No Frontiers 2024 by penmelbourne

PEN MELBOURNE JOURNAL 2024

PROMOTING LITERATURE

DEFENDING FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION

Acknowledgment

PEN Melbourne respectfully acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the land on which we work, the Boon Wurrung and Woi Wurrung peoples of the Kulin Nation. We pay respect to Elders past and present. We acknowledge all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, their cultures and their unbroken connection to land and community. Sovereignty of this land has never been ceded.

PEN Melbourne Committee

PEN Melbourne Patron

Arnold Zable

PEN Melbourne Ambassador-at-Large

Sami Shah

President

Christine McKenzie

Vice-President

Mammad Aidani

Treasurer

Ben Quin CPA

Secretary

Josie Banner

Writers in Prison Convenors

Josephine Scicluna and Zara Gudnason

Membership and Communications

Paul Morgan

Writers for Peace Committee and Website Coordinator Con Pakavakis

Publications

Zara Gudnason

Committee Members

Jackie Mansourian, Radhika Santhanam-Martin, Mikaelie Evans

PEN Melbourne Life Members

Behrouz Boochani, Judith Buckrich, Lucina Kathmann, Judith Rodríguez (1936 - 2018), Tom Shapcott, Rosa Vasseghi, Arnold Zable

PEN Melbourne Honorary Members

Wajeha al-Huwaider, Julian Assange, Seedy Bojang, Behrouz Boochani, Busra Erslani, Natalia Radzina, Mahvash Sabet, Nedim Türfent, Ragip Zarakolu, Zhang Jianhong (1958-2010)

International PEN Melbourne Journal

ISSN: 26525267

Editor Zara Gudnason

Deputy Editors

Josie Banner and Mikaelie Evans

Editorial Advisors

Christine McKenzie and Josephine Scicluna

Additional Editing

Dior Sutherland and Preeshita Shah

Designer Jordan Ross

PEN Melbourne

The Wheeler Centre 176 Little Lonsdale Street Melbourne VIC 3000

editor@penmelbourne.org www.penmelbourne.org

The opinions in the publication are those of the individual authors and are not necessarily endorsed by the editors and the PEN Melbourne Committee.

The Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund has supported this issue by assisting PEN Melbourne to pay writers for their work.

2 Editorial Note

3 Ambassador’s Note

Zara Gudnason

Sami Shah

4 President’s Note Christine McKenzie

5 First Nations Readings & Resource List

6 A Letter to the Palestinian Journalists Plestia Alaqad Killed by Israel

7 Julian Assange’s freedom Con Pakavakis is a boon for the world

8 Writers in Prison Josephine Scicluna

10 The focus is on AI art… but what Malcolm Knox about AI audiences?

12 taş gelmez sen gel /

İlhan Sami Çomak and Stone can’t come - you come!

13 A Letter to Pinar Selek

14 Blowing the whistle on sport in Australia

17 Epitaph

18 Their unwavering spirit

Caroline Stockford

Marion May Campbell

Karen Percy and Wendy Carlisle

Judith Rodriguez

Mammad Aidani

19 From the Cultural Linda Jaivin Revolution to the Voice

20 Found In the Maze Nandar

22 Myanmar’s Writers and Journalists Ross Holder Facing Heightened Persecution

24 Can versin yüreğin / Nedim Türfent Let your heart give life

25 Sana dair izlerin peşinde / Nedim Türfent Searching trails of you

26 The Falsehoods that Feed Fear

Sushi Das

28 Angry Poems Bala Mudaly

29 The Price of Difference and Krishna Sen Dissent in Modi’s India

31 A Collaboration Between Generations Mikaelie Evans

32 Uluru Statement from the Heart

33 Join PEN Melbourne

Editorial Note

“Literature knows no frontiers and must remain common currency among people in spite of political or international upheavals.”

- PEN Charter

You may have noticed as you picked up, or clicked on, this year’s journal that we have a new name: No Frontiers Drawn from the PEN Charter, No Frontiers invokes the current climate we find ourselves in - working across communities and borders to advocate for writers who put their own safety on the line for the sake of freedom of expression.

As we have worked on this edition of the journal over the past months, I have had a sentence stuck in my head. In response to the violence in Palestine and the Gaza Strip, Editor-in-Chief of Real Review Jack Self wrote, “the scale and speed of this suffering has destroyed our ability to sustain any belief in the symbolic values of ‘the international community’ and ‘human rights’”. Not long after that, I received an email that asked, “what is the point of writing and telling?”

Our belief in ideals like an ‘international community’ and ‘human rights’ have always been stronger than the reality of those ideals in action. War, violence, oppression and persecution have dominated our world, even during the supposed golden age of international (Western) cooperation. Over the past decade, we’ve entered into what some have termed a ‘posttruth’ world as we’re flooded with disinformation and misinformation. While it feels as if we are moved further from reality with every broadcast of Sky News, we see an ever increasing number of writers, poets, journalists, filmmakers, rappers, singers, artists and whistleblowers speaking out and speaking truth.

The words printed on these pages remind me of why we write, why we speak, and why the work of PEN Melbourne is more important than ever. Following on from last year’s theme of ‘voice’, this year we’re inviting you to sit with the notion of ‘truth’.

This year’s journal recognises the pervasive impact of disinformation on our democratic processes, reaffirms our support for the Uluru Statement from the Heart, calls for recognition of First Nations peoples and extends our solidarity to the writers, poets, commentators and journalists who speak out against threatened press freedoms in Australia and overseas.

Sushi Das reflects on how disinformation contributed to the Voice to Parliament ‘No’ outcome, Mammad Aidani writes about the intensifying oppression and censorship under the Iranian Islamic regime, Linda Jaivin explores the relationship between disinformation, misinformation, conspiracy, and trust in Chinese communities today, and Sami Shah asks “how do we rescue truth?”. Plestia Alaqad pens a letter to the Palestinian journalists killed by Israel Defence Forces, and Nedim Türfent, Ilhan Çomak and Bala Mulady move us with their poetics.

In the days before this journal went to print, we received the news that Ilhan Çomak, Kurdish poet, writer and playwright who had been imprisoned by Turkish authorities for 30 years, had been released and reunited with his family and friends. Ilhan’s release is a moment of hope in a bleak year and his poem printed in this journal reminds us of the enduring strength and courage of those who refuse to be silenced.

The works included in these pages ask us to consider our own role in the protection, and production, of truth. How do we engage thoughtfully and critically with a world where, as Sushi Das writes, factual truth is in danger of being “manoeuvred out of the world not only for a time but, potentially, forever”? 1

This journal is offered as an embodiment of the PEN Charter. An effort to ensure that literature remains common currency in spite of political or international upheavals.

Zara

Gudnason Editor, No Frontiers

1 Arendt, H. (1968). Between past and future: Eight exercises in political thought. Viking Press.

Ambassador’s Note

Rescuing Truth

Sami Shah

The truth is under assault. It has been besieged and smashed; twisted and reshaped to suit the needs of those who wield the most influence. The information landscape we now inhabit—from political statements to TV news to social media posts—is cratered with the deliberate and reckless manipulation of facts, truth buried under a rubble of lies.

Fake news has become a part of our daily lexicon. We’ve seen politicians dismiss verified information they don’t like as “fake news” while themselves eagerly indulging in its spread. Meanwhile, Twitter/X, Facebook, TikTok, Discord, Youtube and whatever hellish new app we’re all being subjected to have become fetid swamps fogged with swarms of conspiracy theories and AI-generated photos of cakes and massacres. Imagine if every book on every shelf was filled with ads, detailed descriptions of genitalia and racist abuse. That’s what the internet has become now and it’s not an accident—it’s the byproduct of a world where the weaponisation of information has become more important than the dissemination of facts.

This manipulation of truth becomes even more dangerous when it intersects with matters of life and death, such as in the current conflicts in Israel, Gaza, and Lebanon (as of this time of writing—who knows where the war will expand to in the time between submission and publication). Amid the bombs, bullets, and casualties, the truth itself has become collateral damage. In these regions, truth is not just a matter of integrity— it is a matter of survival. When reality is obscured by half-truths, outright lies, or carefully curated narratives, it becomes even harder to see a path to peace. Governments and militant groups are constructing their own versions of reality, each eager to present a narrative that paints their actions in the best possible light, each obscuring the ordinary people who suffer as these falsehoods spread, trapped in a conflict where their stories are seldom heard and their shrieks drowned by the screaming arrival of destructive deceit.

Disinformation in conflict zones is not new, of course. Propaganda has long been a tool of war, wielded as skilfully as any weapon. But what has changed is the speed and scale at which it spreads. A lie today can go viral in seconds. By the time a fact-check can be performed, the damage is done—the falsehood has already shaped the opinions and emotions of those exposed to it. A missile strike on a building becomes a symbol of

villainy or victimhood, depending on which side you’re inclined to believe. An image from years ago resurfaces, repurposed to fan the flames of hatred today. And once a lie has been accepted as truth, it is almost impossible to uproot.

What makes the battle against misinformation so difficult is that it preys on our emotions. We are more likely to believe—and share—information that aligns with our deepest fears and prejudices. Narratives are no longer about objective truth but about rallying support, justifying actions, and dehumanizing the other side. From the United States to India to Europe to the boardrooms and streets in our city, the proliferation of misinformation is undermining democracies, fuelling extremism, and sowing distrust in institutions. We are witnessing a fragmentation of reality, where truth has become subjective, and facts are seen as irrelevant.

So, how do we rescue truth?

It starts with education. Media literacy should be a core part of any curriculum. Citizens need to be able to identify reliable sources, verify information, and understand how algorithms can manipulate what they see online. The goal is not to make people cynical but to make them discerning.

Journalists also have a role to play. In a world awash with content, it is more important than ever to hold fast to the principles of responsible journalism. Reporting the truth, even when it’s uncomfortable, is the only way to maintain the trust of the public. And we must protect the journalists who risk their lives to report from conflict zones, who often face not only physical danger but also the threat of being discredited by those who seek to control the narrative. Journalists like Mujahed al-Saadi, who has been arrested by the IDF from his home in Jenin, beaten and placed in indefinite “administrative detention” by Israel without charges or trial.

For PEN Melbourne, our mission has never been more urgent. We stand for the freedom of expression, the right to tell the truth, and the importance of protecting writers and journalists who seek to hold power accountable. In the fight against disinformation and misinformation, we must defend truth and, in doing so, save not just truth but our ability to value it once again.

Sami Shah is PEN Melbourne’s Ambassador-at-large. A multi-award winning writer, comedian, and journalist. He has published books, short stories and essays in a variety of genres, and won multiple awards. He currently presents the satirical podcast NEWS WEAKLY and is a lecturer in journalism at the Centre for Advancing Journalism, University of Melbourne.

Sami

President’s Note

The songs around/Have lost their sound/And instead of songs:/The crunch of spines. In my beloved country/Before spring comes finally,/Through my prison bars/You still shine.

- Kaciaryna Andrejeva

Written from prison in 2021 and translated from Belarusian by Hanna Komar and John Farndon.

Where does hope lie in this year of global conflict, of diminishing regard for human rights, of the rise of misinformation and contempt for truthful reporting? At the end of this year, my tenth as president of PEN Melbourne, I cannot recall a worse time for grievous assaults on citizens in Gaza, Iran, Myanmar, Ukraine, Sudan, to name only a few countries. The silencing, imprisonment and targeted killing of writers and reporters is documented by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). With regard to Gaza, the CPJ comments, “every time a journalist is killed, injured, arrested, or forced into exile, we lose fragments of the truth. Those responsible for these casualties face dual trials: one under international law and another before history’s unforgiving gaze.” We need to know this history.

Years of occupation and conflict have led to the escalation of genocidal violence in the OPT with more than 40,000 people killed in Gaza. We need the writers of courage who are on the ground who witness and record this history. PEN Melbourne joins the call for the International Criminal Court to investigate the violations perpetrated in Gaza which they consider a serious breach of international law. The protection of writers, journalists and artists is crucial due to their work in reporting war crimes and human rights violations.

Throughout these challenging times the PEN Charter is our guide. This powerful instrument originated after WW1 when the founding writers came together for mutual support. Following WW2, when European PEN members had been persecuted for their work and books were burned, the Charter was developed by the PEN Congress of 1948. PEN members agreed that freedom of expression was an imperative for peace, that ‘Literature knows no frontiers and must remain common currency among people in spite of political or international upheavals.’ Hence this journal’s title: No Frontiers. It’s a radical notion when nation states are closing their borders, or violently extending their boundaries and nationalistic autocracies are increasing.

