Arundhati Roy and Toomaj Salehi Announced as joint winners of the Vaclav Havel Center’s 2024 ‘Disturbing the Peace’ Award to a Courageous Writer at Risk

The Vaclav Havel Center (‘VHC’) announced today that the winners of the 2024 ‘Disturbing the Peace’ Award for a Courageous Writer at Risk are Indian writer Arundhati Roy and Iranian rapper Toomaj Salehi.

About the Award:

The VHC’s annual Disturbing the Peace Award for a Courageous Writer at Risk recognizes writers who share Vaclav Havel’s passionate commitment to human rights and have suffered unjust persecution for their beliefs. The award is given each year to a writer or writers of distinguished works of fiction, literary nonfiction, biography, memoire, drama, or poetry who are courageous in dissent and have been punished for challenging an oppressive regime. The award, which includes a $5,000 cash prize, supports individuals who embody Havel’s legacy while drawing attention to the many writers worldwide who bravely fight human rights violations.

Announcing the Award, Jury member Salil Tripathi commented:

“Vaclav Havel was often an involuntary guest of the Czechoslovak government because he believed in living the truth and disturbing the peace. The peace he disturbed was not of calm serenity, but the imposed silence of an authoritarian state. And he defied the state with reason, arguments, imagination, a commitment to truth, and non-violence. The world remains in a state where governments continue to suppress inconvenient voices. But those voices remain unbending: these writers and artists have integrity, courage, and determination of the kind Havel displayed. Toomaj Salehi in Iran uses words and songs with energy and gusto to challenge Iran’s theocratic autocracy which suppresses women’s rights and got handed a death sentence, subsequently overturned by its Supreme Court but he remains in prison. In India, Arundhati Roy speaks for its marginalized and dispossessed, whose lands are taken away for big business; who oppose India’s nuclear policies; who speak up for the Dalits; and who fight for their self-determination, making the comfortable afflicted, and offering comfort to the afflicted. They are worthy recipients of the Disturbing the Peace Award this year.”

Nominations for the Disturbing the Peace Award are collected each year from international organizations prominent in literature and human rights. A short list of nominations is then prepared by the VHC Award Committee and forwarded to a small group of jurors, who select the awardee.

‘Disturbing the Peace’ Award Committee Chair Bill Shipsey thanked the jurors for their work and added:

“Arundhati Roy and Toomaj Salehi are wonderful exemplars of the spirit of Vaclav Havel who would have been honored to count them both as members of his human rights and freedom of expression defending and loving community.”

Arundhati Roy

Arundhati Roy is an Indian author best known for her novel The God of Small Things (1997), which won the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1997 and became the best-selling book by a non-expatriate Indian author. Her second novel The Ministry of Utmost Happiness was published in 2017 and was long listed for the Mann Booker Prize.  

She is a political activist involved in human rights and environmental causes. Roy donated the prize money she received from the Booker Prize, as well as royalties from her book to human rights causes. Prior to the Booker, Roy won the National Film Award for Best Screenplay in 1989, for the screenplay of In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones, in which she captured the anguish among the students prevailing in professional institutions. In 2015, she returned the national award in protest against religious intolerance and the growing violence by rightwing groups in India.

In 2002, she won the Lannan Foundation’s Cultural Freedom Award for her work “about civil societies that are adversely affected by the world’s most powerful governments and corporations”, in order “to celebrate her life and her ongoing work in the struggle for freedom, justice and cultural diversity”.

In 2003, she was awarded “special recognition” as a Woman of Peace at the Global Exchange Human Rights Awards in San Francisco with Bianca Jagger, Barbara Lee, and Kathy Kelly.

Roy was awarded the Sydney Peace Prize in May 2004 for her work in social campaigns and her advocacy of non-violence. That same year she was awarded the Orwell Award, along with Seymour Hersh, by the National Council of Teachers of English.

In January 2006, she was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award, a national award from India’s Academy of Letters, for her collection of essays on contemporary issues, The Algebra of Infinite Justice, but she declined to accept it “in protest against the Indian Government toeing the US line by ‘violently and ruthlessly pursuing policies of brutalisation of industrial workers, increasing militarisation and economic neo-liberalization'”.

