“Yang Tongyan was a peaceful champion of human rights and democracy, who made a huge personal sacrifice to stay true to his principles. The authorities feared the power of his writing and did all they could to silence him.He should never have spent a single day in jail let alone nearly half his life,” Nicholas Bequelin, East Asia Director at Amnesty International.
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News that Chinese writer and recipient of the 2008 PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award Yang Tongyan has passed away, less than four months after the death of Liu Xiaobo under similar circumstances, is a further devastating loss for free expression advocates around the world and a harsh reminder of how critics of the government are treated by Chinese authorities, PEN America announced Tuesday.
According to a contact at the Independent Chinese PEN Center (ICPC), Yang Tongyan passed away after being released from Nanjing Prison on medical parole in August 2017 following his diagnosis with an aggressive form of brain cancer. He briefly returned to his home in Siyang, Jiangsu province. Although he was sent to a hospital in Shanghai that specializes in neurological care to have brain surgery, his family were informed that, as he was a “criminal,” he would not be permitted to leave the country for treatment, according to Yang’s sister.
According to Amnesty International, “Yang Tongyan was months away from completing a 12-year prison sentence when he was released on medical parole. His conviction for ‘subversion’ in 2006 was based on his writings in support of political and democratic change in China. He previously served a 10-year prison sentence for criticizing the crackdown on China’s 1989 pro-democracy movement.”
“Yang Tongyan’s death, so soon after that of Liu Xiaobo, is another black mark on the Chinese authorities’ human rights record,” said Karin Karlekar, PEN America’s Director of Free Expression at Risk Programs.
Yang, who wrote under the pseudonym Yang Tianshui, was a brilliant writer, literary critic, and member of the Independent Chinese PEN Center (ICPC), an organization of leading writers working on free expression issues both inside and outside of China. He was known for his critical writings published on web sites such as Boxun.com and EpochTimes.com. His catalog of literary writing includes poems, short stories, essays, novels, and memos, many of which were written during his time in prison. In May 2006, after a three hour trial that was closed to the public, Yang was sentenced to twelve years’ imprisonment and four years’ deprivation of political rights by the Zhenjiang Intermediate Court in eastern China’s Jiangsu province, on charges of “subversion of state power” for writing dissident articles, and for his political activism. He had suffered from poor health for years, and had served eleven years of his twelve-year sentence before his family’s third request for medical parole was approved.
News of Yang’s death comes less than four months after Nobel Peace Laureate and notable writer Liu Xiaobo’s death in custody from liver cancer. Following Liu’s release from prison, the authorities also denied his wish to travel overseas to access high-quality medical treatment. Since his death and funeral, his widow, poet and painter Liu Xia, has been held at an unknown location and has had no contact with family and friends.
China’s extensive censorship apparatus limits freedom of speech both within and outside its borders. The situation has grown more alarming since President Xi Jinping took office in early 2013, with an increased crackdown on free speech and implementation of additional censorship laws and restrictions on the internet. Lengthy prison sentences have long been used in China to silence dissident voices, and many Chinese writers, journalists, and pro-democracy activists live in fear of censorship, harassment, and incarceration as a result of speaking out about sensitive issues.
PEN Americastands at the intersection of literature and human rights to protect open expression in the United States and worldwide. It champions the freedom to write, recognizing the power of the word to transform the world. Its mission is to unite writers and their allies to celebrate creative expression and defend the liberties that make it possible.
Amnesty International is a global movement of over seven million people who, under this umbrella, campaign for a world where human rights are enjoyed by all.
“Only when the last prisoner of conscience has been freed, when the last torture chamber has been closed, when the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a reality for the world’s people, will our work be done.” Peter Benenson, Amnesty International Founder
DR. APRILIA ZANK is a lecturer for Creative Writing and Translation in the Department of Languages and Communication at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany, where she received her PhD degree in Literature and Psycholinguistics for her thesis THE WORD IN THE WORD Literary Text Reception and Linguistic Relativity.
Aprilia is also a poet, a translator and the editor of two anthologies: the English–German anthology poetry tREnD Eine englisch-deutsche Anthologie zeitgenössischer Lyrik, LIT Verlag, Berlin, 2010, and the anthology POETS IN PERSON at the Glassblower (Indigo Dream Publishing, April, 2014). She writes verse in English and German, and was awarded a distinction at the “Vera Piller” Poetry Contest in Zurich. Her poetry collection, TERMINUS ARCADIA, was 2nd Place Winner at the Twowolvz Press Poetry Chapbook Contest 2013. Aprilia Zank is also a passionate photographer: many of her images are prize-winners and several have been selected for poetry book covers.
i’ll have none of that, you see . . .
none of the exclusivity of clubs
with their business of foundations,
divisions and the self-satisfied
whole-hearted embrace of conceits,
moth-eaten and self-righteous,
the mythopoeic and parabolic
spelled by men into stone and dogma,
the collision of sacred language with
parochialism and that left-over tribalism
exploding into disdain and violence . . . how is it that vision ends and lunacy begins?
lead me instead to that inchoate space,
between saint and sanctity, soul and spirit,
bequeath me into the great yawning
where my mother thrives as Khoas unquelled,
where my father shines dressed in anarchy, where
my sister sips tears from the wan cheeks of sages, . . . . . let us begin again
Tell us in prose or poem, what should we do, what should we ask for, when we know that vision has died and lunacy is on the rampage. If you feel comfortable doing so, share your response or a link to it in the comments section below. All works on theme will be published here next Tuesday. You are welcome – encouraged – to come out a play no matter the status of your career: beginning, emerging or pro. You have until Monday evening, 8:30 p.m. PST, to respond.
