PEN Journey 26: Macedonia—Old and New Millennium

PEN International celebrates its Centenary in 2021. I’ve been active in PEN for more than 30 years in various positions and now as an International Vice President Emeritus. With memories stirring and file drawers of documents and correspondence bulging, I am a bit of a walking archive and have been asked by PEN International to write down memories. I hope this personal PEN journey will be of interest.

 

I remember diving from a rowboat into Lake Ohrid and swimming in pristine water. I love to swim but never did so at PEN Congresses. However, the 68th Congress was held on one of Europe’s oldest—3 million years old—and deepest lakes which floated in the mountainous region between North Macedonia and eastern Albania. The water was the cleanest I had ever seen or felt. I swam without looking back until finally, I heard a voice from the boat shouting, “Come back! You’re almost in Albania!”

Moments before Isobel Harry (l) (Canadian PEN) and Joanne Leedom-Ackerman (r) (American PEN) dive into Lake Ohrid for a swim between meetings at the 68th PEN Congress in Ohrid, Macedonia in 2002

Albania, or rather the Albanian Liberation Army, a paramilitary organization, had recently been in conflict in Macedonia and was the reason PEN’s Congress there had been postponed the year before. (PEN Journey 25)

Swimming with me was my friend Isobel Harry, Executive Director of Canadian PEN, and in the boat sat Cecilia Balcazar from Colombian PEN and another PEN member. They watched over us in this break from the PEN meetings. My memories of the 2002 PEN Macedonia Congress include intense meetings of the Assembly in the Congress Hall of the old Soviet-style Metropol Hotel and neighboring Bellevue Hotel conference center and relaxed gatherings afterwards at lakeside cafes in the town of Ohrid, a UNESCO World Heritage site.

PEN colleagues at a lakeside cafe during the PEN Congress in Ohrid, Macedonia. (L to R) Dixie Willis and Sara Whyatt (WiPC staff), Susie Nicklin (English PEN), Eugene Schoulgin (Norweigan PEN & WiPC Chair), PEN member, Joanne Leedom-Ackerman (Vice President & American PEN), Niels Barfoed (Danish PEN), Isobel Harry (Canadian PEN), Fawzia Assaad (Swiss Romand PEN), Victoria Glendinning (English PEN), Carles Torner (PEN Board & Catalan PEN)

In the evenings we gathered for literary events with UNESCO-like titles—The Future of Language/Language of the Future and Borders of Freedom/Freedom of Borders. These were also the themes of the Congress. There was music and poetry in Macedonian and other languages I didn’t understand, recited in cavernous, shadowy chambers, including in the ancient Cathedral Church of St. Sophia, a structure from medieval times, rebuilt in the 10th century. Its frescoes still adorned the walls from Byzantine times in the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries and had been restored after the church was converted to a mosque during the Ottoman Empire.

While current politics and conflicts occupied the daytime work of PEN, history suffused the gathering. Civilization in Ohrid dated to 353 BC when the town had been known as “the city of light.”

Cathedral Church of St. Sophia in Ohrid

“The old millennium, especially in ‘old’ Europe, should, I believe, be left behind with all its anachronistic boundaries—geographical, historical, racial, ethnic, state, linguistic, religious and cultural—and give way to the unfolding of the new millennium, to its open-mindedness and tolerance,” Dimitar Baševski, President of Macedonian PEN, wrote in his introduction to the Congress. “For generations we in Macedonia have lived with a creed according to which culture and not warfare or power is perceived as the field for competitiveness among nations. The aims of the World Congress of International P.E.N. in 2002 perfectly correspond with the spirit of this creed.”

Over 300 people from 69 PEN Centers gathered in the hills of this North Macedonian city for the 68th World Congress. The Congress’ work included the activities and reports of PEN’s committees—Writers in Prison, Peace, Translation and Linguistic Rights, Women’s, Exile Network—and the PEN Foundation, PEN International Magazine, and PEN Emergency Fund. There was a proposed revision to PEN’s Charter removing the concept of literature as being national in origin; there was the introduction of new centers, the dissolution of inactive centers and the elections for the Board, Vice Presidents, and Search Committee. There was a report from the International Secretary on the renewal of PEN’s “formal consultative relations” with UNESCO for a further six years, a step that acknowledged PEN as the only voluntary organization and the only literary organization in this category and one of only 12 organizations with a “Framework Agreement.” PEN had also been reclassified as a Category II organization with ECOSOC (United Nations Economic and Social Council) which included organizations with “special competence in specific areas” such as Amnesty and Human Rights Watch, a category that reflected PEN’s status and contribution as the only world writers organization within the UN system. At PEN’s Assembly of Delegates attention was called to a dozen PEN conferences—last year’s and the year ahead—and finally the Assembly passed Resolutions from the Writers in Prison Committee and Peace Committee on the situations in Russia and Chechnya, Russia itself, the Middle East, Belorussia, China, Colombia, Cuba, Iran, Turkey, Zimbabwe, Uighur Writers, and Tatarstan

The aftermath of the 9/11 attacks on the United States the year before remained a focus that was altering the security landscape for nations around the world and for writers. PEN President Homero Aridjis observed, “Today our world is teetering on the brink of war.” He added, “In search of security, there have been encroachments on privacy and intrusive measures threatening freedom of expression and the right to dissent and criticize, but the global reach of information seems to have accelerated, proof of which is the current effort by the Chinese government to block its citizens’ access to the search-engine Google.”