This edition titled Truth follows last year’s Voice, and again references the Uluru Statement from the Heart. The ‘No’ vote outcome in the Voice to Parliament referendum dealt a blow to First Nations peoples being

heard and respected in the decision-making processes that affect their lives. In Victoria, the Yoorrook Justice Commission hearings are vital and a model for serious investigations into injustices against First Peoples. Bring on Treaty. Recently in Naarm, the First Peoples’ Assembly of Victoria and the Victorian Government officially started the negotiation of the first statewide Treaty.

I commend No Frontiers to you and applaud the committed PEN members who have produced a publication that reflects our ethos. Thank you Zara Gudnason, Josie Banner, Mikaelie Evans, Jordan Ross, Jo Scicluna, Jackie Mansourian, Radhika Santhanam-Martin, Preeshita Shah, and Dior Sutherland.

PEN Melbourne’s partnerships with The Wheeler Centre, University of Melbourne’s Centre for Advancing Journalism, and RMIT’s non/fictionLab have allowed us to reach new audiences, and our commitment to writing and freedom of expression has been welcomed by these communities. PEN Melbourne has developed a special partnership with Peta Murray and her cohort in RMIT’s School of Media and Communication which brings a mutual benefit in the students’ creative responses to PEN’s work, and our committee has been enriched by the students who have joined us.

Thank you to PEN Melbourne Committee members who give their time and dedication to PEN’s project: defending the freedom to write, campaigning for writers at risk, delighting in our love of literature.

PEN Melbourne’s members are our strength. Your ongoing membership of PEN is crucial for our continued work. Way beyond the financial gift, your presence as members makes us strong.

Thank you to all the writers whose work you will read here and all those who dare to keep reporting from places of despair like Kaciaryna Andrejeva, whose words shine light into the dark places. Here lies hope.

Christine McKenzie President, International PEN Centre Melbourne

“…we can’t change the past, but we have to learn from the past and we have got to stop being bystanders”

- Aunty Jill Gallagher AO

As Treaty negotiations begin in Victoria, PEN Melbourne remains committed to supporting the recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Knowledge sharing is paramount to ongoing discussions of Treaty and truth-telling. Below is a collection of our recommended books and online resources authored by First Nations authors and organisations.

Recommended Resources

See these online resources for information on truth-telling about the injustices experiences by First Nations peoples in Australia, as well as educational materials.

Yoorrook Justice Commission

Evidence Library

First Peoples’ Assembly of Victoria Treaty Explainer

Yoorrook Justice Commission Submissions Library

Claire G. Coleman in Meanjin Spring 2024

The Australian Constitution, annotated.

Carpentaria

Alexis Wright

courtesy of Giramondo Publishing

A Letter to the Palestinian Journalists Killed by Israel

- Plestia Alaqad

We may never have met, but there are undoubtedly connections between us. Gaza is a small place, and we all know each other one way or another. I might even be a distant cousin to some of you — who knows?

I'm struggling with the title here. Should it be “A Letter to the 116 Palestinian Journalists Whom Israel Killed”, or should I refrain from mentioning the number? For one thing, it’s constantly changing, and secondly, you are not mere numbers. You have names and stories, and there is far more to each of you than being journalists.

Writing and reading letters are among my favourite things to do, but writing a letter like this is a different matter. It is a task I am stumbling over and not sure how to approach. Where do I even begin? What do I write? Is there anything to say at all?

Since October last year, I have had a complicated relationship with death and comprehending it. As the death toll rises, I find myself questioning what death even means. Is it only you, the ones targeted and killed by Israel, who are dead? What about us? Are we, Palestinians with first-hand experience of the genocide, dead in some way too?

In a world that often turns a blind eye to injustice, you were the eyes of Gaza. You gave a voice to the voiceless. You showed the world the truth it can no longer ignore. You may not be physically with us today, and yet your

work remains, and your legacy continues to inspire. The fact that Israel targeted you speaks to how loud and powerful your voices were.

Maybe if I tell you that the majority of the world now stands with Palestine, this would bring you some comfort? That your sacrifices were not in vain and have, in fact, changed our world into one that humanises us, that is aware of our struggle, one that knows Hind Rajab, Hiba Abu Nada and Refaat Alareer? One where Palestine is again the most urgent and compelling cause for justice today because of you and your work?

Whenever I feel tired or question why we are still reporting on this genocide — whenever I wonder if trying to convince people to see us as fully human is still worth it — I think of you. I remember every Palestinian journalist killed by Israel to silence us. I tell myself that the only way I can honour you is to keep telling our stories and keep telling the truth. It is the mission that you started, one I pledge to continue.

As our darling Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, a household name who was shot dead by the Israeli occupation while covering a raid at the Jenin refugee camp on 11 May 2022, once said: “It takes endurance... Keep your spirits high.”

We shall always keep our spirits high. Rest in power Shireen. Rest in power our journalists.

Love always, Plestia Alaqad

Plestia Alaqad is a Palestinian journalist whose fearless frontline coverage of Gaza has garnered 4 million Instagram followers. Named Young World's Journalist of the Year (2024), her work features in major global media. A journalism graduate pursuing her Master's, she's also a poet and advocate, with her memoir "Eyes of Gaza" forthcoming.

Julian Assange’s freedom is a boon for the world

Following Assange’s first official address since his release from Belmarsh Prison, Writers for Peace convenor Constantine Pakavakis writes about the use of legal process as a form of punishment for political prisoners.

I want to be totally clear. I am not free today because the system worked. I am free today after years of incarceration because I pled guilty to journalism. I hope my testimony today can serve to highlight the weakness, the weaknesses of the existing safeguards… the truth has been undermined, attacked, weakened and diminished.

- Julian Assange speaking at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE)

Like many others, I celebrated the release of Julian Assange on 25 June 2024 as if it was the mythical lining up of the planets, a portent of better things to come. Watching his testimony to the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) in Strasbourg on 1 October, I was heartened by his eloquence and intelligence, by his calm conviction, and by the honesty, vulnerability, and humanity of his persona. Assange’s freedom is a boon for the world.

The movement to free Assange united human rights lawyers, media organisations, journalists, philosophers, religious leaders, academics, musicians, politicians and a broad spectrum of peace and democracy activists around the world. Assange’s father, John Shipton, and his brother, Gabriel Shipton, screened their film, Ithaca, across the globe and distributed The Trial of Julian Assange, a meticulously researched forensic analysis by law professor and UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer. Melzer’s analysis armed the campaigners with an unquestionable conclusion – that Assange was being persecuted by the United States government, who were using extra-territorial reach to warn other journalists off exposing the US government’s secrets.

Þórhildur Sunna Ævarsdóttir, the PACE General Rapporteur for Political Prisoners, called Assange’s case a high-profile example of transnational repression where governments employ both legal and extralegal measures to suppress dissent across borders. Her report recommended that “Mr Assange should be properly recognised by the Assembly as a political prisoner…” and former Australian diplomat Alison Broinowski has substantiated this view,

“We learned several years ago that the CIA was invigilating every move that Julian made for seven years inside the embassy, courtesy of a Spanish security company which videoed the whole lot, and that, by itself, should have been enough to annul the allegations and prosecution against Julian but it never did because the British courts would not listen to it. They were asked by Julian’s legal team again and again to take this into account because that was the kind of thing over which Daniel Ellsberg got off his case in the Pentagon Papers… and that was clearly political manipulation… both British and American, at the same time, hand in glove.”

What, then, led the United States government to offer a plea deal? Was it

an enlightened appreciation of democratic principles? A political favour for a close ally? An empathic change of heart?

Many observers of Assange’s case have called it ‘punishment by process’. Julian, in his address, pointed out how laws were reinterpreted by judges and those in power. When the first extradition hearing judge ruled in his favour, British Home Secretary Priti Patel overruled it. In a 150-page Perfected Grounds of Appeal, submitted on 26 August 2022, Assange’s legal team highlighted political persecution and denial of access to the First Amendment if extradited to the US. The judge refused all grounds of appeal.

After five years in Belmarsh Prison and numerous court hearings, the final High Court appeal was scheduled for 9 July 2024. The US prosecution had been specifically asked if it could guarantee Assange, if extradited, the same First Amendment protection that a US citizen would receive. It finally acknowledged it couldn’t. This fact was known all along. But they had achieved their goal of punishing by process.

This signalled the end of the United States’ case for extradition, and they entered into secret negotiations for a plea deal. The US dropped all but one of their eighteen espionage charges, the plea deal was famously signed on 25 June, and Assange was released after a sentence equal to the time he had been imprisoned.

Assange’s case demonstrates the threat to freedom of speech and freedom of expression if countries can employ extralegal transnational action against writers and journalists who expose the truth.

The European Council has taken a step towards recommending improved protection for journalists in Europe. And for the rest of the world, Assange’s closing remarks at PACE are instructional:

“I would just like to thank all the people who have fought for my liberation. And who have understood, importantly, that my liberation was coupled to their own liberation. The basic fundamental liberties which sustain us all have to be fought for. And that when one of us falls through the cracks. Soon enough, those cracks will widen and take the rest of us down. So thank you for your your courage in this and other settings and, keep up the fight.”

Constantine Pakavakis is the convenor of PEN Melbourne’s Writers’ for Peace Program

Writers in Prison Report 2024

I want to introduce this year’s report with a personal note about the work of co-convening the writers in prison work for the past several years. I’m yet to find the words to adequately show the overwhelming incredulity I feel each time yet another writer is incarcerated, or their life otherwise destroyed for another absurd reason at the hands of states and their authorities.

On 13 November the well-known Iranian journalist, blogger and human rights activist, Kianoosh Sanjari, killed himself in protest at the Khameini regime. His demand posted on X to the Iranian government

was for the release of four other political prisoners by a specified time. When it was not met, he posted again: "My life will end after this tweet but let's not forget that we die for the love of life, not death. I wish that one day Iranians will wake up and overcome slavery". In words shared by my fellow committee member Mammad Aidani, Kianoosh suffered “at least nine arrests, six forced transfers to a mental hospital, two years in prison, nine months in solitary confinement, and now his blood. Like many others before him, the name Kianoosh Sanjari is forever linked with the murderous Islamic Republic of Iran, which is officially responsible for his death”.

This report, is dedicated to Kianoosh Sanjari.

For more information about the writers and countries listed in this report please access the PEN International 2023/2024 Case List and the Committee for the Protection of Journalists.

Philippines

“Activists, human rights defenders and individuals who criticise the government are all vulnerable to being ‘red-tagged’, exposing them to harassment, arbitrary arrest or even death” (Source: PEN International)

Amanda Echanis

WRITER, POET, ACTIVIST

Detained since December 2, 2020 after being "red-tagged," a practice of labeling individuals as communist sympathisers in the Philippines.

Myanmar

MYANMAR as of 31 Oct 2024, 9 media workers, writers and artists are currently held in pre-trial detention, with at least 41 currently serving prison sentences (Source: PEN Myanmar)

Win Htut Oo (pictured) and Htet Myat Thu JOURNALISTS

Killed in a military raid on a home in southern Mon State.

China

“...many writers, bloggers, journalists, and others are currently serving long-term prison sentences imposed in retaliation for their critical expression” (Source: PI Caselist 2023/2024)

Yang Hengjun

WRITER, PRO-DEMOCRACY ACTIVIST

Detained since January 2019 and was given a suspended death sentence in February 2024 on espionage charges in China.

Hong Kong

“...national security and counter-terrorism laws being used to target journalists and human rights defenders for exercising their internationally protected right to freedom of expression” (Source: PEN International)

Jimmy Lai

FOUNDER OF APPLE DAILY, DEMOCRACY ACTIVIST

Facing a life sentence for peacefully campaigning for democracy in Hong Kong.

Turkey

“Under the state of emergency [2016], the situation for free speech and media freedom in Turkey has deteriorated at breakneck speed, in an attempt to quell critical and dissenting voices by a government that is moving ever closer to authoritarianism” (Source: PEN International)

Selahattin Demirtaş

WRITER, HUMAN RIGHTS LAWYER, FORMER CO-CHAIR OF THE PRO-KURDISH PEOPLES’ DEMOCRATIC PARTY

Currently serving a 42-year prison sentence in Turkey on charges of terrorism-related offences and spreading terrorist propaganda.