In memory of Teresa Margaret Mahfouz, beloved sister.
“On his back, Robert must have had time to see something beautiful, and not just the ugliness of a city street at the end of life. Even with the tremendous pain in his badly gutted belly he would have looked up beyond the fire escapes and the windows with their glittery trees and television glows, to the sky about the rooftops. A sky shimmery with the possibilities of death; lights exaggerated, the heavens peeled back- a swirling haze of nebulae and comets – in some distant place, intimations of the new beginning into which he would soon journey.” Oscar Hijuelos,Mr. Ives’ Christmas
The last Wednesday Writing Prompt, Dueling With Words to Stop Gun Violence, November 1, was the gift of Evelyn Augusto, the poet who initiated an effort with the same name. Details are in that post. Clearly Evelyn’s passion comes out of personal loss and experience and she is not alone in this. Gun violence – self-directed and other-directed – touches all our lives to one degree or another. In this collection I’ve included my own Girl in a Wooden Box, which was published on this site and elsewhere but bears repeating as a cautionary tale about depression and the abundance of and ease of obtaining guns and ammunition.
Thanks to Evelyn and to Lisa Ashley, Paul Brookes, Sonja Benskin Mesher, Kakahli Das Ghosh, Renee Espriu and Colin Blundell for participating in this prompt and taking a valued stand against gun violence.
His First Gun, A True Story
(For DJ)
His first gun was a .357. He was seven,
sitting in the front seat.
His cousin, Dwayne, 16, was driving.
His 5-year-old brother in the back seat.
It was a drug deal.
New Orleans.
Some guys wanted our stuff.
Dwayne always said,
“Shoot ‘em before you let them rob you.”
Pow, pow, pow!
Dwayne is hit in the head!
Grab the wheel!
Tried to stop the blood.
He stopped breathing.
We all had guns.
We couldn’t take him to the hospital.
We dragged Dwayne into the bushes
beside the canal
and left him there.
Later, we went back.
Only some brown stuff on the leaves.
He was just gone.
The dreams were really bad.
They went on for a long time.
I’ve been doing the negativity for a long time.
I told my mom I’m done with this.
I’m going to give my life to God.
And football.
I can’t be in here any more.
I need to be back in school and training.
I’ve always been good at sports.
My coach said I was a freak, I’ve got a lot of talent.
I can’t get my GPA up in this school in here.
We take stupid classes in here like “life skills.”
What’s that?
My cousin said it was family business,
I needed to do it for the family.
I was like 10,11.
I went to do the deal.
I took out some of the stuff,
showed it to the guys.
They wanted to see it all.
I told them only after I got the money.
They told me to get in the car.
They started to grab me.
I took out my gun.
Pop, pop, pop!
I ran.
They didn’t come after me.
I went home.
I stayed inside all night and all day.
I didn’t go to school.
I didn’t go out.
I sleep with my gun.
When I wake up I check it.
I put it on the toilet while I take a shower.
I put it in my pants when I’m done.
Then I go out the house.
People think gun violence is all about the adults.
It’s not.
It’s the teens that got the guns.
I know a 12 year old in here had a .50.
It was so big he could hardly handle it.
All the kids have guns.
One time I had so many guns
couldn’t fit them all in my backpack.
I have to protect my mother and my sister.
But I know no matter how many guns I have
something can happen.
Guns aren’t good.
But I feel safer when I have one.
When my mother came for a visit last week
I told her the next time she sees a gun
it will be registered.
The next time she sees money on me
it will be money from my job.
I’ll give her half.
I’m done with this shit.
You love violence
You love bloodshed…
A perpetual war you fought
in an endless night…..
Where lies bravery while you kill innocence…
When your loud laughter
ruptures ailing hearts..
Your firm stick beats flimsy backs…
You are courageous
when the other stands before you with
tender eyes and limp knees…
You are rich when the other is bankrupt.
Have you ever thought that a spiral knot of bankruptcy ..
an octopus of black smoke is approaching to you..
Your throat would be choked
Your breathing would be amiss..
The faint one you desired to distract has also a garden like you
Where flowers flourish Colorful butterflies fly
Humble bees buzz every day and night..
How many jewels have you grabbed
How many rivers of peace have flown through your chest
Being so aggressive..
Now a cloud of languish is nearer to you
A fear of being lost is chasing you..
Your garden may demolish by his musket …
Now its not a face to face war
Its a revenge of mass killing Numerous bloody rivers
would be created ..
You are unknown of it
You are unaware of this new bloody horror
You are ignorant of losing your lovable birdhouse…
If you kenned that…
you never did grab that firegun
Never became a witch bloodthirsty.
And this addition to the post from Colin Blundell:
Jamie: I notice that I’m 23 minutes late with this! I was stumped with the prompt, sound though it is! I can only think that the world will only change when individuals decide to make a difference. Fifty years ago I signed the Peace Pledge Union pledge: ‘I renounce war and refuse to support or sanction another…’ Anybody who supports the possession of guns and threatens others with bombs is, in my book, just a bloody idiot and I note that the world is full of them, from Trump & Co to the latest shooter…
For a few days I have contemplated posting this bit of irony:–
Jamie Dedes' THE POET BY DAY Webzine 