“How can PEN and writers bring about positive changes?” he asked. “For a start, we could promote freedom of expression in Afghanistan. Not that long ago we were signing Internet petitions protesting against the treatment of women by the inhumane Taliban regime and begging the Taliban not to dynamite the colossal Buddhas of Bamiyan. Now I ask you to help me identify and approach Afghani writers who would be willing to found a PEN Center in Afghanistan and to try and find ways of giving this fledgling Center the means to thrive.”

[With the help of Norwegian PEN and others, an Afghan PEN Center was in fact founded with men and women writers from all ethnic groups and was voted into PEN at the 69th Congress the following year in Mexico. Writers in Prison Committee Chair Eugene Schoulgin played an instrumental role in working with and facilitating support for the Afghan writers.]

At the Macedonia Congress Eugene reported, “In my speech in London last November I mentioned the threats to the freedom of expression I feared that would follow the events of 9/11 in the US. What has happened last year has unfortunately proved these fears were well founded. Today over 40 countries have imposed new legislation on their populations which clearly weaken their human rights. New Anti-terror laws have been established in Canada, USA, UK, France, EU as a whole, Jordan, India and New Zealand. Terrorism laws expanded on Cuba and on Italy and in Colombia, Egypt, Zimbabwe, Israel, Russia, Uzbekistan, China and in the Philippines, and terror laws have been used as an excuse to crack down on the opposition and on minorities inside their regions. This in combination with the threats of a new war on Iraq makes the present situation extremely worrying, and will most certainly give us in the WiPC reason to be even more vigilant in the year to come.”

Visiting the WiPC Committee at the Congress were two former PEN main cases—Eşber Yağmurdereli, Turkish poet/dramatist and lawyer, who was blind and spent 14 years in prison and whom a number of us had met in Istanbul at a Freedom of Expression Initiative a few years before and Flora Brovina, a Kosovair/Albanian poet and doctor who had been abducted by Serbian troops and imprisoned in Belgrade during the NATO bombing. Flora’s son had contacted PEN which sent out an urgent appeal about her abduction. I had met her husband and family when I visited Pristina, Kosovo the year before with the International Crisis Group while she was still in prison. This was the first time I met Flora, who had become an internationally celebrated case and was a member the country’s Assembly. She told the Writers in Prison Committee that every letter sent to the prison by PEN served as another attempt to tear down the walls of the prison.

Esber Yagmurdereli said at present there were around 10,000 prisoners accused of being “terrorists,” but 90% of these should be considered prisoners of conscience, and many were simply students. “On 19 December 2000, the 20th day of the protest, I was playing chess with my friend in my cell,” he said. “He was a university student named Irfan. He was my son’s age–21 or 23 years old. He defeated me three tims. He said you are 60 years old. There are so many of us whose cases ar not covered in the press, but you do get attention. We need you as much as you need us. Then came the teargas. The protests took three yours. I myself lost consciousness and came to about an hour later. I learned that 32 people had been killed–burned to death. I learned that my friend Irfan was one of them.”

Russian journalist Anna Politkovskya also attended the Macedonian Congress.  She told the WIPC meeting that she got threats from criminals, military and government. “I could stay in Vienna or elsewhere in the West, but it is my decision to be in Russia because I understand more than other people that if I couldn’t write articles or give radio talks, there would be no information about Chechnya,” she said. “Because travel to Chechnya is illegal, I need to prepare my trips as if I were a spy. I have to be strong, as far as I can. My children are in Moscow, and they are also threatened. ” My last meeting with Anna was sharing thick coffee at a tiny airport café in Skopje on our way home from the Congress.

Resolution for change in wording of PEN’s Charter; amended wording, noted and approved, proposed by English PEN president Victoria Glendinning. Final proposal and approval to take place at Mexico Congress in 2003.

In addition to its traditional work, International PEN was proceeding with modernizing its governance and structure, led by International Secretary Terry Carlbom and the Board of PEN. Deputy Vice Chair of the Board Carles Torner reported that this included the restructuring of PEN and the PEN Foundation as British charitable tax law was changing; also new roles for the Vice Presidents were being considered; a modest change in the Charter was proposed for this Assembly to be confirmed at the next year’s Congress in Mexico, and the Treasurer was proposing a new international dues structure with a graded system, raising dues for centers from wealthier economies and reducing dues for others, based on the World Bank system of four categories. The change in the dues structure was unanimously approved.

