Writers Honored for Free Expression Commitment
12 writers from China are among the 41 who received Human Rights Watch’s 2012 Hellman/Hammett grants “for their commitment to free expression and their courage in the face of persecution”. The organisation suggested that the presence of so many writers from one country reflected ...
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It’s ironic that an award named after these two (both supported the Soviet Union’s Communist Party and Stalin) goes to those who “have faced persecution for their work, generally by government authorities seeking to prevent them from publishing information and opinions”.
The honored writers under the PRC one-party authoritarian regime have stood up for creative freedom in a way that the latest Nobel Literature laureat has not and never will, himself being a Party writer and high Party official. Hammett is a famous novelist buried in Arlington Cemetery as a veteran of two world wars, while Hellman is a noted playwright; while neither was perfect, they at least stood up for the freedom of speech and thought; it is a serious distortion to pigeonhole either as some sort of Stalinist or hard-line communist.