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Writers in Exile

The National Assembly is to be asked to join a Europe-wide scheme that provides sanctuary for writers who have been persecuted and exiled from their own countries. The Cities of Asylum network is run under the aegis of the International Parliament of Writers, an organization set up in 1993 by 300 writers from all over the world in response to the assassination of writers in Algeria. So far ten states, four regions and twenty-five cities have joined the scheme, and the idea is spreading to Latin America.. The UK is the only member of the EU which has not yet decided to participate.

The project's immediate aim is to provide refuge for writers who have suffered at the hands of their own governments. Writers from Algeria, Cuba, Iran, Nigeria, Uzbekistan and Vietnam are among those who have benefited so far. A secondary aim is to defend the freedom of literary creation wherever it is threatened and to undertake research into the new forms of censorship which have emerged in recent years. A magazine, Autodafe, was launched at the Frankfurt Book Fair last year and is now published in five languages.

The first session of the Parliament of Writers elected Salman Rushdie as its President; its current President is Wole Soyinka and its Honorary President is Václav Havel. Among members of its Administrative Council, a veritable galaxy of the literary stars of five continents, are Breyten Breytenbach, Hélène Cixous, J. M. Coetzee, Jacques Derrida, Margaret Drabble and Harold Pinter. The IPW is supported by the European Parliament and the Council of Europe and its Charter, drawn up in 1995, has been accepted by the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of Europe (CLRAE) which brings together respresentatives of more than 400 European cities. Under the Convention of the Charter each city agrees to host a writer proposed by the IPW and to provide him or her with normal living and working conditions, including accommodation and a monthly stipend, for an initial term of twelve months.

Wales, which has always benefited from the work of refugees who have found their way here, is rightly proud of its internationalist traditions and Cardiff or Swansea would be a welcome member of the Cities of Refuge scheme. At a time when the UK is receiving new influxes of asylum-seekers under the British Government's policy of dispersal out of London, membership of the IPW network would remind the Welsh public that refugees often include writers, scholars, artists and intellectuals. The network would also give Wales its own voice in an international council that has some political clout. The writers who find refuge here would, in due course, go home and lasting links might thus be forged between Wales and their countries. Welsh membership would be a practical sign of a commitment to anti-racism, multiculturalism and human rights.

Such noble ideals were behind the attempt, a few years back, to create a Welsh branch of PEN, but nothing seems to have come of that initiative. When the city of Swansea made a bid to host the Year of Literature in 1995, it promised it would join the IPW network as one of 'the lasting legacies' of the Year; a sum of money was put aside, but again nothing has come of it. The ball is now clearly in the National Assembly's court. So far the Assembly has done almost nothing concrete to promote the arts and culture of Wales; what, for example, has come of the suggestion that it should appoint a People's Poet? Surely here is an opportunity for Wales to take unilateral action, without waiting for the other countries of the UK.

Further information is available from the Administrative Secretary of the IPW, Alexandra Frenod in Aubervilliers; tel.00 33 1 1 48 11 61 34, e-mail: ipwpie@compuserve.com

Meic Stephens