Parting Songs: Poems from Prison with Busboys and Poets Books
Date and Time
Mar 7, 2018 5:30 pm
Location
450K
450 K St NW, Washington, District of Columbia, 20001
Mar 7, 2018 5:30 pm
450K
Please join Busboys and Poets Books in collaboration with Crude Accountability to examine and discuss the role of art and the artist in oppressive regimes and the power of art as an instrument for contemporary advocacy.
Batyr Berdyev is a victim of enforced disappearances in Turkmenistan. A former diplomat and then Minister of Foreign Affairs, he was arrested along with dozens of other high-ranked officials in 2002 for allegedly participating in an attempted coup d'état. Batyr Berdyev was sentenced to 25 years in prison, and since his arrest in 2002, his family has not seen him, nor do they know where is he or if he is alive at all. International human rights organizations, lawyers, and doctors are denied access to him and he cannot receive packages or letters. There has been no official information about Berdyev’s status since 2002. His voice was last heard by a fellow prison inmate in May or June 2005. According to witnesses, Berdyev was severely beaten and tortured during his arrest and interrogation.
Judging by the dates on some of the manuscripts, the poems were written between December 2002 and March 2003. The manuscripts were smuggled out of prison and passed on to an acquaintance abroad. The international campaign Prove They Are Alive! translated the poems into English and published the book, which was presented at a human rights meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in Warsaw, Poland in September 2017.
This event is co-sponsored by Crude Accountability (crudeaccountability.org). Crude Accountability is an environmental and human rights nonprofit organization that works with communities in the Caspian and Black Sea regions who battle threats to local natural resources and the negative impacts on their health. Crude Accountability works on the local, national, regional, and international levels in partnership with active communities and organizations committed to a just and environmentally sustainable world. Based in Alexandria, Virginia, Crude Accountability also collaborates with environmental organizations in the United States working on similar issues. Crude Accountability is a participant of the international Prove They Are Alive! campaign.
