Romaissaa Benzizoune
English PEN
London, England
As I mentioned in my last post, I spent a good amount of time writing two articles for the PEN website. I didn’t expect to be doing any substantial writing this summer, but because writing is ultimately what I want to do , I was thrilled to be given the opportunity.
Most of the writing I had done to date was more personal or creative, so it was a challenging but worthwhile exercise to write these journalistic pieces. They were much more stressful to write than personal pieces because much more was at stake, but at the same time, they also felt much more meaningful than my personal pieces once completed. Both articles–and indeed, most of the articles that English PEN seems to run–had a specific political aim: to help free, by raising awareness and boosting existing social media campaigns, the writers mentioned.
A lot of English PEN’s articles coincide with significant campaigning dates such as arrest date anniversaries. In this way, they straddle the line between journalism and advocacy, and there is a bit of leeway to add calls to action, personal opinions, and other pathos-driven insertions that could help appeal to public sentiments.
My first article was about Egyptian poet Galal El-Behairy, who has been held in Egypt’s notorious Scorpion prison for over 500 days at this point for a book of poetry he wrote and a song he helped pen for Ramy Essam. My second article was about Bahraini engineer/activist Dr. Singace, who has been imprisoned for nine years following his peaceful protesting and a series of blog posts about his opposition to the government. Please read about their cases if you have a moment, and click on the the linked petitions and social media hashtags. Also consider writing to them in prison.
Writing these articles was an invaluable experience because it felt like I was contributing in some small way to the freedom of these writers. The articles also helped me understand the freedom I came into this program to study: the freedom of expression. It is a different experience, to read an article about somebody’s arrest in another hemisphere, as opposed to talking to the family members of those very writers, to be touched by their stories and enraged by their suffering. In addition, doing this work for English PEN has given me a new admiration for this line of work and has reinforced the notion that I would much rather engage with human rights through writing and organizing rather than law.
Thank you, Gallatin, for this incredible opportunity!