By reading selected poems of the Palestinian poet Ashraf Fayyad, sentenced to death in Saudi Arabia, the world will unite today in a hundred locations in more than 30 countries in a cultural initiative calling for the abolition of the death sentence and the release of that prominent artist and curator, a great promoter of contemporary Saudi art. of art in the world.
By the decision of the Saudi court on November 17, 2015, this 35-year-old Palestinian poet and curator living in Saudi Arabia was sentenced to death for rejecting the Muslim faith. He is also accused of blasphemy and advocating atheism in the collection of poems "Instructions from Within", published in 2008 in Beirut, and then banned for distribution in Saudi Arabia.
He was deprived of his right to a lawyer, and therefore his right to a fair trial. The poet claims that in his poetry he deals only with his own exile, cultural and philosophical issues, while religious extremists see in them "destructive ideas directed against God".
Organizations for the protection of human rights reacted immediately, and numerous individuals and cultural institutions joined the appeals to prevent the execution of the sentence, including the international literary festival in Berlin, which launched the initiative of world poetry reading, which was supported by signatures of more than 300 artists, including laureates of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Herta Miller, Elfride Jelinek, Orhan Pamuk, Vol Sojinka, Mario Vargas Llosa, as well as the president of the international PEN, Jennifer Clement.
Poetry readings will be held in about a hundred locations in more than 30 countries, and Fayad's case is not the case of one man, but he is a symbol of all the victims of a deeply repressive regime supported by Western governments, which in turn declaratively advocate freedom and democracy above all else, the announcement warns. Internationales Literaturfestival Berlin”.
With a worldwide poetry reading, the organizers of the initiative call on the governments of Great Britain and the USA to intervene for Fayyad, as the first step in putting pressure on Saudi Arabia to raise its standards in respect of human rights and to stand on the side of justice and freedom.
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