Osman Kavala

PUBLISHER, ACTIVIST FOR CIVIL AND CULTURAL RIGHTS

Imprisoned since 2017 and was sentenced to life in prison in April 2022 for allegedly attempting to overthrow the government by financing the 2013 Gezi Park protests.

Nicaragua

A new wave of terror and detentions since May 2023 (Source: PEN International)

Freddy Antonio Quezada

WRITER, PHILOSOPHER, ACADEMIC

Forced into exile along with 134 other political prisoners after the government cited his “liking” of a social media post about Miss Universe 2023 winner Sheyniss Palacios as evidence of alleged crimes against the state.

OPT/Israel

“As at Nov 8 2024, 137 journalists and media workers killed: 129 Palestinian, two Israeli, and six Lebanese” (Source: Committee to Protect Journalists)

Shireen Abu Akleh

VETERAN AL JAZEERA JOURNALIST

Murdered with impunity while covering a military raid in Jenin, West Bank, on 11 May 2022.

Issam Abdallah

REUTERS BROADCAST REPORTER, CAMERA OPERATOR, PHOTOGRAPHER

Killed on 13 October 2023, in Alma Al-Shaab, Lebanon, when Israeli shells struck him and wounded six other journalists who were clearly identified as press while covering cross-border exchanges between the IDF and Hezbollah.

Iran

“Continuously worsening socio-economic conditions and authorities’ backlash against the widespread protest movement that followed the 2022 death in custody of young Kurdish-Iranian woman Mahsa (Jina) Amini… Escalating use of the death penalty as a tool of repression against ethnic minorities” (Source: PI Caselist 2023/2024)

Mahvash Sabet

WRITER, POET, WELL-KNOWN LEADER OF BAHA’I COMMUNITY

Serving her second 10-year sentence on ‘spying’ charges.

Narges Mohammadi

HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENDER, JOURNALIST, AUTHOR, AND FORMER DEPUTY DIRECTOR AND SPOKESPERSON OF THE DEFENDERS OF HUMAN RIGHTS CENTRE (DHRC) IN IRAN

Currently serving sentences totalling 13 years and nine months on charges including committing “propaganda activity against the state” and “collusion against state security”. Her health has deteriorated drastically. (Source: PEN America)

Cuba

Arbitrary arrests, harassment, and threats by authorities signal a pattern of censorship amid the passage of new laws limiting the exercise of free expression. (Source: PEN International)

María Cristina Garrido Rodríguez

POET, ACTIVIST

In prison since July 2021 for participating in nationwide protests against the authoritarian government of her country and demanding reform.

Belarus

Since the August 2020 presidential election, the authorities under President Alexander Lukašenka have detained tens of thousands of peaceful protestors. The Belarusian Association of Journalists has recorded the arrests of 497 journalists and media workers; 29 are still in detention.

Kaciaryna Andrejeva

JOURNALIST, WRITER AND POET

Serving an 8-year prison sentence on bogus charges of ‘state treason’. Andrejeva is currently being held in a medium-security penal colony in Homel, southeastern Belarus.

Photo courtesy of Adriana Quezada

The focus is on AI art… but what about AI audiences?

Malcolm Knox writes about the complexities and taboos of audience taste in AI art.

There’s a first-year economics fable about how long a fishmonger can keep selling cod while it goes off. On day one, the fresh cod sells at full price. On days two and three, they keep selling it, at a discount, because the customers can’t tell it’s going off. By day four, when the cod is rancid, the monger stops; they don’t want to poison their buyers.

During the US writers’ strike in 2023, when the production of screenplays by artificial intelligence was a key issue, a leader of the American Writers’ Guild was telling me the fishmonger story as a comparison. The studios/fishmongers figured they could sell cheaper AI-generated product/rotting fish to customers who they hoped couldn’t tell the difference. The studios wanted to push the potential for mechanised screenplays as far as they could. While the AWG won a compromise, the question remains open: How far can the middlemen of creative work (studios, music and book publishers, art traders) push the AI experiment before audiences will refuse to accept it? Will audiences ever refuse? Is AI changing the relationship between creator and audience irrevocably?

Creators have reacted to AI as if it is a supply issue. How are large language models such as ChatGPT trained? (With human-produced work.) If they steal copyrighted work (they do), how can they be made accountable to artists whose work they have stolen? (With difficulty.) What jobs will AI replace? (All but senior ‘curatorial’ ones, breaking the chain of apprenticeship beneath all creative work.) How can the tech giants and the corporations who use their tools be restrained? (Good luck!)

Too rarely, in my view, is there discussion about demand. Studios, producers and publishers aren’t (for the most part) evil operators plotting to eliminate the artist. They are following audience taste, trying to make a few cents on the dollar. If audiences can’t, or won’t, differentiate between real and machine-made art, or if price is the overwhelming basis for consumer decisions, isn’t that the bigger end of the AI problem? While it is legitimate to fret over AI simulations ‘catching up with’ creative works, shouldn’t we also fret about audiences?

The debate we should be having is the one we find too hard, because it relies on subjective judgements and risks an elitist judgement on audience taste. As an example, I wrote recently about a presentation by Dr Jon Whittle, the CSIRO’s experienced AI leader, on AI and the arts. He commented favourably on AI-generated visual art, inviting us to play the game: Which is better? Can you tell which is which? My response was that whether AI-made art is good, bad or indifferent, the game misses the point. A simulation of human-produced art may be many things –decorative, attractive, impressive - but one thing it cannot be is art.

Dr Whittle replied, quite reasonably, that he is an AI ‘positivist’ and not an ‘evangelist’, and said that how we use AI should be based ‘on real evidence, carefully evaluat[ing] the risks and benefits, and ask[ing] ourselves as a society what we want from the technology we create’.

Where AI is used in the sciences, or anywhere ‘real evidence’ can be gathered, this argument is obviously valid. I would argue that the arts are an exception. Efficiency is not the creator’s aim, ‘risks and benefits’ are not its standards, and ‘real evidence’ is exactly the opposite of what it leaves.

Without going down the rabbit hole of defining art, I think Leo Tolstoy’s can stand: ‘Art is a human activity consisting in this, that one [human] consciously, by means of certain external signs, hands on to others feelings [they have] lived through, and that others are infected by these feelings and also experience them’. If that’s what art is, then it cannot not be human – at both ends of the relationship. Human-to-human art might be messier, less efficient, more labour intensive and, in many ways, ‘inferior’. Like Japanese Kintsugi, it contains flaws through which the creator says, ‘I am here’, and the audience says, ‘I see you’. Entirely mechanised art is as absurd as an entirely mechanised audience. It may be artificial but it is not, in any defensible form, intelligence.

An audience whose minds have been turned to mush by formulaic, derivative cultural sludge that takes them for fools is an audience open to more opportunities for books, screenplays, music, painting and sculpture made by AI – a mode of cultural production that is also formulaic, derivative and contemptuous. But it’s almost taboo to talk about rebuilding audiences by ‘educating’ them. The customer is always right in commerce, and if art is a commercial transaction, then the customer who prefers a cheap AI knock-off cannot be criticised.

Only an educated, vibrant audience can keep up their end of the Tolstoyan bargain. But that sensibility is shrinking. Take reading for example: the 2021 Australian National Reading Survey found that 25 percent of Australian adults never read a book, up from 8 percent in a similar survey four years earlier. According to the latest National Arts Participation Survey, older Australians reading books for pleasure fell

from 77 to 68 per cent in the last five years, the biggest decline ever measured. Australian government research has found that 44 per cent of adults read at year 10 level or lower. Eighty-two per cent of adults read at year 12 or lower. Such statistics are music to the AI industry’s ears. If audiences are losing their acuity, why would publishers not pump out mechanised products at a fraction of the cost?

Rebuilding markets should be getting more attention from funding bodies. In northern Europe, governments provide hundreds of euros worth of vouchers for every adult to spend on books, music, film tickets and other modes of art consumption. The whole-of-industry Australia Reads campaign has the single aim of increasing reading. Creative Australia’s Building Audiences program, founded in 2015, has focused on getting more Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples reading books, listening to music and looking at visual art. But these are drops in the ocean of market development and audiencebuilding programs that have fallen away. Writers and artists in schools and libraries continue to generate interest at its source amongst the young. The available research shows that the greater challenge is with adults.

When AI manages to simulate art ‘perfectly’, we arrive at the point in the cod market where the fisherman starves and the audience dies. It’s all very well to try to limit the suppliers of AI, but the artist has more power to build audiences than to make Microsoft accountable. To address supply, we need unimaginable riches. To address demand, we only need ourselves.

Malcolm Knox is the multi-award winning author of eight novels, most recently The First Friend, and many non-fiction books and television screenplays. He has written for The Sydney Morning Herald since 1994 and has won three Walkley Awards and a Human Rights Award.

Photo: usman / Adobe Stock Photos

Malcolm Knox The focus

Taş gelmez sen gel

Stone can’t come - you come!

İlhan Sami Çomak

Gökte taş ve su sesi, bulutların geçtiği eşikte açtığın bir kaç kapıda, kirpiklerinde uyanan uyku havalanıyor... ışıktan bir kelime yakanda omuzunda, göğsünün yangınlara gebe ayrımında arzunun zavallı ve çıplak sızısında ıslak bir kamaşmayla, öfkeli uçurumların korkusunda salına salına. Yolumu kaybettim ben burada sen sesinle gel.

Ilık havaların demiyle, sadece boşluğun bildiği sebeplerle, kafesteki kuşları takip ederek, sen sesinle gel.

Ezberlediğim, tüm şarkıları unuttum: Taş gelmez, sen gel! Uzun yüzüne baktım çıplak ayağına daldım ve dikenler Topuklarına batmış ölümün titreyen sesiyle kendini hatırlattı.

Başladım yürümeye o uzak bayramlara nehirde yüzen hayvanlara Çocuklar gibi salınan çiçekler gibi beklenmedik bir gençliğin adımıyla

Sen kayalara otur ben gün dönümünü, hayat denen düğümü, kanatsızlığın acısını susarak susturarak durduğun yeri, baktığın yönü, upuzun gövdeni, rüzgâra kaçmış saçlarını örerken, teninin selamlarını, dudaklarını... Taş öpmez sen öp!

Ve yine alevler eskiyen ağaçlara yürümüş dürülmüş defterlere Çiçekli eteğinden sabaha çiyler, çıplak gövdeme ateşler yürümüş. Taş yürümez biz yürüyelim!

Aklımda olanlar şudur: Nar ağacının rüzgârı, tespihin şıkırtısı, üveyik, yudumladığım suyun bardakta bıraktığı boşluk, masaya nizam veren ellerin ve birlikte uçmanın uyumsuz geometrisi. Dağ bize bakıyor, yorgun atların kurumuş teriyle ertelediğimiz yollar mahsus bizi çağırıyor. Ağlarken susacağım paslı çivilerin vücut diliyle. Bırak yağmur yağsın, nehir aksın. Nehirden sonra dağ.

Ben söyledim sen tekrarla: Taş hatırlamaz sen hatırla! Taş yakmaz sen yak !

English translation Caroline Stockford

At threshold passed by clouds, stone and water sound in sky.

Sleep that lay upon your brow takes flight, here, where you've thrown open shutters. A word of light upon your collar and on your shoulder, in the cleft of your breaststhat place beholden to blazes - there it sways like a dew-laden bloom in the pitiful, naked ache of desire beneath the awe of raging cliffs. Here I am, I've lost my way, come to me with your sound, your song.

With the breath of balmy weather, with reasons known only to vacancy following the caged birds, come to me with your sound, your song. I forgot every song I memorised: Stone can't come - you come!

Long I've looked into your face, daydreamed of your bare feet. Thorns dug into your heels, their shaky voice reminding you of death. I've started to walk towards those far-off Festivals, those stream-bathing animals my steps like swaying flowers, like a child in this unexpected childhood. You - sit on the stones, and I will wordlessly silence the solstice, the knot we call life and the pain of being denied flight. You, sit there, as I braid your wind-blown hair with the place you sit, the direction of your sight and your Cypress tree body, with the welcome of your skin, your lips... Stone can't kiss - you must!

From your flowery skirts dew falls on flame-worn trees, on books that walked and waited, as fires walk over my body. Stone can't walk - we must!

