U.S. Poet Rejects Hungarian Award due to Rights Concerns
U.S. poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, 93, has turned down a literary award partly funded by the Hungarian government due to concerns about human rights in the central European country, his publisher said Friday.
The Janus Pannonius International Poetry Prize was set up in 2012 by the Hungarian PEN Club, a branch of the worldwide PEN writers' associations.
Part of the 50,000 euros ($64,730) prize money is funded by the Hungarian government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has faced accusations at home and abroad of undermining human rights in the European Union member state.
"The policies of this right-wing regime tend toward authoritarian rule and the consequent curtailing of freedom of expression and civil liberties," Ferlinghetti told the Hungarian PEN Club, according to his publishers New Directions.
It added that Geza Szocs, president of the Hungarian PEN Club since 2011 and former minister of culture in Orban's cabinet, offered to take out the state contribution but Ferlinghetti rejected the proposal.
"I hereby refuse the Prize in all its forms," the San Francisco-based writer said, adding that "I am grateful to those in Hungary who may have had the purest motives in offering me the Prize."
Ferlinghetti's snub follows the decision of Jewish-American author and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel to return Hungary's highest state honour in June in protest at the "whitewashing" under Orban of the country's dark wartime past.
Others have also made clear their disgust, with Akos Kertesz, an 80-year-old prize-winning Jewish Hungarian writer, in March going as far as applying for political asylum in Canada.
And in January internationally acclaimed Hungarian-born pianist Andras Schiff said he would no longer perform in his native country because of the increasingly hostile environment not only for Jews but also other minorities like Roma.
Source: Agence France Presse
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