Khet Mar at City of Asylum/Pittsburgh

From The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

Exiled Burmese writer relishes 'respite from fear'

By Angela Disipio
POINT PARK NEWS SERVICE
Saturday, December 12, 2009

Although the colorful mural isn't finished and its writing is indecipherable to most Pittsburghers, the house on Sampsonia Way has helped transform a drab alley into a unique sanctuary for exiled writers.

Khet Mar, a fiction writer and journalist from Burma whose prose tells about the struggles of ordinary people, lives there. She is the third writer hosted by the City of Asylum/Pittsburgh, a nonprofit organization that keeps three North Side houses for writers forced from their homelands under threat of death or imprisonment.

Mar wrote the short story painted on her house after coming to Pittsburgh in March. The words, in Burmese, recount her feelings when she arrived: "Although anxious in Pittsburgh, I look forward to a respite from fear and persecution."

Threatened with death in Burma, Mar said she and her family feel safer here.

"In Burma there is a military government," she said. "There is no clear-cut guidelines, no security. People get arrested for anything. ... Pittsburgh is great for me because I can live and write safely here."

According to Henry Reese, who co-founded City of Asylum/Pittsburgh with his wife, Diane Samuels, the "House Publications" project, in which each writer paints art on their North Side home, became a tradition after the arrival of the first writer.

Huang Xiang "celebrated his free speech by putting it on his home," Reese said. "It was the first time he spoke in public without being locked up."

The Sampsonia Way houses are one way the organization brings awareness to and engages people in the mission of protecting free speech. Primarily funded by individual donations, with some support from foundations, City of Asylum/Pittsburgh provides a furnished house, living expenses of about $30,000 a year and medical care, and legal or language support that a writer may need for up to two years.

City of Asylum/Pittsburgh began in 1997 after a talk Salman Rushdie gave in Pittsburgh about a program that offered refuge to exiled writers in Strasbourg.

"At one point during the speech, Diane kicked me and we thought this was something we could do," Reese said.

The couple and Schuyler Foerster, who this month stepped down as president of the World Affairs Council of Pittsburgh, put together the grassroots plan.

"It's an example of civic leadership," Foerster said. "It wasn't set up by a university, not a town or a government. It was two common people, who happen to be uncommon, getting together and setting this up."

Program participants must comply with legal requirements necessary to live in the United States. The goal of the program, Reese said, is to help exiled writers get on their feet.

"We provide sanctuary for the writer to continue to write," Reese said. "We lose if these voices are silenced."

Supporters of the program said as long as the asylum-seekers are writing, even from thousands of miles away, their words have power in their countries through conduits such as the Internet and publications in expatriate communities.

Of the 10 or so cities Mar visited before joining the program, she said Pittsburgh was her favorite.

"It is beautiful and peaceful here," she said. "I especially like the people."

She intended to return to Burma but is thinking of making Pittsburgh her home.

Freedom House, an independent watchdog organization, ranked Burma the third worst country in terms of freedom of the press and conditions for journalists this year, behind Turkmenistan and North Korea.

"We always have to worry because police and soldiers can come to my home and can take me anytime," said Mar, who was a political prisoner in her homeland. Humanitarian work she did there increased the government's suspicion about her, she said.

"As a mother, I have to think about what is best for my sons, their education and their safety," Mar said. "It is very good to be here to write without fear of persecution, but I still need to think about (how) to avoid censorship, as I still want to print my stories in Burma."