On my mind is the breeze of the pomegranate tree, the shicker of prayer beads, the turtle dove, the vacancy left in the glass by the water I gulped, your hands that bring order to the table, and the divergent geometry of flying with each other. The mountain looks at us. With the dried sweat of horses the innocence of the road we've made wait so long calls to us. Calls in a language the shape of rusty nails, in the language of my thirst when I cry. Let rain fall, let rivers run. After the river the mountain comes.

I've said it, so you repeat: Stone cannot burn, you burn! Stone won't remember - you must!

İlhan Sami Çomak is a prize-winning Kurdish poet, writer and playwright writing in Turkish. He is Turkey's longest-serving student prisoner, having been arrested and tortured in 1994, İlhan has been in prison for 30 years. From there, he has published 9 books of poetry, a collected works, a best-selling autobiography and a prize-winning play, which played to sold-out audiences in Istanbul in 2023. Ilhan has received two major poetry prizes in Turkey and was awarded the Norwegian Writers' Union's Freedom of Expression Prize in 2022. He is an honorary member of six PEN centres. İlhan is due for parole in November 2024, having been denied this for no good reason in August 2024 after 30 years in prison.

Caroline Stockford is a poet, translator of Turkish literature, writer and human rights campaigner from Wales. She works as the Turkey Adviser for PEN Norway. Caroline’s poetry, translations and short stories have been published online and in anthologies. She is co-editor of the anthology of world poets writing for İlhan Sami Çomak Words that Walk Through Walls, published by Palewell Press in November 2024.

A Letter to Pinar Selek

Marion May Campbell writes to Turkish feminist poet and activist Pinar Selek who faces her fifth trial in 2025 despite four acquittals, having endured imprisonment, torture and exile for refusing to reveal her sources. She has spent 24 years facing persecution for her work with marginalised communities and her poetry of resistance.

Dear Pinar,

To so many around the world your feminist and poetic activism stands as a blazing beacon. Placing yourself in the path of great risk, you knew that offering your listening and your poetic art to witness the plight of the oppressed and disenfranchised, you could open channels for these silenced minorities to tell their stories – knowing that singular truths speak more poignantly and trenchantly than any statistical and abstract generalisation of experience.

Your refusal to betray your informants has earned you twenty-four years of persecution, and despite four trials and four acquittals, you face in February 2025 yet another ordeal before the courts. And despite years of imprisonment, undergoing shattering torture, and then long exile, you still bear high the torch for freedom and truth-telling to power.

Already as an adolescent, you made radically generous choices, spending nights divided between your home and the streets to participate in the lives of excluded minorities, the shunned, the shamed, the homeless and substance-addicted: street kids, sex workers, the LGBTQI+, the Kurdish and Albanian minorities in Türkiye. It seems that from the beginning, you knew poetry could be enlisted for resistance, that the narratives of the excluded can open pathways to inclusion,

that one can climb into the blue train of dream cinema and poetry to liberate reality for the disinherited and disenfranchised. For so many, you embody the hope that mass resistance can derail the relentless crushing power of dictatorship.

My country continues to perpetrate colonial abuse upon its First Nations people. After nearly 250 years since Invasion successive governments have made only trivial attempts at reparation for a history of massacres, of forced displacement from their lands, of pervasive cultural genocide, and of deliberate miscegenation with their children stolen and incarcerated in state institutions. Compounding the transgenerational trauma Aboriginal Australians suffer are catastrophic lags relative to non-Aboriginal Australia on all fronts of wellbeing: adequate nutrition, housing, health and education.

Yet, despite calling itself a democracy, Australia still baulks at a Treaty whereby Aboriginal Australians might draw, through their powerful and eloquent voices, the pathways to self-determination. Your ‘combat poetry’ and ‘acrobatic feminism’ have again and again demonstrated the imbrication of authoritarian regimes and patriarchy and lend us courage to challenge these on our own home front.

Thank you from the heart, Pinar!

In solidarity, Marion May Campbell

Marion May Campbell is a poet and fiction writer whose most recent works include languish (Upswell Poetry 2022) and third body (Whitmore Press Poetry 2018), and the experimental memoir The Man on the Mantelpiece (UWAP 2018). She lives in Naarm on unceded Wurundjeri country with her two border collie companions.

Blowing the whistle on sport in Australia

MEAA Media Section President Karen Percy and investigative reporter Wendy Carlisle discuss the challenge of getting to the truth in sports journalism, fighting the culture of silence in the AFL and NRL, and the importance of whistleblowers in bringing to light the prevalence and reality of head injuries in contact sport.

Karen Percy: Wendy Carlisle, freelance reporter, former executive producer of Background Briefing, former reporter on Four Corners, and broadcaster extraordinaire over many decades. Firstly, I want to start with the theme of this year's journal for PEN Melbourne, which is truth. How hard is it to get the truth?

Wendy Carlisle: How hard is it? Well, in my experience, in my reporting, that's what it's all about. It's quite hard to get to the truth. I think increasingly, we live in a world where people are bound by non-disclosure agreements (NDA), where governments don't want to be transparent and in the world I'm inhabiting right now, which is professional sport, they absolutely do not want the truth about the issues I'm reporting to be transparent. They get away with it by locking people up in NDAs. There is a very strong culture of secrecy, so if people speak out, they are seen to be against sport. They are seen to be breaking a code of some kind. Sport is a very interesting cultural experience in Australia, especially in contact and collision sports. A million people play these games during the season. It's a big part of people's lives, their community, how people connect in a world where they increasingly feel disconnected and importantly, it teaches team sport. And of course, we're talking about a very popular spectator sport.

KP: So we're talking about Australian rules football and Australian rugby league. The work you've been doing is in that high-contact realm where concussion injuries are prevalent. Talk us through how you deal with whistleblowers. You've worked with a number of players, doctors or family who've been prepared to speak out. How do you find them initially? Walk us through that process of that first contact.

WC: I think it's important to separate whistleblowers from sources. In my experience, whistleblowers never set out to be whistleblowers in the first place. They are, by definition, insiders and they work or have worked inside the system. By that, I mean they work in research or as a player because they believe in it. What happens to whistleblowers is that at some point, something transgresses their own moral code, and frequently, they stay inside because they think they can reform things from within. At some point, in the cases I've dealt with, the whistleblower realises that's not going to happen, that they're not being listened to, the word we now use is they get gaslit, and their last play is to go public.

In my reporting, I've dealt with a couple of whistleblowers. The one I can name because I've reported on him in an essay I wrote in The Monthly is a neuroscientist called Alan Pearce. He did some really interesting research, a small-scale study looking at how concussion and head injury amongst Australian rules footballers and rugby league players affected their thinking, memory, cognition, and motor functions. He was contracted by the Australian Football League (AFL) to replicate this study in a much broader group of players. He signed a four-year contract with the AFL. They gave him a small amount of money to do his research, $60,000, and he signed an NDA.

I'd quoted Alan a few times in stories I'd written. During that four-year period I spoke to him, and increasingly, his frustration at the research and what he called the interference in his research became apparent. At the end of four years, instead of giving him 150 players to study, the AFL gave him just four and the AFL cauterised parts of his research. He realised his research had been meaningless and he'd been effectively silenced for four years through this NDA. That's when he decided to blow the whistle.

We had many conversations leading up to him blowing the whistle about what that would mean for him personally and professionally. I had to be very frank with him - I didn't know whether this would change anything. I told him I didn't know whether the journalism would change anything, but I felt it was important that the truth come out. I said I didn't know how this would affect him professionally - it could affect him negatively, and I think it actually has.

As much as I wanted the story, I wanted him to be aware that this wasn't going to make everything better. He decided to blow the whistle - he had documents, he'd taken notes, he had contracts. He blew the whistle and I wrote that up in a piece in The Monthly. It was really hard for him, and I felt a great weight of responsibility around reporting that. Because his allegations were so strong, the weight of evidence I needed to go public with was quite substantial. I spent a long time making sure all the i's were dotted and t's were crossed to get that story over the line.

KP: I want to pick up on that - somebody telling you something is not enough, whether they're a whistleblower or an official or unofficial source. How do you differentiate between a source and a whistleblower? Because I think that's really important for people to understand.

WC: I think a whistleblower is someone who was an insider, and they actually have documents to substantiate their claim to blow the whistle on the organisation in which they have lived inside of. Whistleblowers are terribly affected by this - they become traumatised and they ruminate a lot on what's happened to them. Part of what you end up doing is listening to the ruminations a lot.

A source is somebody who may have been affected by an organisation or by an event, and so they can give you a witness account from the

outside. Just to go back to your point, you need to know that the person who is your source is not somebody who's just got a grievance, who doesn't really know enough to say what they're saying, and so that requires a bit of interrogation on your part.

KP: That's exactly right because somebody telling you something is never enough, right? You need to corroborate it. But also, to your point about documents and insiders, you really need to be able to cross-examine to a degree because you're going to be up against an organisation.

WC: You don't want to be wrong. I mean, I go to bed when I've filed a big story, and I'm riven with doubt. Have I got this wrong? Am I being fair? Is this correct? Because when you've got a big story, if you make a mistake and you say something that is not going to stand up or hasn’t got legs, you've caused a bit of damage, and you've left yourself open to defamation. You don't want to be doing that.

KP: I want to pick up on managing expectations because somebody says something to you and that's not enough, but you also don't know where it's going to lead. You touched on it earlier, but give us a bit more about how you manage expectations of whistleblowers, who know they're taking a really big step, but you've got so many more steps to go.

WC: Well, when you're doing a big story, the first thing I say is, "I don't know whether any good will come out of this, but I do know the truth is important, and it is of consequence." Because in the case of professional sport, these are really important issues of national significance, simply because of the size of professional sport and the fact that it is basically immune to any transparency. It's like a big black box. They're not-forprofits. They don't have to report. They can decide what's an injury. They don't have to answer your questions because they don't have to, basically.

Photo: News Images LTD / Alamy Stock Photo

Karen Percy Blowing the whistle on sport in Australia

Managing the expectations of people, it's about being very honest and saying, "I'm really not sure whether there will be change," because people want change. And I think that's all you can do, Karen, in a way, and just support them in going through it because you believe in the story, you believe in what they're saying, and you believe it's important.

I think what happens once you go with the story - and you'd know this too - is that there's this initial high when the story gets run, and then there's the crash because there's a resounding silence. That's, I think, the hardest for the whistleblower to help them go through that and just say, “it's what happens and what you're going through is an emotional response. It does not mean that what you said was not important. You've just got no adrenaline left, or cortisol left to run through your body.”

These relationships aren't transactional in the sense that you're not just getting information from them and them telling you about it. It's more than that. I don't want to say one of care, but you have to be traumainformed, and look, to be honest, sometimes these people become close to you.

“ “

I’m really not sure whether there will be change.

– Wendy Carlisle

KP: So if Big Sport is untouchable in this way, what motivates whistleblowers to go up against that? Do they really know what they're going up against?

WC: I don't know that any whistleblower ever truly knows what they're going up against. I think what motivates people is what this story is about. This story is a major public health issue, and I'm talking about brain injury in contact sport. And so where I tell the story is in the professional game because that's the one that everyone knows about, and it has the big names, and you get to tell those powerful stories about superstars who are now struggling with dementia or postconcussion syndrome or all sorts of things.

The evidence is now showing us that repeatedly hitting your head is causing brain damage and if you start doing that at a young enough age and if you do it for long enough, the risk of getting dementia of some kind or other long-term cognitive effects are much greater than if you never played the game. That is a public health issue because, as I said before, so many people play the sport at a community level, and so many people play it hard at a community level.

At least in the elite game, there are some modicum of concussion protocols, however inadequate they are, they at least pull players out of the game who have concussions, diagnosed concussions. But at the community level, you go to any game going on in any suburban field, and you will see it's just a roving maul where people are getting knocked out.

People's motivation to speak out is because of concern at the brain injuries this is causing, and concern that this could be much more widespread than we actually realise because it's such a hidden injury and because the disease - by that, I mean dementia - may not become apparent for decades.

And so Australia has got an ageing population, and we know dementia is a big issue. So the people who are motivated to speak out about this, whether they're former players, whether they're wives, sisters, mothers of people who've been diagnosed with CTE, which is the particular dementia I research, they don't want this to happen to others.

