PEN Sydney condemns the war in The Middle East and stands with political prisoners, writers and journalists impacted by the war.
The US/Israel-Iran war has entered a new and extremely dangerous stage. At the time of writing, Iran has struck targets in Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Iraq, Jordan, Syria, Iraqi Kurdistan and Cyprus, while Israeli attacks on Southern Lebanon have displaced more than a million people. Thousands of people have been killed and tens of thousands injured.
The US and Israel claim the war is about achieving military and political objectives, while for the Islamic regime in Iran the war is existential. The Iranian regime is fighting to maintain its theocratic rule anchored in repression, killing, terror and suppression of basic human rights.
The war already threatens to expand throughout the Middle East, but the human costs and implications of these brutal attacks extend beyond the region. They have global consequences. This war requires a global response from freedom loving people.
For now, this war appears to be between the US, Israel, and Iran. They all have a brutal history with millions of victims.
On 2 March Peter Hegseth, the US War Secretary, said, “No stupid rules of engagement, no nation building quagmire, no democracy building exercise, no politically correct wars.”
These words do not need to be decoded or analysed by academics and political commentators.
The US has engaged in hundreds of wars, military deployments, military interventions, military coups since WW2 which resulted in imposing dictatorships, killing, executions, abductions, destruction, suppression of freedom and basic human rights.
The history of US military involvement in declared and undeclared wars over decades has proven that the objective of these wars was to define and redefine American hegemony and its supremacy in the global order, or to shape a new global order by force.
The Islamic regime in Iran in the past 47 years has killed, assassinated, arrested, tortured hundreds of thousands of people. Freedom has been crushed, women’s rights suppressed, writers and journalists incarcerated or murdered. Poverty in Iran is widespread.
Since the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, which killed an estimated 1,200 people, Israel’s war in Gaza has killed at least 70,000 people and injured 170,000. The war crimes and crimes against humanity which an Independent International Commission of the United Nations found have been committed by Israeli forces in Gaza continue a history stretching back to 1948 of illegal occupation of Palestinian lands and repression of the human, civil and political rights of the Palestinian people.
This war is not a people’s war. It is not our war. It must be stopped now. The Iranian people should determine their destiny with no foreign intervention.
They may choose to topple the dictatorship in Iran, but they cannot fight the regime in the streets while the bombs and missiles are falling.
The reports from Iran indicates that the regime set check points, arrests people, clamping down on freedom including freedom of expression and cutting the internet and telephone lines.
Meanwhile there are further reports of the deliberate killing of journalists by the Israeli Defence Forces[i]. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, the IDF has committed more targeted killings of journalists than any other government’s military since CPJ began documentation in 1992.
PEN Sydney expresses its concern regarding the safety of prisoners, especially writers, political prisoners, journalists and activists, and calls on all actors in this war to fulfil their obligations to protect the lives of prisoners, and respect the right of journalists to report freely, fairly and accurately in the public interest.
We affirm our solidarity with all those in Iran, Israel and the United States who oppose the continuation of the war.