Vietnamese underground publisher receives freedom prize

 

DPA-Apr 26, 2011

Buenos Aires - The Vietnamese underground publisher Bui Chat Monday was awarded the freedom prize of the International Publishers Association (IPA).

The award was granted at the 37th Buenos Aires International Book Fair.

Chat founded Giay Vun Publishing in Vietnam, where he has printed works by Vietnam's pavement poets and helped create an independent publishing movement in the South-East Asian country, according to the US-based Publishers Weekly.

He has published the works of banned authors and historians.

'Under extremely difficult conditions, the Giay Vun publishing house has initiated a new movement of free thinkers, free writers, free artists who refuse to conform to the state rules of creation,' Bjorn Smith-Simonsen, chair of IPA's committee on publishing freedom, was quoted as saying by Publishers Weekly.

Chat said he hoped the award would further boost the independent publishing movement and civil society in Vietnam.

'Books have the power to make the world free; freedom for those who publish books, for those who read books, and for those who discuss what books bring to them,' Chat said.

 

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