Word for the Silenced, 4 March 2019, 7pm

Our Amnesty Group organises together with Exiled Writers Ink a poetry human rights evening which is called "Words for the Silenced". It takes place on Monday, 4 March 2019, 7 pm at the Poetry Cafe, 22 Betterton Street, London WC2H 9BX.

The evening will focus on four writers who are punished for their words:

1. Ahmed Mansoor (UAE) was arrested on 20 March 2017 and was sentenced in May 2018 to 10 years in prison for his human rights activism. Ahmed Mansoor is not only a human rights activist, but also a poet.

2. Ashraf Fayadh (Saudi Arabia) was originally in November 2015 sentenced to death for his poetry. In 2016 the court overturned this sentenced and changed it to eight years in prison, 800 lashed and a fine.

3. Galal El-Behairy (Egypt) is a poet and lyricist. He was arrested on year ago on 3 March 2018. On 31 July 2018 he was sentenced to three years in prison and a fine for his new unpublished poetry collection and the lyrics to a song by the Egyptian Rock Singer Ramy Essam.

4. Nedim Türfent (Turkey) is a journalist. He reported about the events at the Syrian border and in particular the military action and clashes between Kurdish Civil Protection Units (YPG) and the Turkish army. He was arrested in 12 May 2016. In December 2017 he was sentenced to eight years nine months in prison. 

We have a really interesting line up of partipants: Bill Law (journalist) and Drewery Dyke (human rights activist) will speak about their friend Ahmed Mansoor and will read his poetry. We have two poets (Albert Pellicer and James Miller) who wrote new poems in support of two prisoners (Ahmed Mansoor and Nedim Türfent) and they will read their work. Jonathan Wright will join us. He is a translator who translated a number of poems by Ashraf Fayadh. He will read his translations and the Palestinian journalist Samira Kawar will read Asraf's poems in Arabic. We also have Ege Dündar who will read some of Nedim Türfent's poems. We plan to have a video message from Ramy Essam, an Egyptian singer. He sings songs for which Galal El-Behairy wrote the lyrics. Finally, we also want to show clips of videos with Ramy's songs and an excerpt of a film about Ahmed Mansoor which is about to be finished. 

There is a small entrance fee: £5 or £3 Exiled Writers Ink members and asylum seekers.

You can find more information about the event on the Exiled Writers Website and more information each of the writers in the blog post of one of our members. 

Addendum (16 March 2019):

We shared photos and videos about the event from our Twitter account and one of our members made a blog post using our tweets: "A Poetry Evening in Tweets: Words for the Silenced". We hope you like them (and you can also still retweet our tweets).