Elections at the Congress included two new Vice Presidents Lucina Kathmann (San Miguel Allende PEN) and Boris Novak (Slovene PEN) and new Board members Takeaki Hori (Japan PEN), Cecilia Balcazar (Colombian PEN), Sibila Petlevski (Croatian PEN) and Elisabeth Nordgren (Finnish PEN).

“We are at the end of the first mandate of the first Board elected three years ago during the Warsaw Congress under the new Regulations.” Carles reported. “…we now have a real capacity for collective decision-making between Congresses…we are noticing that the transformation we dreamed of six years ago, when the new structuring of International PEN started, has taken place. There are more people involved in the work of International PEN, and each person represents a specific sensitivity within our international community…and we are better prepared to achieve our task now and in the future.”

The modernization and reform of governance also applied to PEN’s more than 130 centers with agreement that new centers from unrepresented parts of the world needed to be developed and centers that no longer functioned or worked in harmony with PEN’s Charter should be disbanded though there was often reluctance among PEN members to close a center.

At the Macedonia Congress, a particular PEN-like debate arose over the Langue d’Oc Center which no longer functioned. Langue d’Oc, or the Language of the Troubadours, was still spoken in a region in the South of France, in part of Italy and in one valley in Spain. The center’s president, whose name was the same as a great literary character, had worked on PEN’s Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights with PEN’s Committee on Translation and Linguistic Rights half a dozen years before, and one member was still eager to keep the center going as a cause of minority languages. But the elderly outgoing President was not able to help, according to Jane Spender, PEN’s Administrative Director, who communicated or tried to communicate, with these centers. The center no longer functioned, had no office or contacts who replied, she reported. Before the center was declared closed, however, former International Secretary Alexander Blokh proposed that it be declared dormant and during the ensuing year French PEN writers who knew some of the members would “try to wake them up.” The Portuguese PEN delegate also offered to help as did the Esperanto, Slovene and Galician delegates. A similar lifeline was given to the inactive Welsh center by English PEN who agreed to perform the same role.

At PEN’s Congress the following year in Mexico, the interventions confirmed that after a year of dormancy neither center had rallied and so the Assembly voted to close the centers. In both cases new writers then came forward, and a few years later a new and active Welsh Center and Langue d’Oc Center formed and were elected back into PEN’s Assembly.

At the Macedonia Congress three brand new centers—Kyrghyz, Sierra Leone, and Tibet—joined the PEN family. It was in this fashion that PEN International pruned, renewed and broadened its base in civil society among nations and cultures and languages.

 Lake Ohrid in the hills of North Macedonia between Macedonia and eastern Albania

 

Next Installment: PEN Journey 27: San Miguel Allende and Other Destinations–PEN’s Work Between Congresses

12 Comments

  1. Katherine Stephen on April 24, 2020 at 6:57 pm

    Thank you for posting this interesting account of your time with PEN in Macedonia. You certainly have been to many fascinating places as part of your PEN work.

    • Joanne Leedom-Ackerman on April 24, 2020 at 8:19 pm

      Thank you, Kathy. Yes, PEN has opened up and connected the world and also developed friendships all over.

  2. VS on April 25, 2020 at 10:17 am

    “I just read your great piece on your PEN meeting by Lake Ohrid. What a time that was – and it’s always inspiring to be reminded of the crucial work that PEN does in defense of free speech and so many persecuted writers – in this case in my part of the world.

    I also wanted to say that you brought back some lovely memories to me from Ohrid Lake. It is indeed the most pristine water that I’ve ever swam in. I spent many a summer holiday there as a child and teenager – on the Albanian side – and always wondered about the much brighter lights on the other side – the forbidden side… Being able to cross on the other side in the early nineties was the most impressive trip to another country I have ever had. I’ve been back since several times. It’s a truly special place – in more ways than one. The sound of oars dipping into the calm deep blue water still put me to sleep to this day.“ —VS

    • Joanne Leedom-Ackerman on April 25, 2020 at 10:20 am

      Thanks so much for sharing your memory…from the other side. The hope of all these meetings is that we begin to see the other side and all sides. What a beautiful place and memory to have!🌷

  3. Antonio Della Rocca on April 26, 2020 at 11:36 am

    Dear Joanne,

    I have already expressed elsewhere my gratitude for your idea of building up a detailed history of PEN mainly by Congresses, I appreciate it very much (and I highly appreciate also that you post the chapters on PEN International on Facebook).

    I am following with interest your Journey over the Congresses I did not attend. As you know, I am a relatively recent member of PI, and my first Congress was Bogotà 2008 (I really could not miss it, having been working over there in 1968/1970…) but PEN Trieste was received in 2003 at the Mexico City Congress.