And the other thing about it is this is preventable. This is a preventable disease, and just simple safety steps need to be taken to make it preventable or to reduce the risk. That's what the best science tells us, so that's what motivates people. It's what motivates me, because it is, I think, a very big public health issue. I think this is a big call on my part, but there is plenty of science behind it - it could be like asbestos, it could be like smoking, it could be like drinking too much. We just don't know yet, but we do know that lots of people are exposed to the risk of this, and so the science is not yet there to say, "Well, you've got a 50% chance or 10% chance of having problems because you played for 25 years." We just know that, based on European studies, that your risk of getting dementia is three and a half times greater if you've been exposed to repeated head injury. I think that's big, and that's a big cost to the nation.

KP: What advice would you have for somebody who's thinking about being a whistleblower or wants to get the truth out there?

WC: Oh do it!

KP: And journalists dealing with whistleblowers?

WC: Yep, do it, do it. Come to me. You know, it's a horrible business we're in, in a way that we love that sort of thing. But we love [whistleblowers] because they give us a special insight into what's going on inside, and it allows us to tell a story, a truthful story, as opposed to the one that's been publicly presented and in the case of whistleblowers, there is clearly a disconnect.

Advice to whistleblowers, I don't know that I can give them any advice. People know at their own point when something's gone wrong, and as I said before, it's their own moral line. People just get to that point. But I do think that, you know, our whistleblower protection laws are piss weak, so if people are going to blow the whistle, there's not a lot of protection for them. Most people who blow the whistle suffer consequences for it. Often nobody thanks them, especially not their co-workers, because life becomes difficult. For some of them, it affects their mental health and I guess there will be others who go, "Yep, this is great. I've done my thing," but I notice that a lot... you know, there are consequences for people, but my advice is to know what the legal situation would be, and I think people have got to go into it, as much as they can, with their eyes wide open.

KP: Do you think many whistleblowers ultimately regret what they've done?

WC: Not in my experience. They might regret the consequences, but I don't think they regret doing it because they feel so strongly about it.

Wendy Carlisle is a former ABC Four Corners reporter and now a freelance journalist. She specialised in concussion in sport and writes for The Australian, The Herald Sun and The Saturday Paper amongst others.

Karen Percy is a freelance journalist, former foreign correpondent, trauma trainer, and board director based in Naarm, Melbourne.

Since 2022, Karen has been the elected President of the Media section of the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance, advocating for stronger protections for public interest journalism and the public’s right to know.

PEN Melbourne holds dear the memory of Judith Rodriguez (1936-2018) poet, human rights activist, mentor, teacher, and beloved PEN Melbourne member. Judith was President of PEN Melbourne during 1990-91, edited The Melbourne PEN newsletter from 1991 to 1995, and was Vice-President of PEN Melbourne for over 15 years. In 2017 Judith was elected an International Vice-President of PEN International.

The poem Epitaph was discovered by her daughter Zoe among Judith’s papers after her death. It was written in 1981 following Judith’s first cancer diagnosis.

Their unwavering spirit

Mammad Aidani writes about the intensifying oppression and censorship of writers, journalists, artists and activists under the Iranian Islamic regime

The oppression under the Iranian Islamic regime persists, and its prisons are filled with brave individuals. Despite the risks, these individuals have dared to express their views and criticise the system, demonstrating remarkable courage and resilience.

The prisoners are, as usual, subjected to harsh and inhuman conditions. Today, the Iranian Islamic regime routinely punishes human rights activists and religious and ethnic minorities for peaceful activities, preventing the free exercise of belief and expression. Hundreds of prisoners of conscience, writers and artists are currently detained in Iran. The regime continues to discriminate against women and interfere in questions of marriage, divorce, inheritance, child custody, and women’s national and international travel.

Iran has one of the most severe censorship laws in the world. It strictly controls information in newspapers, radio, television, the internet, literature, and all art forms. These forms of censorship have been used to suppress opposition and influence public opinion since the establishment of this regime in 1979.

Iran’s Islamic regime, at the behest of its leadership, has constantly and brutally repressed artists and human rights activists who have dared to peacefully dissent. This repression has become even more pronounced in the two years since the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini on 16 September 2022 at the hands of the Islamic Morality police over a dress code violation. After Mahsa’s murder, the killing of hundreds and the arrest of thousands continued. However, the Iranian authorities’ systematic increase in oppression has not diminished the resilience of the regime’s critics and opponents. Their unwavering spirit offers a glimmer of hope in these dark times.

Iran’s status as the world’s second-largest jailer of writers, second only to China, emphasises the issue’s global significance. The arrest and detention of writers highlights the persistent suppression of free expression and dissent in Iran. This calls for immediate international attention and action.

The harassment and imprisonment of writers and artists is a systematic oppressive pattern that the Iranian Islamic regime has adapted to intimidate or force its critics to be silent. Figures like singer-songwriter Mehdi Yarrahi, rapper Toomaj Salehi and Vafa Ahmadpour, poet Mahvash Sabet, writer Peyman Farhangian, Keyvan Mohtadi, activist Anisha Asadollahi, human rights activist and writer Golrokh Ebrahimi Iraee, poet Sattar Rezaei, poet Sepideh Rashnu, and political activist and writer Sepideh Gholian and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi are all in prison.

Hossein Shanbehzadeh, a writer and blogger, has been sentenced to twelve years in prison after responding to, and making comments about, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on X. Shanbehzadeh has also spoken out against mandatory dress for women and other political issues. In early June this year, the Islamic Regime’s agents arrested him for posting a single dot in reply to one of Khamenei’s tweets. He was arrested because his reply had received around double the number of likes received by Khamenei’s original tweet.

The crime of these individuals is to fight for justice and freedom, and to express their thoughts through words on a page. The Morality police in Iran arrest young people for simply wearing the wrong attire. The regime’s security forces’ harassment goes beyond imprisonment, with incessant harassment and threats against critics occurring outside of prison as well. For example, the Special Merit Award winner for Best Song For Social Change at the 2023 Grammy Awards, the singersongwriter Shervin Hajipour, was sentenced for ‘propaganda against the Islamic regime’ and ‘encouraging and provoking the public to riot to disrupt national security.’

He was sentenced to three years and eight months in prison. He was summoned by the police and questioned and accused of causing the protests in 2022. Security forces detained him in September 2022 and released him on bail that October. Whilst supposedly free on bail, Hajipour is not allowed to leave Iran and was told by the regime to write and sing about the achievements of the Islamic Revolution, which he has refused to do.

In the month after Mahsa’s death, and amid mass demonstrations across the country, the Islamic Regime’s forces injured, blinded and killed hundreds and arrested thousands. The regime continues to mistreat and oppress writers, artists and political activities in its prisons, illegal detention centres staffed by various intelligence and security agencies, and through its use of plainclothes security forces across Iran.

The trauma and fear is constant, both for those actively detained by the Islamic Regime and those who live under its constant watch.

Mammad Aidani is the Vice-President of PEN Melbourne.

Cultural Revolution to theVoice From the

Linda Jaivin explores the relationship between disinformation, misinformation, conspiracy, and trust in Chinese communities today.

During the leadup to the referendum for the Voice to Parliament last year, I received some messages on WeChat from an old friend, a Chinese person now living in Australia, who I’ve known for decades since first meeting in Beijing.

My heart sank. They were Chinese-language (Mandarin) video ‘explainers’ about the Voice that made the claim that to vote yes for the Voice was to risk losing one’s home. The videos also claimed that the Voice would over-privilege Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and hand over control to them of everything from parliamentary business to Australian foreign and immigration policy. As Haiqing Yu has written elsewhere, the pro-Voice videos and posts on Chinese-language social media appealed to people’s reason, whereas the anti-Voice campaign appealed to emotion, including fears of ‘reverse racism’ in which Asians would be the losers. It accused pro-Voice campaigners of being naïve and victims themselves of misinformation1

I tried politely but firmly to rebut the dis- and misinformation in these videos, but my friend, also politely, wasn’t having any of it. Just as when we discussed vaccination several years earlier, I could tell they were convinced that I would be so much better off if I’d just take the ‘Red Pill’.

While I haven’t seen evidence linking the Communist Party of China with these videos, the Party has a history of promoting news and views that cast democratic countries and systems in a bad light or show them as dangerous places to live. One Beijing friend of mine gets in touch from time to time with questions like: Is it true that Black Lives Matter protesters are terrorising ‘ordinary’ Americans? How do you know that Trump didn’t win in 2020?

Both friends came of age during the Cultural Revolution (broadly 196676). Over that decade, millions of people, egged on by Chairman Mao and other Party leaders, were beaten, tortured or killed for supposed ‘bad class background’ or alleged participation in counter-revolutionary conspiracies.

It should be said that even in the darkest times of the Cultural Revolution, where the only openly available information was disinformation – crystallised in Mao’s insistence, amid violent anarchy, that “the situation is excellent and getting better all the time!” – there were those who saw through it. These included Zhang Zhixin, a Party member who directly called out the Party’s lies and disinformation. They subjected her to almost unimaginable

torture and cut her vocal cords before executing her so that she could no longer discomfit them with her words.

Not long after Mao died in 1976, the new leadership renounced ‘class warfare’ and admitted that the so-called conspiracies had been made up. They posthumously ‘rehabilitated’ Zhang Zhixin and declared her a martyr. Everything that victims, perpetrators and bystanders alike thought they knew about the terrible events of the decade was revealed by the Party to be a tangle of misinformation, disinformation and baseless conspiracy theories.

By the time the new leadership declared in 1981 that the Cultural Revolution was itself a counter-revolutionary conspiracy, many Chinese people had lost all trust in authority. There is a fine line between healthy scepticism towards authority and the kind of toxic cynicism that inclines people to seek out wild conspiracy theories of their own. Some of these related to Lin Biao, the man Mao had once considered his ‘closest comrade-in-arms’ and designated successor, officially reported to have died in a plane crash with his family in 1971 while fleeing to the Soviet Union after a failed plot to assassinate Mao.

China today is very different from how it was in Maoist times. People enjoy far more freedoms, especially regarding lifestyle, employment and leisure. But disinformation and misinformation still rule and the Party’s digital-age propaganda is both sophisticated and pervasive. It promotes a highly edited version of its own history and criminalises any attempts to cut through the disinformation, or fill in the gaps, as ‘historical nihilism’. A recent law makes ‘insulting heroes and martyrs’ a crime and some independent historians like Wang Youqin, author of Victims of the Cultural Revolution, have been forced into exile. Censorship, surveillance (including mutual surveillance among the people), and other controls over the media mean that the Party doesn’t need to cut its critics’ vocal cords to silence them.

Try using the Chinese-language Baidu search engine to look up Liu Xiaobo, for example. Liu was the fearless cultural critic turned advocate for democracy who received the Nobel Prize in absentia while serving an eleven-year sentence for ‘subverting state power’. He died while still incarcerated in 2017. Baidu provides a brief and unsavoury description that doesn’t mention his many significant works, much less the Nobel. Search Baidu for the erudite and outspoken scholar of Chinese constitutional law, Xu Zhangrun, and you’ll find… nothing at all.

Linda Jaivin is a translator (from Chinese), essayist and the author of 12 books, including the internationally published The Shortest History of China. Her next book, to be published in 2025, will be a short history of the Cultural Revolution, Bombard the Headquarters!

1 Haiqing Yu, ‘The campaign to persuade: the “Voice” among Chinese Australians’, Pearls and Irritations, 14 August 2024

Found In the Maze

Nandar, feminist activist and founder of Purple Feminists Group from Shan State, responds to Ma Thida’s A-Maze: Myanmar’s Struggle for Democracy, weaving her own experiences of surviving war and systemic oppression in Myanmar, where poetry and storytelling become tools of resistance and truth-telling in the face of military violence.

“While reading A-Maze by Ma Thida, I found myself reflecting on the reality of war that shapes the lives of so many in Myanmar, including my own. My poetry is a product of lived experiences—of witnessing the destruction, fear, and systemic oppression that have marked generations.

“Boom! Ka-Boom! Boom!”

The table collapses.

My heart trembles.

“CRASH!”

Unfinished lunch

Scattered across the floor.

I need to call my mom.

Dialling…

“The number you are trying to reach is not in the service area.”

Eyes wet.

Speechless.

Helpless.

Body frozen in broad daylight. Every bomb blast,

A seizure to the body.

Insomnia.

Homelessness.

Starvation.

Fear, installed like a recurring disease.

A systemic pyramid

My ancestors died dismantling—

Only to realize it’s a maze

Designed to trap us.

Colonialism.

Dictatorship.

Stories like those in A-Maze can serve as a window into the complexities of our struggles, yet it’s through personal experience that we understand the true weight of survival and resistance. For me, storytelling is not just an art form—it is a lifeline, a means of truth-telling in the face of war.”

