Sochi 2014: world authors join protest against Putin
More than 200 prominent international authors, including Günter Grass, Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood and Jonathan Franzen, have joined forces to denounce the "chokehold" they say Russia's anti-gay and blasphemy laws place on the freedom of expression, amid a growing swell of protest on the eve of the opening of the Sochi Winter Olympics.
The authors' open letter, published in the Guardian on Thursday, comes as athletes and journalists from around the world descend on the Black Sea resort before the lavish opening ceremony at a specially built stadium on Friday evening. President Vladimir Putin has spoken of the Games as a personal project to show the world Russia's greatness and its ability to host such major events, but the build-up has been marred by controversy over corruption and rights abuses in Russia.
The open letter to Russia condemns the recently passed gay propaganda and blasphemy laws, which respectively prohibit the "propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations" among minors and criminalise religious insult, as well as the recent recriminalisation of defamation. The three laws "specifically put writers at risk", say the authors, and they "cannot stand quietly by as we watch our fellow writers and journalists pressed into silence or risking prosecution and often drastic punishment for the mere act of communicating their thoughts".
Grass is joined as a signatory by three fellow Nobel laureates, Wole Soyinka, Elfriede Jelinek and Orhan Pamuk, and by acclaimed writers from over 30 countries, including Ariel Dorfman, Carol Ann Duffy, Edward Albee, Julian Barnes, Ian McEwan and Neil Gaiman. Russia's foremost contemporary novelist, Lyudmila Ulitskaya, is also a signatory to the letter.
Rushdie described the campaign as essential, telling the Guardian that it is "incredibly important to Russian writers, artists and citizens alike".
"The chokehold that the Russian Federation has placed on freedom of expression is deeply worrying and needs to be addressed in order to bring about a healthy democracy in Russia," said the Booker prize-winning novelist, author of Midnight's Children and The Satanic Verses.
Gaiman said: "I believe that free expression – freedom of speech, freedom to write, to argue, to disagree – is the most important freedom we have as human beings. I hate to see that being stifled in Russia. The solution to speech and writing that offends you is to speak and write about it in your turn, not to criminalise it or to try and eradicate it.
"Criminalising those who write positively about gay people and gay themes, or who write negatively about the church, criminalising defamation, these are all things that clamp down on the exchange of ideas, that push dissent and stories underground. I hope that Mr Putin reads the open letter; I hope he changes course."
Ulitskaya, the first woman to win the Russian equivalent of the Booker, said that Russian authorities were attempting to impose "a cultural ideology that, in many respects, mimics the style of Soviet-era propaganda".
"Like many Russian citizens, I am deeply concerned about the increasing restrictions on freedom of speech in my country, about the ever-expanding legislation and arbitrary bureaucracy that affect all aspects of Russian life," she said. "I am frightened by the judicial system's increasing dependence on these very authorities. Because of this, I signed PEN International's open letter to the Russia authorities protesting their increasingly regressive approach to freedom of expression."The tension is not only being felt in the literary world. In the past week, the only independent source of television news in Russia, cable station TV Rain, has been cut off from its viewers, after all the main cable providers dropped it from their broadcasts... read more:
