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The danger of teaching Uyghur language

According to the UN more than one million Uyghurs are detained in so called re-education camps in the Xinjang province in North Eastern China. Their crime is that they speak the ‘wrong’ language and...
Text: Abduweli Ayup November 18 2019
Article

Self-translation as a political activity

The writer and researcher Manuel Bolom Pale belongs to the Tsotsil people, the largest indigenous group in Mexico’s southernmost state Chiapas. “Writing in Tsotsil means reviving and reconnecting with...
Text: Manuel Bolom Pale November 26 2019
Article

The mother tongue of Babel

“Globalization is without a doubt a flood that will entomb more than half the languages of the world under water during the twenty-first century,” writes Carles Torner, a Catalonian author and the...
Text: Carles Torner November 21 2019
Article

Falling apart

The right to use the Kurdish language has been a major controversy in Turkey all through the Republic’s existence. Ciwanmerd Kulek belongs to the younger generation of Kurdish writers who out of...
Text: Ciwanmerd Kulek November 01 2019
Article

How should we break the ice of silence?

How far do our words travel? This is the question that author Simona Škrabec asks in her essay about the importance of small, marginal, and “invisible” languages. She starts off in Chiapas at a three...
Text: Simona Škrabec October 29 2019
Article

Being Jts’ibajom te jbats’I k’optik

What is it to be Jts’ibajom te jbats’I k’optik – meaning, what is it to be a writer writing in one’s indigenous language? Does it entail a certain responsibility? Resistance? Defense? Taking a stand?...
Text: Ruperta Bautista October 18 2019
Article

Letter to Gui Minhai

It has been over 1,400 days since the Swedish publisher Gui Minhai was imprisoned in China. This is a letter to Gui Minhai written by his publisher colleague Eva Gedin. “You cannot hear us but we are...
Text: Eva Gedin June 13 2019
Article

A Tale of Two Places

Jessica Yeung is a docent of translation at Hong Kong Baptist University where her research includes minority cultures. In this text she depicts the common denominators that weave together Hong Kong...
Text: Jessica Yeung June 13 2019
Article

Of Forbidden Words and Architecture in Hong Kong

In “Forbidden Words and Architecture in Hong Kong” author and journalist Ilaria Maria Sala sketches the development of architecture in Hong Kong as it opens more and more doors to Beijing and the...
Text: Ilaria Maria Sala June 13 2019
Article

The Emperor’s New Clothes

Gezahegn Mekonnen is an Ethiopian journalist and filmmaker, and one of the founding members of PEN Ethiopia. He currently lives in exile in Toronto, Canada, where he edits the journal New Perspectives...
Text: Gezahegn Mekonnen May 03 2019
Article

Open letter to the Prime Minister of Ethiopia

Solomon Hailemariam, author and founder of PEN Ethiopia, had to leave his homeland Ethiopia in 2015, after repeated attacks on himself and the organization. He now lives in exile in Canada, and serves...
Text: Solomon Hailemariam May 03 2019
Article

The Unsung Heroes

It is now more than six years since Swedish journalist Martin Schibbye and photographer Johan Persson returned home after 438 days in Ethiopian prison, accused of terrorism. Today, Martin Schibbye...
Text: Martin Schibbye May 03 2019
Article

The Dawn is Not Here

In 2011, award-winning Ethiopian journalist Reeyot Alemu was sentenced to fourteen years in prison for her writing, on an accusation of “terrorism”. Her crime was having written critical texts on...
Text: Reeyot Alemu May 03 2019

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