Journalists Expelled from PEN Centre BiH Assembly

Convened again at an unusual time and in an unusual place (Art Gallery of BiH, Tuesday, December 28 at 4 PM), and without informing or inviting the media to cover it - the Assembly of PEN Centre BiH faced its long-standing problem right at the beginning - lack of quorum, writes the Patria News Agency.

Academician Abdulah Sidran, a member of the Croatian PEN Centre and by that status a member of the World PEN organization, attended the Assembly – again uninvited and clearly unwelcome by those present.

After being given the floor upon a repeated, loud request from the Assembly's chairman, Prof. Dr. Edin Pobrić, Sidran pointed out the repeated, constant, and illegal practice whereby (all due to the notorious lack of quorum!) the Management Board (executive body) assumes the powers of the Assembly (legislative body!).

According to Sidran, this practice has been undermining the legality of PEN Centre's governing bodies for years and, as he states: makes every decision they make legally invalid or at least questionable.

Not wishing to participate in the vote on the admission of new members – among whom he is also a candidate, despite being one of PEN's founders and a member of the World PEN organization – Sidran left the Assembly, wishing it successful work.

What followed was a real shock! The leaders of PEN Centre ordered the present journalists to leave the Assembly immediately!

It is not easy to understand everything that goes on in this NGO, but it can still be inferred that Abdulah Sidran is a much smaller problem than the problem he has been pointing out for years.

Many wrong things have happened in our culture, and we have become accustomed to almost everything. But for an organization whose fundamental program and Charter should fight for public access to its work and protect free speech – to declare its sessions "closed" (what is so mysterious about it) and expel media representatives from them – even the greatest dark figures could not have expected this!