The IX Regional Meeting of PEN Centers took place in Kyiv
On October 27-31, the IX Regional Meeting of PEN Centers, organized by PEN Ukraine with support from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), took place in Kyiv
Launched in 2014 as an annual meeting of PEN Centers from the Central and Eastern Europe, this event constitutes a safe venue for mutual support and a platform to discuss challenges for the freedom of speech and human rights in the region. Since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine, the Meeting is subjected to expressing the international PEN community’s solidarity with Ukraine.
The pool of participants of the IX Regional meeting included Maja Gudim Burheim (PEN Norway), Laura Mintegi (PEN Basque), Enrique Yeves (PEN Spain), Tomica Bajsic (PEN International), Said Khatibi (PEN Slovenia), Ira Wells (PEN Canada) and Vincent Engel (PEN Belgium).
During their visit to Ukraine, the participants visited key sightseeing attractions of Kyiv – St. Sophia’s Cathedral, St. Michael’s Cathedral, and Maidan Nezalezhnosti. They also saw the damaged disticts of Kyiv, deliberated towns of the Kyiv region – Bucha, Irpin and Borodyanka – and the de-occupied village of Yahidne in the Chernihiv region. It was there that the Russian occupiers held 350 civilian captives in the local school’s basement for a month in March 2022. This visit was aimed at showing the scale of Russians’ war crimes in Ukraine to the foreign guests.
During their stay in Kyiv, the Meeting participants also visited the National Museum of Holodomor Genocide and the Mystetskyi Arsenal where they met its director general Olesya Ostrovska-Lyuta and director of the Internationa Book Arsenal Festival Yuliia Kozlovets.
The representatives of PEN Centers also partook in the conversation about culture activists killed in Russia’s war against Ukraine. The discussion based on the project Ukrainian Culture Makers Killed by Russia, launched by PEN Ukraine in cooperation with INDEX: Institute for Documentation and Exchange, Memorial Memory Platform, Raphael Lemkin Society, the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory, Human Rights Centre ZMINA, and НеМо: Ukrainian Heritage Monitoring Lab. The conversation about writing commemorative features was held by the project coordinator Olha Olkhova and authors Mariana Matveichuk and Hanna Ustynova, PEN Ukraine’s deputy executive director.
The participants of the IX Regional Meeting met representatives of Ukrainian human rights orgnizations – Nataliia Yashchuk, Aliona Maksymenko and Anastasiia Holovnenko from the Center for Civil Liberties and Kateryna Mitieva, representative of the Truth Hounds organization. The representatives of PEN Centers also had a meeting with the representative of the Ukrainian PR Army NGO, Khrystyna Shkudor, who told about the organization’s activities.
A visit of the representatives of PEN Centers to the Mission of the President of Ukraine to the Autonomous Republic of Crimea marked another point of the Meeting.
The participants also visited the Voices of Children Foundation – the biggest Ukrainian organization providing complex psychological aid to children affected by the war.
The Meeting participants also met human rights activist Maksym Butkevych, journalist Stas Kozliuk and combat medic Yuliia "Tayra" Paievska. The three invitees shared their own stories of struggle and resistance, both personal and national.
Said Khatibi, the representative of PEN Slovenia, mentioned that today Ukraine is changing many senses for the entire world:
"Ukraine has changed the definition of resistance. From the outside, due to Russian propaganda, people have the impression that there are only two kinds of Ukrainians: refugees, or those living in fear inside the country. But when I saw children going to school, when I saw people having coffee on a café terrace, I thought to myself: this is resistance. It’s about living the Ukrainian way, dreaming and loving. The love between Ukrainians is also a form of resistance. However, I believe that my role as an intellectual is to tell the stories of ordinary people, they are the true heroes, to share their attachment to their land and their roots. Ukraine is also fighting for us, for our freedom"
Ira Wells, the representative of PEN Canada, pointed out that, during his visit to Kyiv, he was impressed by Ukrainians’ morale strength:
"I was impressed by the speed at which Ukraine is memorializing and commemorating recent tragedies: I was struck by how exhibitions and an interpretive apparatus is fast emerging even in places that faced unimaginable devastation just a couple of years ago. I was also struck by the cultural dimension and motivation of Russia’s full-scale invasion, which I had not fully appreciated: for instance, the monument to Taras Shevchenko in Borodyanka, which had been shot and torn down by Russian soldiers, and is now standing tall again. One understands on an abstract level that this invasion is about more than just territory—it is also about culture—but it was striking to see such visceral, material evidence of Russia’s attempts to extinguish Ukrainian culture (attempts which are bound to fail)"
Within the Regional Meeting, the representatives of PEN Centers also joined a public event at PEN Ukraine Space. Namely, they participated in the public discussion Literature Around the World: Can It Still Help Humans, moderated by Volodymyr Yermolenko.
During these days, the participants of the Regional Meeting also accepted a resolution stressing that PEN Centres reaffirmed their decisive support of the Ukrainian resistance and called other writers around the world to continue telling the story of the Ukrainian struggle for freedom.
Photos: Artem Galkin, Anastasiia Mantach, Valentyna Naumenko
Read also:
We need your help to create projects and materials aimed to defend freedom of speech, popularize Ukrainian culture and values of independent journalism.
Your donation means support for discussions, awards, festivals, authors’ trips to regions and PEN book publications.
