A jailed Baha’i poet whose book Prison Poems was the subject of two literary events in Australia has received the support of the worldwide writers association, PEN International.
PEN has called for the release of Mahvash Sabet from an Iranian jail where she has been incarcerated since 2008.
Mrs Sabet is one of seven Baha’i leaders who were tried on spurious charges in a sham trial that was widely condemned by the international community.
She is a niece of Sydney Baha’i Ghodsieh Samimi, who said she was very grateful to Pen International.
“Mahvash truly is an inspiring poet and a wonderful person but she has suffered too much already for her beliefs, and so it is heart-warming to see this plea to end her incarceration,” Mrs Samimi said.
While in her Tehran cell, Mrs Sabet secretly penned her verses for Prison Poems, which had its official Australian launch in Sydney on 29 May 2014, and which was also celebrated at an event in Canberra.
This month, as part of a global campaign to defend persecuted writers, PEN International selected five among them to highlight in a week-long campaign, of which Ms. Sabet was the first.
PEN said that Mrs Sabet and the six other imprisoned Iranian Baha’i leaders “suffered appalling treatment and deprivations during pre-trial detention” before being sentenced to 20 years of imprisonment “after six brief court sessions characterised by their lack of legal due process”.
The president of PEN in Melbourne, Arnold Zable, has urged people to fight for the release of Mrs Sabet.
“Why are such people imprisoned when they should be feted and celebrated?” Mr Zable asked.
“It is this ‘why’ that drives us to do everything we can to free poets of such great courage. These two lines leap out, two of the many that embody the spirit of the all too many imprisoned poets who practice their craft in spite of the darkness of their prison cells:
‘As soon as they chain down our feet
They free the albatross of the mind’
Adding weight to the campaign, the prominent Argentina-born Canadian novelist Alberto Manguel has written an emotionally moving open letter addressed to Mrs Sabet, and which was published in The Guardian newspaper.
Mr Manguel said her poems bear “witness to society’s injustices, prejudices and inability to understand that no matter what society might do to a poet, the poet’s words will still be free in the minds of the readers, and continue to conjure up ideas, engage the mind in conversation.”
PEN International published open letters to four other imprisoned writers as part of a campaign which culminated in its 33rd annual Day of the Imprisoned Writer on 15 November. The campaign asked PEN members – who represent authors in more than 100 countries – to sign a petition asking for the immediate release of Ms. Sabet.