A diverse group of writers from 20 countries have received Hellman/Hammett grants in recognition of the courage with which they faced political persecution, Human Rights Watch announced today.

Among the recipients is Daniel Bekoutou whose reports played a key role in the international effort to hold Chadian dictator Hissène Habré accountable for crimes against humanity committed under his rule. The Hellman/Hammett awards also recognize Maria Petreu for her outspoken criticism of extreme right ideology in Romania and Esmat Qaney whose writings have been burned and banned by successive Afghan regimes.

Each year, Human Rights Watch presents Hellman/Hammett grants to writers around the world who have been targets of political persecution. The grant program began in 1989 when the estates of American authors Lillian Hellman and Dashiell Hammett asked Human Rights Watch to design a program for writers in financial need as a result of expressing their views. This year’s grants totaled $175,000.

In many countries, governments use military and presidential decrees, criminal libel, and sedition laws to silence critics. Writers and journalists are threatened, harassed, assaulted, or jailed merely for providing information from nongovernmental sources. In addition to those who are directly targeted, many others are forced to practice self-censorship.

Short biographies of the recipients who received grants in 2001 follow.

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Aung Pwint (Burma), a poet whose work expresses the feelings of ordinary people about the social and economic crisis in their country, was arrested in 1967 and again in 1978 because of his contacts with the student movement. During the 1988 pro-democracy movement, he acted as joint secretary of the People’s Peaceful Demonstration Committee in the Delta region. Subsequently, he joined a fledgling media group, which produced videos and calendars. In 1996, the military government banned his videos because they were considered to show too negative a picture of Burmese society and living standards. In 1999, he was arrested and sentenced to eight years in prison.

Bei Ling (China), poet and essayist, came to the United States in 1988 on an exchange with a Chinese-language newspaper. After the Tiananmen Square protest, he stayed and founded Tendency Quarterly, a scholarly literary magazine. Since 1998, he has spent most of his time in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan researching, writing and editing. In 2000, he rented an apartment and opened editorial offices in Beijing. After printing the summer issue of Tendency, he was detained and charged with "illegal publication." Beijing security forces interrogated him and threatened a ten-year prison term. They offered leniency if he provided information about the identity of Chinese citizens who had helped to produce Tendency. He refused. After an international protest, he was fined $24,000 and released.

Bui Ngoc Tan (Vietnam) started a career in journalism in 1954 writing in accord with the Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP) line. Gradually, he became critical of the VCP perspective. In 1968, he was arrested as a "revisionist and antiparty element" and imprisoned without trial from 1968 to 1973. After his release, he wrote stories and novels but was banned from publishing and had to earn his living as a laborer. In 1995, he was permitted to publish again. Nhung Nguoi Ranh Viec (These People with Nothing to Do), published in 1995, and Mot Ngay Dai Dang Dang (A Very Long and Boring Day), published in 1999, are mildly critical of the ruling regime. In 2000, he published Chuyen Ke Nam 2000 (Story Told in Year 2000), a denunciation of the communist detention policy. This book was too much for the censors; it was recalled and burned. He has undergone numerous interrogations and is now under surveillance.

Chan Mony (Cambodia), journalist, has written mostly on social issues and public safety - law enforcement, robberies, mob violence, and street demonstrations. He currently works for the Evening News, a paper generally regarded as leaning toward the ruling Cambodian People’s Party. In March 1997, while covering a peaceful demonstration in front of the National Assembly, someone threw grenades into the crowd killing at least sixteen people and injuring hundreds of others. Mony’s right leg was broken, and shrapnel pierced his left eye. Members of a bodyguard unit of Prime Minister Hun Sen were implicated in the attack, but no one has ever been arrested. Mony’s eye injury flared up again, putting him in constant pain.

Kong Bun Chhoeun (Cambodia), novelist and songwriter, has been writing prolifically since the 1950s but stopped and became a farmer while the Khmer Rouge were in power. If he had revealed his identity during their regime, it is likely he would have been killed. Cambodia is now moving toward democracy, but powerful people continue to ignore the law. The plot of his last book, The Destiny of Marina, or Acid-Laced Vengeance, published in 2000, bore many similarities to the 1999 scandal of a karaoke singer who was attacked with acid by the jealous wife of a government official. The book details the problem of official impunity in Cambodia. After publication, Kong Bun Chhoeun received death threats from the husband of the woman who had mutilated the singer. In November 2000, he fled to Thailand.

Pham Que Duong (Vietnam) started his career in the People’s Liberation Army in 1945 at age fourteen. Over the next forty years, he rose to the rank of colonel. In 1982, he became editor in chief of Tap Chi Lich Su Quan Su (Military History Review) and devoted all of his time to writing. In 1986, he was fired because he refused to obey orders not to mention exploits of dismissed officers. In 1990, he was investigated and accused of supporting Tran Xuan Bach, Secretary General of the Vietnamese Communist Party for the seventh Congress, who was expelled for advocating pluralism. In 1990, Pham Que Duong quit the VCP in solidarity with a prominent outspoken dissident and became a democracy activist. His house has been searched several times, his telephone tapped, his e-mail suppressed, and he is often summoned to police headquarters for questioning.

San San Nweh (Burma), novelist and poet, has spent long periods in prison for her political activities. She has been serving her current ten-year sentence since October 1994 for "fomenting trouble" by producing anti-government reports and sending them to foreign journalists. She has been offered freedom if she will renounce all political activity, but she has regularly refused despite being forced to sit cross-legged in a cramped cell with three other political convicts and barred from speaking for more than fifteen minutes a day. She is plagued with poor health - kidney infections, high blood pressure, and eye problems.

Wang Yiliang (China), poet and essayist, has been involved in underground literary activity since the early 1980s. State Security authorities have kept him under close surveillance, have regularly summoned him for interrogation and detention, and banned publication of his work. In January 2000, Wang Yiliang was arrested for "disrupting social order" and sentenced to two years of "re-education through labor."

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