Writer Salman Rushdie joined with more than a dozen prominent US writers, artists and composers have written to Sony Pictures urging the media giant to release its controversial film, The Interview.
“…We urge you to take swift action to fulfill your pledge to find a way to distribute The Interview,” said the letter, signed by members of the US unit of the free-expression organisation PEN. “This work should be made widely available, proving that threats and intimidation will not win the day.”
Last week, Sony decided against releasing the film after receiving threats of violence against theatres in which it would be shown. The Interview is about an attempt to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. In November, a group of hackers, allegedly with ties to North Korea, hacked Sony’s computer systems and leaked sensitive information about corporate affairs and upcoming films.
“That the intervention of a foreign government that makes a mockery of intellectual freedom should determine what the American public can see and what American artists can produce is shocking; it puts us all under the sway of armed fundamentalism and intolerance,” the PEN letter said.
The letter discussed its experience in the 1980s battling the fatwa issued against Rushdie’s book Satanic Verses by the Iranian cleric Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
“These threats affected the book’s editors, translators and publishers, as well as booksellers and innocent civilians injured in protests,” the letter said. “Many of those involved took considerable personal risk to stand up to the fatwa, pressing forward with the dissemination of The Satanic Verses despite threats and incidences of lethal violence. Once the danger subsided, Salman Rushdie turned his energies toward helping other writers at risk, serving as president of PEN American Center and founding and chairing the PEN World Voices Festival, which was launched after 9/11 to bring writers from all over the world to New York each spring for open dialogue and debate.”
Offering to organise a screening of The Interview, the members of PEN concluded, “We urge Sony to demonstrate the power of free expression by denying the cowards who made these threats the satisfaction of thinking they have succeeded.”
Read the full text of the letter here.
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“…We urge you to take swift action to fulfill your pledge to find a way to distribute The Interview,” said the letter, signed by members of the US unit of the free-expression organisation PEN. “This work should be made widely available, proving that threats and intimidation will not win the day.”
Last week, Sony decided against releasing the film after receiving threats of violence against theatres in which it would be shown. The Interview is about an attempt to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. In November, a group of hackers, allegedly with ties to North Korea, hacked Sony’s computer systems and leaked sensitive information about corporate affairs and upcoming films.
“That the intervention of a foreign government that makes a mockery of intellectual freedom should determine what the American public can see and what American artists can produce is shocking; it puts us all under the sway of armed fundamentalism and intolerance,” the PEN letter said.
The letter discussed its experience in the 1980s battling the fatwa issued against Rushdie’s book Satanic Verses by the Iranian cleric Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
“These threats affected the book’s editors, translators and publishers, as well as booksellers and innocent civilians injured in protests,” the letter said. “Many of those involved took considerable personal risk to stand up to the fatwa, pressing forward with the dissemination of The Satanic Verses despite threats and incidences of lethal violence. Once the danger subsided, Salman Rushdie turned his energies toward helping other writers at risk, serving as president of PEN American Center and founding and chairing the PEN World Voices Festival, which was launched after 9/11 to bring writers from all over the world to New York each spring for open dialogue and debate.”
Offering to organise a screening of The Interview, the members of PEN concluded, “We urge Sony to demonstrate the power of free expression by denying the cowards who made these threats the satisfaction of thinking they have succeeded.”
Read the full text of the letter here.
