Saturday 10 February, 2001
Artists For Freedom Of Speech
A group of leading writers, including this year's Booker Prize winner Margaret Atwood, have joined forces to support a 16 year old who was jailed after reading from a school essay. The teenager, from a small rural community in Canada, wrote a fictional account based on his experiences of being bullied.
At a recent fundraising event called Artists for Freedom Of Speech, prominent writers protested that the boy's freedom of expression had been violated. Arts In Action reports.
The boy, who can not be named because under Canadian law he is still a juvenile, wrote a short monologue entitled Twisted. His story finished when the main character planted a bomb in his school.
The school authorities responded by asking the police to investigate. Sixteen days later the boy was arrested and detained for 34 days. He was held on four separate charges of making death threats – however three of the charges do not directly relate to his school essay.
Cause Celebre
At the fundraising event, held to raise funds for the boy's continuing education, a wide range of writers took the stage to show their support. It's unusual that a school project would bring such attention, but then it is also rare that a schoolboy would face legal prosecution for a work of fiction.
In her short speech Margaret Atwood, author of last year's Booker Prize winner, The Blind Assassin, focused on the traumas faced by children. Quoting from The Untouched Key, a book by Alice Miller:
'Childhood can be hell', Atwood told the rally, 'one reason that childhood can be hell is that as a child you can have no power, you can have no recourse and nobody who will actually believe you if you did go so far as to express, in one way or another, something that happened to you.'
The case has attracted attention because of the way that the boy was treated and at the heart of this issue is the distinction between fact and fiction. It is now well known that the pupil has been bullied, but did his writings demonstrate violent tendencies or was it a means of expression?
In his talk Michael Ondaatje, author of The English Patient, spoke of how writing helped him to act out his violent thoughts. His first book, Billy The Kid was about a young gunfighter killer:
'It was a book that was full of violence that surprised me, I discovered it in the writing and in some way I learned to keep it there, to hold it within a form. It was still dangerous, but it was there.'
'There is more danger in a violence that you don't face, when you continue to remain locked in a room with it. I see myself as someone who has been saved by writing. God knows what I would have been, become or how I would have ended up without it.'
Author, Michael Ondaatje |
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Life After Columbine
None of the writers would deny that the violent remarks did deserve a school investigation. The boy had allegedly been making death threats, his 14-year-old brother also faces similar charges and whilst detained his sisters complained that their brother was often the bully of the family.
In 1999 the world was shocked when two teenagers went on a rampage through their high school. After shooting dead a teacher and 12 other pupils the two students of Columbine School in Colorado turned their guns on themselves. The knowledge that such incidents can happen still looms large in people's minds.
Author and former chairman of the Canadian Broadcasting Organisation, Patrick Watson comments:
'The kid was behaving a little oddly. He did not give any real reason to believe he had the capacity to blow up the school but, in the age of Columbine, people are very nervous.'
Freedom Of Speech
But for many writers this issue was more to do with making a stand about how a criminal could be made from a piece of fiction. Was this prosecution a clear violation of the boy's freedom of speech?
According to lawyer Frank Horn, the writers are clear about their reasons for support. He comments:
'They recognise how serious a matter it was not only for this case but also for Canada itself. Is it going to be a country where people are going to be able to be free and write what they want to? I believe that this is a civil rights issue.'
The case is due to go to trial in September.
|  |  | | | Twisted Extract |  |
| | The boy's story is a classic tale of a worm turning. Taunted by bullies the character arrives at school 'super happy' one day as he has decided to hide explosives around the school. He wrote:
'Everyone blissfully unaware that their lives were in imminent danger. He went happily along, waiting for the right moment. He decided to detonate at 12:12 exactly. Everyone would be having lunch and having fun.' |
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