    So, I am eager (and I am not alone) to read what you will write in a few weeks about “my” congresses and to look at them again, but from your point of view.

    I would be very happy to read in the Mexico report a line about the PEN Trieste entering into the PI world thanks to Homero Aridjis, to our late first President, Juan Octavio Prenz, and to the many friends that helped us in our journey (I was not there – for health reasons – and I always regretted it) .

    In the genuine PEN spirit, the continuous growth of our Centres is the basis on which our action is founded.

    Thanks again for being always so near to PEN people.

    All the best,

    Antonio

    • Joanne Leedom-Ackerman on April 26, 2020 at 12:31 pm

      Thank you, Antonio. Yes, I remember Trieste PEN joining and it will certainly be part of the new PEN centers admitted at the Mexico Congress, in fact many new centers that year. I have one or two posts to come before the 2003 Congress but I hope to have that post later this month. Thank you too for shepherding the PEN fb page.

  4. Julia Wheatley on April 27, 2020 at 7:07 pm

    Dear Joanne,

    Thank you for taking us along on your worldly journeys. The inner workings of PEN International are both fascinating and critical. They are often personal and fun as well. We loved for example the photograph of Sara Whyatt in the orange skirt and the delegate from Nepal in a white native costume, dancing in front of a local ‘band’ at the WIPC celebration in Kathmandu, What a story-book-name and place!

    Another memory finds you swimming in the crystal waters of Lake Ohrid, off the North Macedonian coast, only to hear those in the small boat you had departed, yelling “Come back you’re almost in Albania”

    A more careful tone understandably underscores the congregation in Moscow. And the plight of those in the Western Sahara is truly heart-rendering—living as they did in stark sub-human conditions, dreaming creatively of better times to come. —Could this be a symbolic harbinger of the world’s current contagion?

    Hmmm, there seems to be a gnawing resurgence of injustice, forcing humanity to ‘engage’.
    …Thanks for PEN.

    Love,
    Julia a friend.

  5. Joanne Leedom-Ackerman on April 27, 2020 at 9:59 pm

    Thank you, Julia for reading and coming along on these journeys…yes, they have been full and educational and sometimes heart-rending and also fun with cherished colleagues.

  6. Isobel Harry on April 28, 2020 at 4:02 pm

    Dear Joanne – Thank you for these reminiscences and vivid historical records – and for the effort you’re putting into the compilation. Your recollections bring back wonderful memories of working together with international colleagues and the very serious work of PEN on freedom of expression and the promotion of world literature since 1921.
    The swim in Lake Ohrid! who can forget the velvety feel of the water – sublime! I’ll always remember an evening of poetry in a circular restaurant, a nattily dressed older gentleman ‘performing’ Macedonian poetry while accompanied by wild violin. And a visit to the ancient monastery church on the island in the lake, where our Tibetan colleague, upon hearing of the church bell’s reputation for fulfilling the wishes of those who rang it, pulled on the cord with both hands and was swept, giggling, heavenward, feet swinging. And Turkish Honorary Member Esber Yagmurdereli singing in a small café surrounded by PEN campaigners, with his son on guitar (or similar instrument – can’t recall now!)
    These moments always arose at congresses, somehow, despite the rigorous work schedule. They made real the work we did then and that PEN continues to do, and were emblematic of PEN’s mission to further mutual understanding among people.
    Thanks again, Joanne, keep up the good PEN work,
    Isobel

    • Joanne Leedom-Ackerman on April 28, 2020 at 7:22 pm

      Thank you for sharing. Everyone adding memories makes a much richer recollection. I’d forgotten some of those memories. And of course most of all, the many friendships across many nations united in important work, friendships that abide even if we don’t see each other often enough.

  7. Malcolm O’Hagan on April 28, 2020 at 4:34 pm

    I wish I could have shared your amazing journey through history and culture.

    The amended resolution caught my attention for a few reasons. I find editorial changes intriguing, and it is instructive to see them on the document. The argument that literature is not national I find hard to accept. Most great literature is strongly influenced by the nationality of the writer. Even immigrant writers cannot shake the yoke of their country of origin. I find it ironic that a writer from a former colonial power is proposing the amendment given the havoc caused around the world with national identities and cultures. Each nation adds richly to the global cultural patchwork quilt.

    • Joanne Leedom-Ackerman on April 28, 2020 at 7:16 pm

      Interesting observation you raise.
      In fact the change to the Charter wording was proposed by Canadian and German PEN, English PEN just simplified the wording and made it clearer.

      The thought behind the change—and lengthy discussion—was that the original Charter wording didn’t take into account literature that was not inspired by nationality but by culture or language groups. In any case the full story of that change comes at the Mexico Congress the following year, but I have one or two posts before I write that one.

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