Footage courtesy of Brittany Blow

Dear Dawit [Habtemichael]:

Like you I have been a journalist and a teacher, but unlike you, nobody has put me in prison for expressing my views, not even when I condemned our prime minister Stephen Harper for his destructive cuts to the arts. Although our protest was widely covered in the media, no police official led me away in handcuffs to spend ten years in prison.

Yes, ten years. That’s how long you’ve been locked up. But prison isn’t the right word for the shipping container that your government has kept you in for doing the work that any journalist does wherever he or she lives. That’s right – instead of a regular prison, you’ve been locked up in a shipping container whose temperature can exceed 50 degrees centigrade in the day and far below 10 degrees at night, temperatures which are difficult at the best of times but no doubt harder on you because you come from the highlands in Eritrea where the average temperature is 26 degrees Centigrade during the summer and six degrees in winter. And what was your crime? Covering student protests and criticizing a government minister in the weekly newspaper you published in Asmara. For that, you were accused of giving information to the enemy, Ethiopia, and your rights were considered worthless.

Yes, worthless because your government has made freedom of the press illegal as well as freedom of movement and freedom of religion. In fact, your government doesn’t allow any privately run media outlets in your country so there’s no chance of your horrible circumstances being reported on in Eritrea. But today at PEN Canada, we’re reporting on your inhumane and unjust imprisonment and we are in a rage on your behalf. We’re told your mental and physical health is poor, and we want the government of Eritrea to release you immediately so the high school students who studied physics with you can have back their role model and esteemed teacher.

Dawit Habtemichael, you are not forgotten!

Susan Swan