Over 70 years of conflict,

The broken NCA.

The false hope of Panglong, Denying citizenship to my Rohingya brothers and sisters,

Burning the lands that feed the nation,

Burying our children’s future in graveyards—

When they should be cradled

In their mothers’ arms, Listening to lullabies.

Stop calling them war casualties—

There is nothing casual about it.

Stop painting our fight for democracy as terrorism

While we are stripped of our human rights.

Stop issuing diplomatic statements

That don’t stop the killings.

Stop calling your “war zone”

The “Golden Land.”

Stop roaring in success, Sleeping in peace,

While our homes tremble from the sounds you make.

Stop lecturing us on the greatness of the 2008 Constitution

When you burn down our schools to protect it.

Stop rewriting laws like you’re above them.

Stop treating us like Muppets, Manipulating us inside your maze.

Everyone needs a tool for revolution, But it doesn’t always have to be guns or bombs.

I am not afraid of war or gunshots, Not anymore.

It’s not the gun or airstrike that scares me—

It’s the aftermath we witness:

Cold, scattered bodies

On roads the living used to walk.

It’s not death that terrifies us most.

It’s living with fear,

The kind that kills us every night.

This time, history won’t be written by the powerful—

It will be written by truth-tellers, Those who fought injustice, Died with meaning, Stood unshaken, Never gave up,

Resisted until the end. In the kitchen,

A bowl of rice cooking,

A single table, a lonely chair.

“I know how to survive the war,”

Just like my comrades, Just like my ancestors, Just like my mother, In the middle of paddy fields.

Hope flows on paper, Stained with the blood

Of my people.

The people of revolution, Who carry this country

On their backs.

We’ve learned how to survive—

Through fear, through war.

But survival should not mean Living in silence, Living in fear, Living under the weight

Of a system designed to crush us.

This time, we rise.

Not just with guns or bombs, But with our voices, Our words, Our truth.

Nandar is a feminist activist, a writer, and a podcaster from Shan State, Myanmar. As the founder of the Purple Feminists Group, she amplifies marginalised voices and champions gender equality. With over a decade of activism, her poetry reflects the struggle for justice, truth, and freedom, speaking to the heart of Myanmar’s ongoing fight for equality.

Myanmar's Writers and Journalists Facing Heightened Persecution

Ross Holder, Head of Asia/Pacific Region at PEN International, sheds light on the ongoing crackdown on free expression in Myanmar and the profound impact on poets, writers, and journalists under the military junta's rule.

Despite the embattled military junta reeling from a series of increasingly significant military defeats, the deepening conflict1 in Myanmar continues to have a devastating impact across much of the country.

The ongoing human rights crisis caused by the military junta has had a profound impact on the right to freedom of expression. Wideranging restrictions on all forms of expression have been enacted, with writers, journalists, bloggers and others subject to arbitrary arrest, military trials, torture and long-term imprisonment for any perceived criticism of the junta or the coup.

One of the most heavily used legal provisions is Section 505(A)2 of Myanmar’s criminal code, which has been used to effectively criminalise any perceived criticism of the junta or the coup. For example, in April 20233, news editor Kyaw Min Swe was detained for over two months for violating Section 505-A after he changed his social media profile picture to a black square as an expression of mourning for the victims of the junta’s bombing of a village that led to the deaths of at least 165 people. More recently, a 70-year-old man was charged4 under the same legislation for sharing a news post on his social media account.

Other recent examples of the government’s efforts to impose further restrictions include the tightening of licensing requirements for publishers on 31 January 2024, with the threat of legal action against those who fail to comply. Evidence of how the junta uses licensing requirements occurred just days prior on 27 January 2024, when the government revoked the licenses of two publishing houses5 for the printing and publication of books for violating the Printing and Publishing Enterprises Law (PPEL). In 2023, the PPEL was amended by the junta to empower6 its Ministry of Information to ban and confiscate publications by decree with no right of appeal.

In recent months, there have also been further restrictions impacting freedom of expression online, including the junta’s establishment of

a committee7 tasked with the monitoring and prohibition of various types of online content, including “political criticism” and content deemed incompatible with “traditional Burmese culture”. According to the decree8, the committee also has the power to freeze bank accounts, deactivate phone numbers and pursue legal action against anyone who posts prohibited content. The junta has also intensified its spot checks9 of pedestrians phones for VPN software, which it recently banned10 as part of its wider efforts to control access to information and communication.

The indiscriminate destruction11 of towns and villages carried out by the junta as part of its egregious ‘four cuts’12 doctrine has resulted in further waves of displacement as civilians have been forced to flee their homes to escape the junta’s campaign of terror.

This displacement has been compounded by the junta’s renewed policy of forced conscription13, which has led many to flee the country to avoid being drafted. Among those who have fled are writers, journalists and committed non-violent activists, many of whom have been living in hiding in Myanmar since the coup but now fear discovery from the junta’s intensified house-to-house searches for adults eligible for conscription.

The impact of the conflict and the junta’s brutal repression is most starkly illustrated by the ongoing plight of Myanmar’s Rohingya community. Almost one million14 Rohingya have already been displaced to neighbouring Bangladesh as a result of decades of systematic repression, including more than 700,00015 who were forced to flee to Bangladesh in 2017 to escape genocidal attacks16 by Myanmar’s military. Among those displaced and trapped in dire conditions are Rohingya poets, writers and others who have continued to use their writing17 to express their collective trauma and resilience in the face of an ongoing crisis of humanity.

In Myanmar’s Rakhine state, the appalling forced conscription18 of Rohingya to fight on behalf of the same military responsible for

committing genocidal attacks19 against them has stoked tensions20 with the opposing Arakan Army (AA), one of Myanmar’s many ethnic armed organizations (EAOs). This has placed the state’s Rohingya community in a position of acute vulnerability between two warring armed groups, and in recent weeks, alarming reports have emerged of further atrocities21 being committed against the Rohingya by both the junta and the AA.

Conditions of detention remain a pressing concern, an issue that was cruelly illustrated by the tragic passing of documentary filmmaker Pe Maung Sein22. Since he was first detained in May 2022, he has been subjected to torture and abhorrent detention conditions, including at one point reportedly23 suffering from multiple broken ribs and prolapsed discs after he was violently interrogated.

He was frequently denied adequate food and medication and later contracted spinal tuberculosis, resulting in him losing his ability to walk. The junta belatedly released him from prison to undergo medical treatment at Sakura Hospital, however, he died just three days later.

PEN International continues to receive requests for support from Myanmar poets, writers, journalists and others who face active persecution for their peaceful expression. Many of those have been forced to flee the country, while others remain in hiding within Myanmar. Working in close collaboration with the dedicated team at the PEN Emergency Fund24 and partner organisations within the Journalists in Distress Network25, we continue to provide a range of supports to those at risk.

Ross Holder is the Head of Asia/ Pacific Region at PEN International

1 International Institute for Strategic Studies. (n.d.). Myanmar conflict map. IISS Myanmar. https://myanmar.iiss.org/dashboard

2 PEN International. (2023, June 22). Myanmar: PEN mourns the passing of PEN Myanmar president, Nyi Pu Lay. https://www.pen-international.org/news/myanmar-pen-mourns-the-passing-of-penmyanmar-president-nyi-pu-lay

3 PEN International. (2023, April 28). Myanmar: Arrest of journalist latest example of junta’s ongoing repression of peaceful expression. https://www.pen-international.org/news/myanmar-arrest-ofjournalist-latest-example-of-juntas-ongoing-repression-of-peaceful-expression

4 Ayeyarwaddy Times. (2024, January 4). [Text in Burmese about the arrest of a 70-yearold man for posting anti-junta messages on Facebook]. Facebook. https://www.facebook. com/100067770862498/posts/696740272594995

5 Ministry of Information. (2024, January 31). ပုံနှိပ်ခြင်းနှင့်ထုတ်ဝေခြင်းလုပ်ငန်းအသိအမှတ်ပြုလက်မှတ် များရုပ်သိမ်းကြောင်းအသိပေးကြေညာချက် . https://www.moi.gov.mm/announcements/51485

6 Centre for Law and Democracy. (2023, July). Note on amendments to the Protection of Privacy and Electronic Communications Law. https://www.law-democracy.org/live/wp-content/ uploads/2023/07/PPEL-Amendments-Note.Jul23.pdf

7 ARTICLE 19. (2024, April 1). Myanmar: Crackdown on freedom of expression with 24-hour monitoring. https://www.article19.org/resources/myanmar-crackdown-on-freedom-of-expressionwith-24-hour-monitoring-2/

8 ARTICLE 19. (2024, February). Translation Committee: Final report. https://www.article19.org/wpcontent/uploads/2024/02/Translation-Committee_watermark.pdf

9 Radio Free Asia. (2024, June 13). Myanmar blocks internet with VPN ban as it cracks down on dissent. https://www.rfa.org/english/news/myanmar/myanmar-internet-restrictions-vpnban-06132024163512.html

10 Access Now. (2024, March 30). Myanmar VPN ban: Undermining digital freedom and safety. https://www.accessnow.org/myanmar-vpn-ban

11 Bellingcat. (2024, June 5). Myanmar military’s territorial losses underscore conflict escalation. https://www.bellingcat.com/news/rest-of-world/2024/06/05/myanmar-military-territorial-losseswar-conflict-human-rights-burma/

12 OHCHR. (2023, March 20). Myanmar’s Four Cuts doctrine exacerbates human rights crisis. https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2023/03/militarys-four-cuts-doctrine-drives-perpetualhuman-rights-crisis-myanmar

13 BBC. (2024, September 13). Myanmar: Journalism under terror in deadliest year since coup. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-68345291

14 UNHCR. (n.d.). Rohingya emergency. https://www.unhcr.org/uk/emergencies/rohingyaemergency

15 UNHCR. (n.d.). Rohingya emergency. https://www.unhcr.org/uk/emergencies/rohingyaemergency

16 OHCHR. (2024, August). Seven years after genocidal attacks, action needed to stop new atrocities in Myanmar. https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/08/seven-yearsafter-genocidal-attacks-world-must-act-stop-new-atrocities

17 Rohingya poetry. (n.d.). https://rohingya-voice.com/poetry/

18 The Guardian. (2024, May 14). Rohingya forcibly conscripted in battle between Myanmar and rebels. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/article/2024/may/14/ rohingya-being-forcibly-conscripted-in-battle-between-myanmar-and-rebels

19 OHCHR. (2023, August). UN expert calls for accountability for Rohingya and end to global indifference. https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2023/08/un-expert-demandsaccountability-rohingya-and-end-paralysis-indifference

20 OHCHR. (2024, August). Seven years after genocidal attacks, action needed to stop new atrocities in Myanmar. https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/08/seven-yearsafter-genocidal-attacks-world-must-act-stop-new-atrocities

21 Al Jazeera. (2024, May 25). 45,000 Rohingya flee amid violence and atrocities in Myanmar. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/5/25/some-45000-rohingya-flee-amid-allegationsof-beheading-burning-in-myanmar

22 The Irrawaddy. (2024, August 19). Myanmar filmmaker dies after years of imprisonment and torture by junta. https://www.irrawaddy.com/news/obituaries/myanmar-filmmakerdies-after-two-years-of-imprisonment-torture-by-junta.html

23 The Guardian. (2024, September 13). Journalists facing terror campaign in Myanmar’s deadliest year for media. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/sep/13/myanmarjournalists-facing-terror-campaign-in-deadliest-year-for-media-since-coup

24 PEN International. (n.d.). PEN Emergency Fund. https://penemergencyfund.com/en

25 Journalists in Distress. (n.d.). Journalists in distress network. https://www. journalistsindistress.org/

Can versin yüreğin

Let your heart give life

Nedim Türfent

yanardağ olsun yüreğin lav selleri akıtsın karamsarlığın soğuk yüzüne eritsin kalpler arasındaki buz dağlarını veya soğuk bir duş etkisi yaratsın ülkenin üzerinde dolaşan kefenden hayaletlere. mesken olsun yüreğin saadet için dövüşenlere. direnci olsun sorgu odasında tutsağın. sabrı olsun sayılı günleri olanların. mutsuzların ağızlarını koca koca gülüşlerle doldursun. kocaman olsun yüreğin içine umut dağları sığınsın.

yeryüzü olsun yüreğin cansuyu versin damarlara. toprağa bereket getirsin kaf dağı’nın ardındaki pınarlardan. toplanan ekinlerin sadakası dahi yaşamın çözüm anahtarı olsun köylüye, marabaya, ırgata... reva olsun yüreğin darda olana deva olsun. merhem sürsün kuşların kırık kanatlarına. göz kulak olsun imece usulü çalışan karıncalara. fedakar olsun, cömert olsun yüreğin, kelebeklere yaşanacak fazladan bir gün versin. yaşam kaynağı olsun ana rahmi misali... berrak olsun yüreğin su renginde, su gibi aziz olsun. kuruyanı yeşertsin her daim... süt emsin güneşin apak memesinden ve emzirsin ihtiyacı olanı. yaşamın efsunlu tınısıyla cansız kalana can versin yüreğin.

let your heart be a volcano pouring streams of lava upon the cold face of pessimism. let it melt the mountains of ice between our hearts or give a shock effect as a cold shower to the mummified ghosts roaming over the country.

let your heart be a remedy to those who fight for happiness. let it be resistance, to the captive in interrogation. let it be patience to those with a set of days left. let it fill the mouths of the unhappy with heaps of laughter. let your heart be so mighty that it shelters mountains of hope.

let your heart become the earth and pour elixir into veins. bring fertility to the soil from the springs behind the mountain qaf. let the benevolence of the crops be the silver key to life.

let your heart soothe the peasant, the day worker, the agricultural labourer...

let your heart be worthy for those in distress, let it be a cure. let it massage the broken wings of birds with ointments

let it grant refuge to the ants, working collectively in solidarity. let your heart fill with generosity giving butterflies an extra day of life, let it be a lifeline like the womb...

let your heart be crystal clear as clear as water, spring to the barren, for ever. let it suckle milk from the sun’s pure breast and feed the needy. with the enchanted timbre of the life, let your heart give life to the lifeless!

