So said Albanian writer
Ismail Kadare, when he sought (and gained) asylum in France in 1990. This week brings us the news that Chinese intellectuals who added their names in official support of
Charter 08, a manifesto demanding more political freedom - and the end to one-party rule - have faced harassment by the authorities. Aside from the (not unexpected) indignities of house arrest without charge and threats by the authorities, academic Xu Youyu was told that in adding his name to the charter and refusing to retract, he had
signed away his right to publish anything in China (as has every writer who supports the charter).
Freedom to create is a very dangerous thing in an oppressive regime - it could lead to unsavoury thoughts such as contrary opinions and an unhealthy desire for political freedom.
Taslima Nasrin, a feminist Muslim writer from Bangladesh, has only recently been given a home in Paris after being asked to leave India (she was threatened with death in her home country in 1994 and has been in exile ever since). The story of the Iranian fatwa on
Salman Rushdie is extremely old news, but even he had to go into hiding while living in the UK because extremist Muslims (still) think he should die for writing about Islam in a less-than-reverential tone.
And on a much less controversial (but still worrying) note, respected Singaporean author Catherine Lim was castigated by then-prime minister Goh Chok Tong for writing about what she perceived as an
'affective divide' in ordinary Singaporeans' attitudes toward the PAP government (i.e. they respect their efficiency but have no real affection for them). She also lost her space in the opinion pages in the Straits Times as a
result of the prime minister's response. The PAP government is known for taking political dissidents (and the print media) to court on defamation charges in order to protect their public standing (and usually winning with crippling financial damages awarded), so Dr. Lim got off lightly, but it served notice to all the 'creative types' in Singapore - you can write about anything for mass consumption except what the government considers an attack on their reputation.
So what can writers do in the face of oppression and censorship? In Ismail Kadare's case, just
writing literature was enough.
"Because all totalitarian regimes, especially Stalinist ones, aren't normal, they're mad," he adds. "So if you manage to do something normal, then you are already against the regime just by the fact of doing it. For me, great literature is just genetically, by its very nature, against totalitarianism. If a book is well done, not to say great or anything - but is a good, proper genuine book, then it is automatically against the totalitarian regime."
