This distinguished program was arranged by the BBC’s arts and culture department in reaction to the attempted assassination of a famous Indian-British novelist, Salman Rushdie, 75, who was stabbed in upscale New York a couple of days ago.
For over 30 years, Salman’s life has had a fatwā ruling, an Islamic formal edict, issued by the then Ayatollah of Iran, Ruhollah Khomeini, after the novelist had published his controversial novel, Satanic Verses which many of the Islamic faith see as a work of blasphemy against prophet Mohammed and cherished Islam in general.
Salman’s attacker, a 24-year-old American of Lebanese descent, Hadi Matar, was quickly apprehended and produced in court and charged with second-degree murder and assault which charges he denied.
When I was violently arrested from my home in December last year, and in January 2022 smuggled into court after I had spent weeks going through harrowing torture in Special Forces Command dungeons, the whole world was on my side as a writer. PEN centres across the world, newspapers, televisions and civil society organizations were concerned about my situation and advocated for my immediate unconditional release.
When graphic pictures of my scarred body went viral, the whole world (except chamchas of the rogue regime) stood with me as a defender of truth armed with a mere pen and an independent mind. The court presided over by Dr Douglas Singiza who was supposed to, in accordance with the law, observe my rights and report the abuse of the same and stay the proceedings, sent me on remand in a despicable state of oozing pus from the dermatological ulcerations and swollen joints and fractured ankle.
The right-thinking humans of the world wondered what kind of a judicial officer could remand a visibly tortured person to prison contrary to the Prevention and Prohibition of Torture Act, 2012 laws of Uganda.
Everyone in this 21st century must know, as Dr Nanson Kahyana elucidated, that while soldiers are armed with guns and tanks to defend a country from wars and external aggression, writers on the other hand are armed with pens to defend the countries from greed, impunity, autocracy, mediocracy and arrogance of leaders who think of themselves as gods.
The freedom to write should never be only about heaping encomiums but also to write unflatteringly lest writers become just automatons – robots for hire. As Salman, the stabbed novelist said, freedom to write without the freedom to offend is useless.
In this age, there should never be a religion, political organization or belief that is greater than the right to live. If defending such beliefs calls for deaths or torture of those who disagree, in total disregard of the human rights laws, then such inherited dogmas do not fit in this civilization where civil liberties and freedom are cherished. No one or no belief or organization should declare themselves immune from criticism and deflecting criticism with threatening life arbitrarily is a justification for abolishing such beliefs.
Freedom to write, of speech and expression, as long as you are not slandering or glorifying violence and a few other exceptions, is nonnegotiable and I will fiercely defend that freedom to my grave. There is no justification for threatening someone’s life simply because he or she has exercised his freedom of thought, to write, speech and expression.
There are those who are ensconced in echelons of power who, in need to deflect criticism, came up with stupid laws like Section 25 of the Computer Misuse Act and they will open their mouths to tell critics that we must respect such a bad law. Just to remind you, even apartheid in South Africa was legal and the apartheid regime expected citizens to respect such a law!
There ought to be a right to disagree and it is non-negotiable. Writers, we have our freedom to describe things and such freedom can never be taken away by an individual, government or religion. If you cannot agree with what someone writes or says, at least defend their right to say or write it.
If you see someone out there broadcasting balderdash in defense of torture, violence and barbarism, then you know that they belong to the stone age and not fit to live in this contemporary society where freedom from torture and right to live are inviolable.
If we have useless leaders that have sunk the country to the abyss of imbroglio and that of the future into indescribable hopelessness and as a result, we get extremely angry, a caboodle of hoodlums acting in the name of the cataclysmic or misanthropic state must not deflect the blame and begin to threaten the concerned with death and inhuman treatment.
I want my right to write about thieves, dictators, murderers, greedy politicians with bottomless stomachs, malingerers, penchants for opulence, election riggers and every state-inspired impunity we are enmeshed in without fear of being tortured or killed.
The author is an exiled novelist and a scholar of PEN-Zentrum Deutschland
Twitter: @KakwenzaRukira
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