Nedim Türfent is a Kurdish journalist and poet currently based in Germany. His first poetry book Bird Mirror was published in Turkey in 2021 and in 2022, his book of poems and writings Über Mauern was published in Germany. He spent 6 years and 7 months in a Turkish prison for his journalistic work. He is an honorary member of English PEN and PEN Melbourne.

Sana dair izlerin peşinde

Searching trails of you

Nedim Türfent

yüreğime dokunuyor yalnızlık. içimde, oracıkta bir yerde, ince bir sancı, dokunaklı bir ezgi. nasıl anlatsam? katran karası karanlıklarla cebelleşiyorum yokluğunda. yokluğun sonu belirsiz bir serüven. çalakalem düşüyorum boş sayfalara satır satır yokluğunda…

yazmaya yeltenmek seni, yokluğuna değinebilmek ne zor işmiş meğer! bir kekeme hal, bir lal hal. bir türlü dile gelememe hali bu doğurgan sayfalarda... saflarında yaşıyorum yokluğunun...

gözlerimin kırgın kıyısında özlüyorum seni. bir avuç hücrede; bir dünya hasret yokluğun...

ve ben ışıklar içinde bir uykuda, toprağın şahdamarlarında akan. yeraltı suyu misali görünmez, edasız sedasız. yokluğunda nikah kıyıyorum, heybemde yalın bir yanılsama bakışlarım aşıp geçiyor duvarları, nizamiyeyi ve surları...

demir parmaklıkları ve gölgeleri aforoz edip her hücresine doluyorum hücremin. hasretin zulamda.

düşündükçe, düşledikçe sığamıyorum uzunluğuna satırların. tutmuyor kemiklerim, takatsiz ve mecalsiz...

seyredalıyorum semayı, bedenim göz hapsinde. nokta nokta gecenin yıldızları, biraz da puantiyeli... mevsimlerden ağustos, sarı sıcaklar egemen birbirini kovalamıyor dakikalar; bitkin, yorgun. bağrımda hatıraların kalp acıtan fotoğrafları ortak paydada buluştuğumuz. hatıralarımız geleceğimizin payandası...

yokluğunda ekşiyor kelimeler, meyve vermez kalemim. yokluğun biteviye manasızlık! araftayım hücrenin kapısında, yokluğunda... sana ait izler peşindeyim, onca beton kütleleri arasında. yapabilsem, bestelerim seni satırların kafiyelerine. sübliminal! bilinçaltımdan damıtır resmederim seni, rüyalarımın pencerelerine...

fakat direnmekte özlem, dile gelmemekte! muhabbet kuşunun gagasından kalorifer peteğine tüneyen sivrisineğe sana ait izlerin peşindeyim, beyhude!

yokluğunda her şey içime dokunuyor.a zira artık tarih kadar ıraksın…

solitude touches my heart. within me, somewhere right in there, a thin veiled ache, a tender melody. how must I explain? in tar-black darkness, I toil in your absence. your absence, an adventure upon an obscured end. I fall weaseling onto empty pages line by line in your absence…

to dare writing about you, to touch upon your absence what a heavy labour! a stuttering state, a mute and scarlet face. to swallow my tongue in these fertile pages… I live in the frontlines of your absence...

on the crestfallen shores of my eyes, I long for you. in a cell the size of a palm; a world of longing your absence.

and me wrapped in lights, asleep, in the earth’s pulsating carotid. as water flows underground, invisible, without a face, or a voice. in your absence I officiate a wedding. a bare illusion in my saddlebag my gaze passes over walls, gates, and fortresses...

excommunicating iron bars and shadows I fill in the every ounce of my cell. your longing in my stash. as I think, as I dream I can’t be contained to the length of lines. my bones won’t hold, powerless and weak...

I zone out to the sky, my body under eye arrest. dot by dot the stars of the night, a little dappled... august in all seasons, warm yellow prevailing. minutes don’t chase each other; exhausted, tired. heart wrenching photos of memoirs in my weary heart where we met halfway. our memories, pillars of our future.

the words sour in your absence, my pen doesn’t bear fruit. your absence forever meaninglessness! I’m in the limbo at the door of the cell in your absence... I seek of trails of you amidst all the mass of cement. if I can, I will compose you onto the rhymes of the lines. subliminal! distilling you from my subconscious, I paint you in the windows of my dreams...

however yearning resists. unspeakable! from the parakeet’s beak to the mosquito perching in the heater’s core I seek trails of you. in vain! in your absence everything is touching me. just because you are as far away as history...

The Falsehoods that Feed Fear

One year on from the Voice to Parliament Referendum, Sushi Das reflects on how disinformation contributed to the ‘No’ outcome and writes “critical thinking is our pathway out of the miasma of misinformation” that has come to dominate news and social media

One of the most shocking features of the Voice referendum campaign last year was the sheer volume of false and misleading information that swept through public debate, the traditional news media and, more importantly, ordinary citizens’ social media feeds.

Just a year earlier, on the pages of this journal, Christine McKenzie, president of International PEN Melbourne Centre, had expressed the hope that advocates on either side of the Voice debate would speak with restraint and oppose “mendacious publication, deliberate falsehood and distortion of facts for political and personal ends”.

The result is now behind us, and discerning the reasons why Australians overwhelmingly voted against the proposal to recognise First Nations people in the Constitution, and to create a representative Indigenous body to advise the Federal Government, will keep political and social scientists, historians and psephologists busy for years to come.

But what we must address immediately is how we manage our polluted information ecosystem, and understand what it is doing to us as a society. Highlighting this is not to say false information was decisive in the referendum outcome. It was, however, a pervasive and consistent feature of the campaign. It wasn’t everything, but it was something.

With my fellow fact-checkers at RMIT Factlab, I observed the campaign closely, every day. Our work involves debunking false and misleading information on social media platforms because it can cause harm to people or undermine democratic processes.

Last year, the bulk of our work focussed on false information relating to the Voice, simply because there was so much of it. In the year leading up to the vote, we produced more than 100 fact-checks, a third of them Voice-related.

As fact-checkers we are signatories to the International Fact-Checking Network’s code of principles, which requires a commitment to fairness, transparency and non-partisanship. We are in the business of promoting information integrity through high-quality fact-checking. What we don’t do is promote any political position.

“ “

But it’s a fact that while monitoring social media during the Voice referendum, the false and misleading information we consistently found was almost exclusively in support of the “No” side of the argument.

Much of what we saw was divisive, racially focussed, sometimes abusive, and often involved false narratives borrowed from the United States. It fell into two broad categories: false information about the role and impact the Voice would have, if implemented; and false information about the electoral process itself.

We saw, for example, claims that the Voice would create a third chamber of parliament; that the Uluru Statement from the Heart was 26 pages long and contained a “hidden” agenda; that it would end private land ownership; and that the Voice would have a legislative veto. All wrong.

False information also targeted the electoral process itself, overseen by the Australian Electoral Commission. There were claims that a failure to vote would count as a “yes” vote; that the referendum itself was unconstitutional; that American Dominion voting machines would be used and give an unreliable result; and that the referendum was rigged in favour of a “Yes” outcome. Again, all wrong.

But does the way the Voice campaign was conducted matter if false information wasn’t decisive in the referendum outcome? And if a majority of Australians voted “No” conscientiously and for a variety of reasons? Leaving aside the Voice, fact-checkers say it does matter because we think facts matter. We want a community in which critical thinking is a reflex action that kicks in every time we reach for our smartphones.

For Australia, the immediate future includes a federal election expected to be held in the first half of next year. Chances are we’re in for another flood of false information. This will be a test for voters, our political leaders, the news media, and for fact checkers. Are we ready?

Sure, political campaigns have always involved elements of propaganda, and all the tricks of rhetoric and advertising designed to misrepresent and discredit opponents. “Truth” has often been optional in political debates. What’s new in the digital age is the speed at which false information spreads, unmediated by traditional news media, too fast for the moderators to catch.

It has changed everything: political campaigning is nastier, debate is uncivil, people are polarised. We have entered a post-fact world, where facts don’t matter. In this environment, false information doesn’t always aim to make people behave or vote in a certain way. Sometimes it simply seeks to cause uncertainty, confusion, chaos, and even fear.

For some, it’s a deliberate strategy, best articulated by Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s former chief strategist and former head of Breitbart News, who candidly remarked that the only way to deal with traditional news media “is to flood the zone with shit”. This means overwhelming the information ecosystem with false information that confounds critics, bypasses the traditional media’s role of discerning the truth and, in the

process, disrupts normal democratic processes to win a political contest. It makes consensus and agreement on the facts not only unachievable but undesirable.

In this environment, voters can become overwhelmed, disengaged, even afraid. And fear leads to mistrust in just about everything: government, democratic and electoral processes, the news media, science, and even each other.

This has real-world harmful consequences, since social media algorithms elevate information that provokes strong emotions like outrage. When people make decisions based on false information, it can give rise to a new horror every time. Conspiracy theories during the COVID pandemic fuelled vaccine hesitancy and resistance. The US Capitol Hill riots in 2021 were based on false claims the presidential election was rigged. False information was central to the racists rioting directed at minorities in Britain recently. And in Australia, false information stalked our social media feeds during the Voice referendum.

Our long-standing framework of truth-telling as a shared communicative enterprise based in reasoned debate and respect is under threat. Critical thinking is our pathway out of the miasma of misinformation. To adapt the words of Hannah Arendt, we must build resilience against the danger of factual truth being “manoeuvred out of the world not only for a time but, potentially, forever.”

Sushi Das leads the fact-checking project at RMIT University.

Photo: Martin Berry / Alamy Stock Photo

Angry Poems Bala Mudaly

It Is What It is

It is what it is

So says the soothsayer, Old man with wrinkled dugs1

Military campaigns, Conquest, rape and plunder

Common as carrion flies

Down the corridors of time; A kind of brutal madness that Cancels cultures, languages and peoples

Advances empires

Energises civilisations

Creates mass employment

Spawns new lethal inventions

Boosts ill-gotten wealth of nations

Ensures the purity of a chosen people.

It's what it is, right?

Grant Me

Grant me an ounce less despair

An ounce more joy

In old age.

Bala Mudaly was born in South Africa in 1938 to parents of Indian ancestors. Chronic unemployment and political harassment compelled him to migrate to Australia in 1988. Bala’s memoir Colour Coated Identity recounts his life under apartheid. As well as supporting PEN, Bala has been an active member of the Australian Red Cross and Amnesty International. His contribution to human rights was acknowledged in 2007 when he was presented with the Claire Wositzky Award by the Victorian Branch of Amnesty International.

