Chilean journalist and Berrigan brothers to receive Stus Award (06/04/00)

Chilean journalist and Berrigan brothers to receive Stus Award

by Ika Koznarska Casanova

NORTH CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - The annual Vasyl Stus Freedom-to-Write Award will be awarded to 33-year-old Chilean investigative journalist and writer Alejandra Marcela Matus Acuna, as well as to Daniel and Phillip Berrigan, two brothers who rose to prominence in the 1960s, leading non-violent resistance to the Vietnam War.

The award, named in honor of Ukrainian poet and dissident Vasyl Stus (1938-1985), is being presented by New England Freedom-to-Write Committee on June 4 at the Bunting Institute, Radcliffe College, at 5:30 p.m.

Ms. Matus is being recognized as a writer who has struggled in the face of oppression to make her voice heard. Well-known for her investigative reporting on politics and the judiciary, Ms. Matus is author of the book "Libro Negro de la Justicia Chilena" (Black Book of Chilean Justice), an investigative report and critical analysis of the judicial system.

The book, published in April 1999, documents abuses of power within the Chilean Supreme Court and its lack of independence, with particular focus on the military dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990) and the period of Chile's return to democracy (1990-1999).

The book created controversy in Chile when, nine years into Chile's transition to democracy, a Supreme Court justice ordered all copies of the publication confiscated within 24 hours of its release.

While the book is still banned in Chile, the government was not been able to stop its posting on the Internet by a Chilean daily that avoided censorship by using a server in the United States.

Ms. Matus was charged under the "contempt of authority" law, which makes it a crime of national security to criticize figures of public authority. Ms. Matus currently lives in exile in the United States, where she was granted political asylum.

The legal action taken against Ms. Matus has elicited both national and international condemnation, and her book and the ensuing controversy surrounding it has led to an open debate in Chile regarding censorship and freedom of the press.

Ms. Matus is a recipient, with fellow journalist Francisco Artaza, of the Ortega y Gasset Prize in 1996 for their investigation into the 1976 car-bomb killing of Chilean diplomat Orlando Letelier in Washington. She was recently awarded the Human Rights Watch's Hellman/Hamett Grant.

A second award will be given to Daniel and Philip Berrigan "whose writings over the course of their lives have shown what it means for people to honor the dictates of conscience."

An influential Roman Catholic figure, Daniel Berrigan S.J. is well-known for his anti-war activities and civil disobedience. A writer, he has published over 40 books of poetry, prose and drama. Philip Berrigan is author of "Fighting the Lamb's War."

The Berrigan brothers have continued their combination of anti-war writing and direct action until this day. Philip Berrigan is at present serving a 30-month sentence in Maryland for his non-violent protests against the United States' use of depleted uranium shells in recent wars against Iraq and Yugoslavia.

Daniel Berrigan will read from his selected poems, "And the Risen Bread, 1957-1997," and discuss the relationship between poetry and politics at the evening program.

* * *

The Ukrainian dissident poet Vasyl Stus, in whose name the award was established in 1998, died in 1985 in Soviet strict-regime concentration camp No. 389/36-1 in the Perm region of the Russian SFSR.

Stus was expelled from the Institute of Literature of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in 1965 because of his protests against the secret arrests and closed trials that were becoming prevalent in Soviet Ukraine. He was arrested in 1972 and sentenced to five years of strict-regime labor camp followed by three years of exile.

Rearrested in 1980 for having joined the Ukrainian Helsinki Group while in exile, he was sentenced to 10 years of strict-regime labor camp and five years of exile.

A man of uncompromising principles, Stus refused to kowtow to the regime and was subjected to constant persecutions, which finally were responsible for his death.

After facing repeated refusals and bureaucratic impediments, family and friends received permission to transfer his body to Ukraine from Perm. On November 19, 1989, a procession of over 30,000 mourners attended the interment of Stus and two other dissidents, Oleksa Tykhy and Yurii Lytvyn, at the Baikove Cemetery in Kyiv. The event became a manifestation of national solidarity and an expression of censure of the repressive Soviet regime.

Although he continued to write while he was incarcerated, the KGB systematically confiscated and destroyed his work. Some poems survived and were smuggled out to the West, where Stus's poetry appeared in several collections: "Zymovi Dereva" (Winter Trees, 1970), "Svicha v Svichadi" (A Candle in a Mirror, 1977) and the posthumous "Pamlimpsesty: Virshi 1971-1979 Rokiv" (Palimpsests: Poems of 1971-1979).

The first collection to appear in Ukraine was an underground samvydav collection, "Povernennia" (The Return), which appeared in 1990. Final "acceptance" came also in 1990, with the publication of the first official edition of his poetry, "Doroha Boliu" (The Road of Pain).

In 1992 two collections were published in Ukraine: "Vikna v Pozaprostir" (Windows into Beyond-Space), containing his poetry, articles, letters, and diary excerpts, and "Zolotokosa Krasunia" (The Golden-Braided Beauty), containing Stus's poetry found in the KGB archives.

Traditional in form, Stus's poetry began as "lyricism of actuality," in the manner in which the poets of the 1970s responded to the realities of the day. Content prevailed over form, message over myth, and the satire found in the poetry of the 1960s often turned to scorn, anger and abuse. The poetry written behind bars, however, is more serene; it expresses a longing, philosophical contemplation of life, nature, man the prisoner, and man the jailer, and reveals Stus's attempt to come to some synthesis with respect to the contradictions of the human experience.

(Source: D.H. Struk, Encyclopedia of Ukraine, Vol. V, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 1993.)

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