Awarded the Award of the International Pen Club

In the Hague, a ceremony of presenting the Awards of the International Pen-Club "For Freedom of Statement" (Oxfam Novib/Pen Award for Freedom of Expression) took place. Her laureates were the Palestinian poet Ashraf Fayyad and Indian journalist Malini Sumramaniam.

Ashraf Fayyad was sentenced to death in Saudi Arabia, Malini Subramaniam is persecuted for his publications.

By tradition, a famous writer addresses the laureates. This year, this honorary duty fell a member of the Pen-club of Switzerland Mikhail Shishkin .

In particular, he said: “In the person of the Palestinian poet and Indian journalist, our recognition, admiration and gratitude are received by all those who went out, go out and will always go to the square“ for our and your freedom ”, no matter how dangerous it is. This is gratitude to thousands and thousands of beautiful courageous people, even if we never recognize all their names. ”

Also, the president of the International Pen-Club , Jennifer Clement , who tasted the problems of protecting freedom of speech in Russia and the situation around the Russian Pen-Center, spoke at the award ceremony.

Jennifer Clement reminded the audience that “Lyudmila Ulitskaya was forced to leave the Russian Pen in early 2015, and over the past few weeks, Leo Rubinstein and the wonderful Svetlana Aleksievich refused to be membership after their calls to release the director Oleg Sentsov.”

“We must admire the courage of these writers who continue to defend freedom of speech in the face of countless difficulties. -said the president of the International Pen Club. - For freedom of speech in Russia, difficult time has come, it is necessary to make a lot of efforts to break through to the truth, the truth that helps to protect writers and advocates of freedom of speech, which are in danger and in prison. Such as director Oleg Sentsov, who is currently serving a 20-year term in Siberia. Today we support members of Russian foam, who turned to President Vladimir Putin with a request for a pardon of Sentsov. President Putin, from this scene, I, as the president of the international foam, ask you to free Sentsov so that he can return to his family - home to the Crimea. It will be a great honor for me to invite him to our next International Congress, which will be held in September this year in Ukraine. ”