{"id":20496,"date":"2025-09-30T13:38:31","date_gmt":"2025-09-30T13:38:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/?p=20496"},"modified":"2025-09-30T13:49:31","modified_gmt":"2025-09-30T13:49:31","slug":"pustyya-kresly-na-91-m-kangrese-mizhnarodnaga-pena","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/2025\/09\/30\/pustyya-kresly-na-91-m-kangrese-mizhnarodnaga-pena.html","title":{"rendered":"\u201cEmpty Chairs\u201d at the 91st PEN International Congress"},"content":{"rendered":"

PEN International has a tradition of \u201cEmpty Chairs\u201d for those whose voices cannot be heard but must be. During meetings, discussions, events, and stage appearances, there remains an \u201cempty chair\u201d with the portrait of an imprisoned writer \u2014 someone who cannot be present here and now physically, but whose place is symbolically with us.<\/p>\n

This moving and powerful expression of solidarity ran through the entire 91st PEN International Congress in Krak\u00f3w. The Congress opened on September 2 with an \u201cempty chair\u201d for essayist, journalist, and blogger Andrzej Poczobut<\/strong><\/a>, and on September 4, the birthday of lawyer and writer Maksim Znak<\/strong><\/a>, the \u201cempty chair\u201d again honored a Belarusian author.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

We thank PEN International and all other PEN Centres for supporting Belarusian imprisoned writers and for giving their voices a chance to be heard.<\/p>\n

In turn, we express our solidarity with imprisoned writers around the world. We were heartened that among us at the Congress tables there were also symbolically present Amanda Echanis<\/strong> (Philippines), Amanuel Asrat<\/strong> (Eritrea), Mar\u00eda Cristina Garrido Rodr\u00edguez<\/strong> (Cuba), Boualem Sansal <\/strong>(Algeria), Gui Minhai <\/strong>(China), Alex Barga<\/strong> (Mozambique), Ashraf Omar<\/strong> (Egypt), Mohamed Tadjadit <\/strong>(Algeria), Rory Branker<\/strong> (Venezuela), and Iryna Danylovych<\/strong> (Ukraine, occupied Crimea). We call for their immediate and unconditional release.<\/p>\n

\r\n \"\"\r\n \"\"\r\n \"\"\r\n \"\"\r\n \"\"\r\n \"\"\r\n \"\"\r\n \"\"\r\n \"\"\r\n <\/div>\r\n\n

PEN Belarus continues to defend freedom of speech, the rights of writers, journalists, and all authors. We consistently stand for freedom of expression and strive to draw the attention of both the Belarusian and international community to the violations of authors\u2019 rights.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

PEN International has a tradition of \u201cEmpty Chairs\u201d for those whose voices cannot be heard but must be. During meetings, discussions, events, and stage appearances, there remains an \u201cempty chair\u201d with the portrait of an imprisoned writer \u2014 someone who cannot be present here and now physically, but whose place is symbolically with us. This<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":117,"featured_media":20497,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4201],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-solidarity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/117"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20496"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20496\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20512,"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20496\/revisions\/20512"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}