, declaring that it degrades his community. Not all quarters of the Brick Lane Bangladeshi community stand with him though and Independent columnist Johann Hari declared the campaign was part of:

a cascade of protest by ultra-conservatives within Europe’s immigrant communities trying to silence women from their own neighborhoods calling for change.

The fun and games and name-calling really began in earnest, though, when so-called feminist writer, Germain Greer, waded into the fray, to support the protests against the book and screamed hysterically in the Guardian:

Writers are treacherous; they will sneak up on you and write about you in terms that you don't recognise. They will take your reality, pull strands from it and weave them with their own impressions into a tissue that is more real than your reality because it is text. ... Every individual, every community ever to be written about suffers the same shock of non-recognition, and feels the same sense of invasion and betrayal.

Salman Rushdie in turn declared Greer 'a sanctimonious philistine' and pointed out that she is the most treacherous writer of all, raking up the embers of an earlier bitter feud. (In an article on recent celebrity spats, Emile Saner said Rushdie's attack on Greer made 'surviving a fatwa look like having a long bath with a good book'!)

Other writers, including Hari Kunzru, weighed in, with English PEN issuing a statement:

It would be best if we could show that this is not the Free Speech absolutists vs an embattled minority (which is the way the story now looks, though that doesn't reflect the reality on the ground); but rather a small group of authoritarians who don't understand the nature of fiction vs a much larger us that includes many progressive Bangladeshis and others in the Brick Lane area.

PEN goes on to warn:

Without strong political leadership, Britain will become an increasingly hostile climate for writers, with far-reaching and damaging impact on our creative industries, and receding hopes of building a genuinely pluralist society.

And of course wider questions are being asked, as Alan Cowell writes in the New York Times:

In some ways, the debate has revived a much wider discussion in Europe about whether free speech may be limited by the sensitivities of people who feel affronted by it. Should old Western societies, in other words, rewrite their definitions of liberty to accommodate the sensitivities of others?

Most definitely not.

Or let's just bury fiction alive, why don't we?

I am very interested to hear the opinions of the Bangladeshi community, but there are ways and there are ways of getting your point across and burning books just makes you look like an yobbish ignoramus.

Salique calls Brick Lane, 'an icon of Britain as it is now'. I remember it in the '70's as a place where you could get the best curry in town. Now you can't even walk down the road without being constantly harrassed by Bangladeshi restaurant workers waving menus under your nose promising gastronomic wonders the cooking sadly fails to fulfil.

Living Memorial for Saro Wiwa

A moving memoir in today's Observer by Ken Wiwa.

Ken Wiwa was one of the "stars" of last year's KL Literary festival arriving on these shores courtesy of the Canadian High Commission. Wiwa, of course, is the son of Nigerian writer Ken Saro Wiwa, who was imprisoned, tortured and executed ten years ago for leading protests on behalf of the Ogoni people who were being screwed by oil giant Shell in the Niger delta.

I'd expected Wiwa's book In the Shadow of a Saint it to be an extended song of praise for the great man his father undoubtedly was. It turned out to be an extremely moving and honest account of a sometimes very fraught father-son relationship, and a wider exploration of the legacy of the pain and confusion a political martyr can bequeath his children. (You can listen to an interview with Wiwa about the book and his father's life here.)

Felt very sad reading the Guardian piece that this is the first I've heard about plans to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Saro Wiwa's execution with performance and readings around the world. Couldn't we also mark the anniversary here somehow?