In November 2011, she was awarded the Norman Mailer Prize for Distinguished Writing.

In June 2024, she was awarded the PEN Pinter Prize. English PEN Chair Ruth Borthwick described her as telling “urgent stories of injustice with wit and beauty”.

In 2010 She was accused of sedition along with separatist Hurriyat leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani and others by Delhi Police for their “anti-India” speech at a 2010 convention on Kashmir at which she was reported to have said “Kashmir has never been an integral part of India. It is a historical fact. Even the Indian government has accepted this.” In June 2024, fourteen years later, the UAPA Act (unlawful activities (prevention) act, 1967) was invoked against her. Both she and the other accused face prosecution and lengthy imprisonment if convicted.

Toomaj Salehi 

Toomaj Salehi (Persian: توماج صالحی;) is an Iranian rapper mainly known for his protest songs concerning Iran’s societal issues and the policies of the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran. In July 2023, the Iranian Government sentenced Salehi to six years in prison for participating in the 2022 Iran protests. On 24 April 2024 Salehi was sentenced to death for charges linked to Iran’s 2022–23 Woman, Life, Freedom movement, before it was overturned in June 2024.

Salehi launched his career at the age of 26. At first, studios were not interested in his work as it was too overtly political, but as protests started taking place across Iran, his songs gained traction. He became a hip hop musician mainly known for his protest songs concerning Iran’s societal issues and the policies of the Iranian Government. He has sold personal items, such as his motorcycle, to produce music, as the “rap-e farsi” genre has to take place secretly, being banned by the government. Salehi’s targets include political repression, religious pressure, the economy, women’s rights, and the corruption of the authorities. Rap is illegal in Iran, and others use pseudonyms to avoid detection, but Salehi has always used his real name. He was barred from performing live in Iran.

His 2021 song, “Soorakh Moosh” (“Mouse Hole” or “Rat Hole”), targets the Islamic Republic directly, as well as Western nations and organizations who turn a blind eye to the oppression, naming US-based lobby group National Iranian American Council (NIAC) in the song.

He openly supported the Woman, Life, Freedom movement and protests, created after the 2022 death-in-custody of Mahsa Jina Amini in 2022. He has supporters within Iran and all over the world, including Coldplay and Sting, for speaking out about human rights abuses, injustice and inequality.

Salehi’s day job is working as a laborer at a metalworking factory.

In 2023, while in prison, Salehi was awarded the Freedom of Expression Art Award by Index on Censorship for his “unwavering commitment to using his craft as a weapon against injustice”. The rapper donated his cash prize to victims of recent floods in Iran.

History of the Award:

The previous recipients of the Disturbing the Peace Award are Egyptian writer and blogger Alaa Abd El-Fattah (2023); Ukrainian author Andrey Kurkov (2022); Belarusian poet Dmitri Strotsev (2021); Cuban author Angel Santiesteban Prats (2020); Turkish writer and journalist Asli Erdogan (2019); Chinese author, reporter, musician, and poet Liao Yiwu (2018); Kurdish novelist Burhan Sönmez (2017); and Burmese writer Ma Thida (2016).

In 2024, the Vaclav Havel Center received 26 nominations from individuals and organizations including from Amnesty International USA, Index on Censorship and Pen International.

The other shortlisted finalists for the 2024 Disturbing the Peace Award were Maksim Znak ​(Belarus) and Söyüngül Chanisheff ​(Uyghur/China).

The members of the Disturbing the Peace Award Jury for 2024 were Alaa Abd El-Fattah, Barbora Bukovská, Martin Palouš, John Shattuck & Salil Tripathi.

The members of the Disturbing the Peace Award Committee for 2024 were Tamar Newberger, Jessica Ní Mhainín, Martin Palouš, Bill Shipsey, Lise Stone & Salil Tripathi,

For further information contact Bill Shipsey or Jana Krupkova at info@havelcenter.org

Press release: DISTURBING THE PEACE Award 2024 Vaclav Havel Center