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Harold Pinter was dedicated to helping persecuted writers

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  • Harold Pinter was dedicated to helping persecuted writers

    Harold Pinter was dedicated to helping persecuted writers

    Harold Pinter, the renowned playwright who died on Christmas Eve,
    should be remembered for his commitment to oppressed writers across the
    world.

    By Carole Seymour-Jones

    Daily Telegraph/UK
    Last Updated: 1:20PM GMT 01 Jan 2009


    Harold Pinter 's association with PEN , the world association of
    writers, went back a long way. He felt a powerful sense of solidarity
    with other writers tortured, detained and even killed for their
    beliefs, and gave the Writers in Prison Committee of English PEN, of
    which his wife Antonia was a former chair, his unwavering support.
    Perhaps this connection was rooted in his own experience of persecution
    as a Jewish boy growing up in Hackney, which I sometimes felt had
    developed into an almost personal identification with that inviolable
    core which some writers are able to preserve in jail, despite long
    sentences under threat of death.

    Certainly Pinter had a fierce and abiding passion for justice and
    freedom that often brought him out onto the streets of London to join
    English PEN demonstrations. Bearing homemade placards, he and Antonia
    stood outside the Nigerian High Commission in London, to protest the
    imprisonment of Ken Saro-Wiwa in 1995. Earlier, in 1985, Pinter had
    joined Arthur Miller in an historic PEN mission to Turkey to
    investigate the plight of writers in prison, and Orhan Pamuk was their
    guide. Twenty years later, in December 2005, when Pamuk himself was
    arrested for comments about the massacres of Armenians in the First
    World War, Pinter was one of the first to sign the English PEN petition
    calling for the charges to be dropped.

    When, however, in October 2004 I wrote to Harold asking whether he
    would agree to be a reader at the annual PEN service on the Day of the
    Imprisoned Writer at St Bride's Church, Fleet Street, I did not expect
    him to accept. He was a busy man. But a charming e-mail arrived,
    accepting our invitation.

    There was a little difficulty over the wording of the flyer. I got a
    ticking off for ascribing the wrong decoration to Harold, CBE instead
    of CH; he also insisted that the font for his name was the same size as
    that for Dillie Keane of `Fascinating Aida'. There was to be no star
    billing for the famous playwright.

    On the day of the service, 14 November, the acoustics were checked.
    Everything appeared to be in working order. I had submitted the script
    in advance, a letter from Uzbek writer and activist, Mamadali
    Makhmudov, one of the longest-serving prisoners in Uzbekistan, relating
    his ill-treatment in Jaslyk death camp.

    The service began without incident. But when Harold walked to the
    lectern and began reading, his words were suddenly scrambled and
    distorted. He stopped and began again. Same result: gobbledegook.
    No-one could understand a word he was saying. The congregation shifted
    uneasily in its seats. Had the mike failed? Or were the Uzbeks sitting
    outside the church in a radio van blocking this evidence of torture in
    their jails?

    Calmly Pinter switched off the mike, and, like the consummate actor he
    was, spoke his lines. His words resonated through the darkened church.
    It was a moment I shall never forget.

    In his final years, Harold still attended the service. He sat at the
    back, humble, steadfast, committed. We shall miss him.
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