From A World to Win News Service

International readings demand "liberty and recognition" for Edward Snowden

September 15, 2014 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

8 September 2014. A World to Win News Service. At the initiative of the International Literature Festival Berlin (ilb), readings in support of Edward Snowden were held at universities, libraries, bookstores, theatres, street corners and other venues around the world on 8 September.

Events were held in Austria, Colombia, France, Germany (47 events), Greece, Iceland, Italy, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa (organized by South Africa PEN, the writers' organization), the UK (Wales), the U.S. and other countries, many simultaneously (at 1700 UTC [Coordinated Universal Time]). Some were broadcast on radio or live Web streaming.

The call for this global speak-out hailed Snowden for his leaking of secret U.S. National Security Agency files that revealed the extent of the American government's spying on millions and perhaps billions of individuals. It demanded that the U.S. lift all legal charges against him and that the European Union member states immediately grant him asylum at least until that happens and as long as he may need it. It asked that Snowden be considered for the Nobel Peace Prize.

The long list of writers, poets, playwrights and other intellectuals who signed the call includes prominent figures and others from every continent.

Some of the events featured readings by well-known authors, such as the Nobel Prize-winning novelist Elfriede Jelinek in Drösing, Austria, and the British novelist Marina Warner, who read excerpts from Snowden's texts at the Shakespeare and Company bookshop in Paris. The faculty at the University of Rostock (Germany) asked that Snowden be awarded an honorary doctorate. The University of Massachusetts Masters in Fine Arts and Honors programmes and another Boston university provided a platform for 33 writers, scholars and students. A reading in San Francisco was sponsored by the antiwar organizations Code Pink and The World Can't Wait. (literaturfestival.com)

 

A World to Win News Service is put out by A World to Win magazine, a political and theoretical review inspired by the formation of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement, the embryonic center of the world's Marxist-Leninist-Maoist parties and organizations.

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