Part II: moving details of protests planned for Europe

[raquelita]

PEN Canada will be contacting schools in an attempt to persuade them to make altars and raise awareness of the plight of writers and journalists in Mexico. It is planning a speaking engagement with Luis Najera who worked for El Diario in Ciudad Juarez, and who escaped to Canada after receiving a death threat. www.pencanada.ca

PEN Catal? Centre will be opening its altar on 2 November, and will be providing public readings of poems from the campaign material and also from those written by their members. www.pencatala.cat

Croatian PEN: on the 1 and 2 November at a local museum, the small Mexican community in Zagreb will arrange an altar dedicated to peace and to building cultural relations between Mexico and Croatia. The altar will sit alongside a specially-designed PEN Day of the Dead placard which will point visitors to an event at the central city library where the campaign will be presented on 3 November. The event will be hosted by Croatian PEN and Ana Ferrera Sandoval, an art theorist from Mexico City who currently resides in Zagreb. www.pen.hr/Eng-StojePEN.asp

Danish PEN?s main activities will focus on the evening of 2 November, when a Mexican singer will be performing and two renowned actors will read speeches and poems. Danish PEN?s altar will be inaugurated on 1 November and will be open until 6 November. During these days, there will be documentaries, theatre, a pi?ata for children, and the venue?s caf? will be serving Mexican food. This centre is also planning to place death announcements (mentioning dead journalists and writers) in newspapers, and will ask the papers to publish the announcements for free. Danish PEN?s activities will be supported by the Danish Federation of Journalists, the Danish Writers Association, the Association of Danish Fiction Writers, Amnesty International and International Media Support. http://danskpen.dk

PEN German Abroad has asked author and journalist Fred Kurer to translate some of the poems included in the campaign materials and submit them to the press. http://www.exilpen.net

English PEN will organize a vigil outside the Mexican embassy in London, where poems will be read in both English and Spanish, and where there will be Mexican music. There will also be a minute?s silence during which the murdered writers and print journalists of Mexico will be remembered. The Mexican ambassador will be invited to attend in a public show of solidarity. Members of the Writers in Prison Committee of PEN International will also be there. http://www.englishpen.org

Italian PEN will place obituaries for the dead journalists in local press. http://www.penclub.it

PEN Club Mexico is collaborating with American PEN Center. Artist Paloma Diaz has built an altar (viewable online) for the campaign. Please see http://www.penmexico.org.mx/diamuerto.html

PEN Suisse Romand: on 2 November this centre will place an obituary in the Romand Swiss daily, Le Temps, dedicated to Yolanda Ordaz de la Cruz, murdered crime reporter and columnist for the Mexican daily newspaper Notiver. http://www.penromand.ch