1 Eliot, T. S. (2001). The Waste Land (M. North, Ed.). WW Norton.

The Price of Difference and Dissent in Modi’s India

Professor Krishna Sen on the growing risk to academic freedom in Modi's India through the case of Hanny Babu

Most readers will not know of Hanny Babu MT. I first heard his name in early 2021 when a senior Indian linguist and friend mentioned Hanny as an example of how social science research has become risky business in Modi’s India.

In July 2020, Hanny Babu, a linguist and Associate Professor in the Department of English at India’s premier institution of higher education, Delhi University, was arrested by the dreaded National Investigation Agency (NIA). Ever since, he has been detained on charges that a speech he delivered on 31 December 2017 at the Elgar Parishad gathering in Pune constituted an incitement to rioting, which broke out the following day in the nearby village of Bhima Koregaon.

Curiously, Hanny Babu had not delivered a speech on that day, had not been in Pune, and had not even been invited to the Elgar Parishad. According to his wife, Dr. Jenny Rowena, neither of them had heard of the event until the riot and subsequent arrests made the news. It took two years after the riots for the authorities to first search their home and another six months before Hanny was arrested.

Over the previous few years, Hanny’s research interests had moved from technical aspects of Theoretical Linguistics to questions of language policy and power in the Indian education system. Some of his supporters believe that it was this research, which was critical of the promotion of Hindi as the language of instruction, that drew the ire of the Modi government.

Elgar Parishad (literally the ‘Declaration Committee’), attended by some 35,000 activists, performers, and intellectuals, was an anti-caste festival

of ideas, readings, singing, and dancing. It ended with the smashing of clay pots, representing the destruction of the Hindu caste system, a mode of prehistoric social classification that continues to plague postcolonial India and has grown more politically pernicious in the last two decades.

The theatrics of gestural politics, such as the symbolic crushing of inequity, are common in Indian performance traditions. The riot that broke out the following day, pitting mainly Dalits against upper-caste Hindus, causing one death and some injuries, was no worse than the litany of other communal riots throughout the 21st century. Dalit, meaning ‘smashed’ or ‘repressed’, is the most widely accepted term for the outcasts of the ghastly Hindu caste system. In official language, these groups are referred to as ‘scheduled castes and tribes’. Almost every year this century, there has been at least one outbreak of deadly inter-caste violence.

A group of 16 (whom the Indian media refers to as BK-16) activists, lawyers, and public intellectuals were detained in relation to the Elgar Parishad under the draconian Unlawful Activities Prevention Act. It is to the credit of India’s independent judiciary that the Modi government, even after its third electoral victory, has been unable to prosecute any of these detainees and forced to release seven of them under various bail arrangements. The eldest, Stan Swamy, died in detention, having never been charged. The remaining eight, including Hanny Babu, are still in prison. PEN International was active on behalf of another member of the so-called BK16: the prominent poet VV Rao, who, at age 78, had been detained in August 2018. In 2022, Hanny Babu was included in PEN International’s case list of Writers in Prison.

Professor Krishna Sen

Outcasts

Hanny Babu, a ‘statistical Muslim’ from North India, is estranged from his family because he married Jenny Rowena, who belongs to a minority Kerala Christian community. Both talented academics, Hanny and Jenny completed their PhDs and, under Affirmative Action regulations, were eventually appointed to Delhi University and the prestigious women’s college Miranda House, respectively. Affirmative Action appointments are often controversial in India. But, as the reaction of his students after his arrest showed, Hanny had a large and loyal following among students who admired his work on behalf of minority educational and linguistic rights.

In Delhi, Hanny and Jenny sent their only child to a secular middle-class private school (incidentally in the same class as my own niece). My brother and sister-in-law, though themselves highly informed and critical observers of India’s declining democracy, knew nothing about this strange case of injustice unfolding not far from their social circles. The cacophonous clamour of the media in India and the overwrought pace of life in the capital drowns out much of what really matters.

The fact that Hanny is a Muslim whose research is directed toward the interests of the eternal outcasts of India makes him particularly vulnerable to the capricious conduct of the majoritarian Hindu revivalist Modi government. At our only face-to-face meeting in January, Jenny cites her husband, saying that ‘prisons are the only public space in India where Muslims are overrepresented’.

The Freedom House Index has downgraded India’s status in every one of its annual reports since Modi’s second election win in 2019. For four decades, prior to Modi’s ascension, India had been the only Asian nation

consistently listed as ‘free’ alongside Western democracies such as the US and Australia. Now, the Modi government holds thousands of political prisoners, and India scores lower than most of its Southeast Asian neighbours on the Freedom House ‘personal freedom’ rankings. In 2021, Reporters Without Borders named India as ‘one of the world’s most dangerous countries for journalists’. This year, India dropped further down the ranks on measures of press freedom.

Still, I was surprised when, earlier this year, just months before Modi’s third national electoral win, I had occasion to speak with a couple of young democracy activists in New Delhi. These young men and I have all the protection historically afforded to India’s upper-caste, middle-class, globally networked, English-speaking elites. But that, it seems, is not protection enough against a government that can be both vicious and arbitrary.

My hosts start by turning off their mobile phones, motioning for me to do the same — as though we are part of some underground resistance cell. Later, they explain that they fear the possibility of electronic surveillance and fake evidence being planted through digital devices.

Whether such fears are real or imagined is irrelevant. The widespread existence of such fear is itself enough to erode democracy’s foundation — the right to peacefully express dissent.

Nonetheless, Jenny Rowena remains optimistic, recently writing that ‘the prison is not a dead end’. She says her husband is learning Arabic and teaching English in prison. He and his fellow middle-class intellectual inmates are finding common purpose with the poor, the illiterate, the Dalits, and the tribals, who constitute the majority of the prison’s population.

Emeritus Professor Krishna Sen, FAHA, is Senior Research Fellow in the School of Humanities, and the Institute of Public Policy at the University of Western Australia and a member of Murdoch University’s Senate. She has been the Chair of PEN International’s Perth Centre since 2021.

A Collaboration Between Generations

Mikaelie Evans reflects on PEN Melbourne’s evolving collaboration with RMIT’s Project Sandpit/box in advocating for persecuted writers.

I first heard about PEN in 2023 while studying a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing at RMIT. In the first semester of each year, students in Peta Murray’s class, Project Sandpit/box, are introduced to PEN Melbourne. Following an exchange of goals and ambitions, students are provided with a brief from the PEN committee. What started as a trial partnership between PEN Melbourne and RMIT has grown into a flourishing collaboration between lecturers, students and committee members.

On an otherwise dismal autumn morning in 2023, our cohort received news that two guests would be joining our class: Chris McKenzie, President of PEN Melbourne, and Zara Gudnason, the first student to partake in this collaboration and current editor of PEN Melbourne’s journal. It seemed serendipitous that I’d been protesting different causes for years and was acutely aware of Julian Assange’s case at the time I met Chris and Zara.

Throughout the semester, I worked with classmates in Project Sandpit/ box who shared similar interests and aligned with the values of PEN. We wrote odes to imprisoned writers, memorialised those who had lost their lives and embraced the concept of the Empty Chair. While I was initially drawn to PEN’s campaign for Assange, I learnt about other less publicised cases where writers remained imprisoned. From these instances, some of the most empathetic and powerful letters were exchanged between the imprisoned and the ‘free’ writers, restoring hope, even if temporarily, in times of distress.

The experience in Project Sandpit/box extended beyond the classroom: in the mid-semester break of 2023, I joined the PEN Melbourne committee. I work alongside other members to advocate for the rights of persecuted writers, and continue the collaboration with Project Sandpit/box for future cohorts.

In the first semester of 2024, Chris, Zara and I met with this year’s students participating in Project Sandpit/box. Again, awakening a sense of urgency on an otherwise dismal autumn morning, we began workshopping ideas for the group to develop throughout the semester.

Meeting in May to mark World Press Freedom Day, the students curated an event for imprisoned and silenced writers. Within RMIT’s Alumni Courtyard, we wrote letters, read poems and shared stories. We created a banner of

messages, scrawled in colours that brightened an overcast day. With portraits of incarcerated writers pasted in the windows of Old Melbourne Gaol, we felt gratitude for those who are unfairly suffering for their writing and journalism.

Following the end of the semester, we entered the second half of the year feeling hopeful. Assange had been released and returned to Australia, and our brainstorming for next year’s collaboration between RMIT and PEN Melbourne commenced. As PEN Melbourne develops and expands, we encourage those who are interested to get involved, to become members, allies and friends. Together, we can bear new hope as the coming generations look towards us for ways to help protect those whose voices are threatened to be silenced.

Mikaelie Evans is a writer and editor based in Naarm/Melbourne. With an AD in Professional Writing & Editing and a BA in Creative Writing, she crafts non-fiction poetry, prose, and personal essays exploring the world around her. Her work appears in The Music, Hysteria Magazine, Desert Highways, and other publications.

Uluru Statement from the Heart

Photo: https://ulurustatement.org

Last year, PEN Melbourne supported First Nations peoples’ call for recognition by voting Yes to a constitutionally enshrined Voice to Parliament. We continue to advocate for and support the Uluru Statement from the Heart and its proposed fundamental changes, including Treaty. To read more on Treaty, visit firstpeoplesvic.org

Join PEN Melbourne

Whether you are a writer or a supporter, PEN members are brought together by a passion for advocating for literature and freedom of expression. PEN International was founded 100 years ago to speak up for writers in prison, writers in exile and writers around the world who cannot take for granted the freedoms we enjoy.

The PEN International Melbourne Centre – based at The Wheeler Centre – is a community of people passionate about literature and freedom of speech, speaking out for writers persecuted in their own countries. Please join us.

As a member, you receive a monthly e-newsletter with articles and information about current issues facing writers and journalists around the world. You will also receive news about our events with Australian and international writers and activists, plus a digital copy of our annual PEN Melbourne Journal.

To join or renew your membership: Scan the QR code below or visit www.penmelbourne.org and click ‘Join PEN’. We need you in our community.

PEN International Charter

PEN affirms that:

• Literature knows no frontiers and must remain common currency among people in spite of political or international upheavals.

• In all circumstances, and particularly in time of war, works of art, the patrimony of humanity at large, should be left untouched by national or political passion.

• Members of PEN should at all times use what influence they have in favour of good understanding and mutual respect between nations and people; they pledge themselves to do their utmost to dispel all hatreds and to champion the ideal of one humanity living in peace and equality in one world.

• PEN stands for the principle of unhampered transmission of thought within each nation and between all nations, and members pledge themselves to oppose any form of suppression of freedom of expression in the country and community to which they belong, as well as throughout the world wherever this is possible.

• PEN declares for a free press and opposes arbitrary censorship in time of peace. It believes that the necessary advance of the world towards a more highly organised political and economic order renders a free criticism of governments, administrations and institutions imperative. And since freedom implies voluntary restraint, members pledge themselves to oppose such evils of a free press as mendacious publication, deliberate falsehood and distortion of facts for political and personal ends.

No Frontiers 2024

PEN MELBOURNE JOURNAL 2024

Acknowledgment

Contents

Editorial Note

Ambassador’s Note

Rescuing Truth

President’s Note

Recommended Reads

Recommended Resources

A Letter to the Palestinian Journalists Killed by Israel

Julian Assange’s freedom is a boon for the world

Writers in Prison Report 2024

Philippines

Amanda Echanis

Myanmar

China

Yang Hengjun

Hong Kong

Turkey

Selahattin Demirtaş

Osman Kavala

Nicaragua

OPT/Israel

Iran

Mahvash Sabet

Narges Mohammadi

Cuba

María Cristina Garrido Rodríguez

Belarus

Kaciaryna Andrejeva

The focus is on AI art… but what about AI audiences?

Malcolm Knox writes about the complexities and taboos of audience taste in AI art.

Taş gelmez sen gel

İlhan Sami Çomak

A Letter to Pinar Selek

Blowing the whistle on sport in Australia

Their unwavering spirit

Cultural Revolution to theVoice From the

Found In the Maze

Myanmar's Writers and Journalists Facing Heightened Persecution

Can versin yüreğin

Let your heart give life

Nedim Türfent

Sana dair izlerin peşinde

Searching trails of you

Nedim Türfent

The Falsehoods that Feed Fear

Angry Poems Bala Mudaly

The Price of Difference and Dissent in Modi’s India

Outcasts

A Collaboration Between Generations

Uluru Statement from the Heart

Join PEN Melbourne

PEN International Charter