RP foundation defends award for Pramoedya

RP foundation defends award for Pramoedya

MANILA (AFP): The foundation granting Asia's most prestigious
literary award yesterday rejected calls to withdraw its prize to
a leftist Indonesian accused of once running a "witch hunt" on
writers.

Pramoedya Ananta Toer will receive the 1995 Ramon Magsaysay
Award even though two former winners from Indonesia and one from
the Philippines have threatened to turn in their prizes in
protest, the Magsaysay foundation said.

"The Foundation regrets having disappointed its esteemed
former awardees but it remains firm in its decision to recognize
Pramoedya" with its 1995 award for journalism, literature, and
creative communication arts, its statement said.

A group of 26 Indonesian writers and intellectuals last week
wrote to the foundation criticizing the decision to grant the
award to Pramoedya, given his role in the suppression of freedom
of expression in the 1960s. Among the 26 were writer and
journalist Mochtar Lubis and writer H.B. Jassin, recipients of
the award for literature.

The foundation acknowledged that Pramoedya had been a member
of the communist-run Institute of People's Culture, known as
Lekra, which in the 1960s attacked a number of prominent writers.

"The attacks and counter-attacks of the times were harsh and
we are indeed aware that some writers suffered badly," it said.

Current attacks on Pramoedya "bear little moral weight in
light of the penalties already imposed upon him as well as a
change in world attitudes toward communism accompanying the end
of the Cold War," the foundation said.

The foundation conceded that Ramon Magsaysay, the popular
Philippine president for whom the U.S.-funded award was named,
had "despised communism."

But it noted that he also "carefully distinguished between the
creed of communism and its individual followers" and that he
fought communism in the Philippines by "righting the wrongs that
made the leftist appeal seductive in the first place."