On April 1, 2011, PEN President Kwame Anthony Appiah sent this letter to Chinese authorities after they refused to grant an exit permit to Chinese writer Liao Yiwu to attend the 2011 PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature.

April 1, 2011

His Excellency Hu Jintao
President of the People’s Republic of China
State Council
Beijing 100032
People’s Republic of China

Mr. Yang Jiechi
Foreign Minister
Ministry of Foreign Affairs
No.2 Chaoyangmen S. Street
Chaoyang District
Beijing 100701
People’s Republic of China

Excellencies:

We are writing on behalf of the 3,400 members of PEN American Center, and on behalf of thousands more admirers of contemporary international literature, to ask you to intervene to facilitate the visit of our colleague Liao Yiwu to the PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature, which takes place from April 25 through May 1 in New York.

The annual PEN World Voices Festival was founded in 2004 to celebrate the power of literature to convey our common humanity; to showcase the wealth of literary achievement from around the world; and to expand the access international writers have to American audiences and readers. Now in its seventh year, the Festival has become the premier forum for international literary exchange in the United States and a fixture on the international literary calendar. The annual list of participants includes a mixture of acclaimed authors already well-known to international readers and new voices that are becoming available for the first time to American audiences; More than 100 writers from around the world will be joining us for this year’s Festival, including Wole Soyinka, Hanif Kureishi, Vladimir Sorokin, and Toni Morrison.

In preparing this year’s program, Sir Salman Rushdie and the rest of our Festival committee were excited to extend an invitation to Liao Yiwu to participate in two programs including the Festival’s opening reading, an event that is meant to introduce and celebrate the Festival’s most honored guests. As you know, Liao Yiwu’s groundbreaking writings have brought readers around the world face-to-face with the men and women of contemporary China and have earned him a well-deserved international following. For several years we had hoped to be able to welcome him to the PEN World Voices Festival, and we were extremely gratified that the Chinese government removed prior travel restriction on Mr. Liao and permitted him to travel to the Berlin Literature Festival in September 2010. We extended our invitation to him with the full expectation that he would be able 
to join us for the PEN Festival and then travel on to Australia for the Sydney Writers’ Festival in May.

We understand that authorities in Mr. Liao’s home province of Sichuan initially told him he would be able to secure an exit visa to attend these important festivals. However, in the past week authorities have re-contacted Mr. Liao and informed him that he is once again being barred from traveling outside of China. Perhaps even more disturbingly, our information suggests that around the same time Mr. Liao was asked to sign a document agreeing that he would no longer seek to publish his “illegal” works overseas—a request which, if true, would seem to violate the most fundamental right of Mr. Liao and of all Chinese citizens, under both international and Chinese law, to express themselves freely across international borders.

We are writing respectfully to request your intervention to review Mr. Liao’s travel status and to ensure that he is able to join distinguished colleagues for the opening event of the 2011 PEN World Voices Festival. Permitting Mr. Liao to attend our Festival will send a strong message to the world about China’s interest in international literary and cultural exchange, and it will advance respect and enthusiasm for China’s expanding literary achievements. This is true even if Mr. Liao’s work does not always present an image of unambiguous glory: we would note that many of the United States’ most celebrated authors—writers such as Ernest Hemingway, Arthur Miller, Susan Sontag, and many others—traveled the world freely despite the fact that their work often challenged American orthodoxies, and that their achievements and their works nevertheless are embraced and celebrated as essential examples of America’s cultural achievement.

As an organization that stands for the promotion of literature and the free exchange of literature and ideas across borders, we very much hope to be able to welcome Liao Yiwu to the PEN Festival in New York this month. We would be very grateful for your assistance in making this possible.

Sincerely,

 

Kwame Anthony Appiah
President

CC: H.E. Zhang Yesui
Ambassador of the PRC to the U.S.
Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in the U.S.
3505 International Place, NW
Washington, DC 20007
Fax: (202) 495-2138

H.E. Li Baodong
Permanent Representative and Ambassador
Permanent Mission of the PRC to the U.N.
350 East 35th Street
New York, NY 10016
Fax: (212) 634-7625 and (212) 655-6103
Email: chinamission_un@fmprc.gov.cn / ChinaMissionUN@Gmail.com




Related Articles

• April 22, 2011: Chinese Government Bars Writer Liao Yiwu From Attending PEN Festival in New York

• September 14, 2010: Writer Liao Yiwu Finally Permitted to Travel Outside China


• March 1, 2010: Chinese Writer Liao Yiwu Prevented From Traveling to German Book Festival