Dear collegues and friends,

The International PEN is an organisation of writers, which are ready to stay for freedom of expression and against every kind of nationalisme. The members gathered in International P.E.N. pursue writing as an art, and are ready to assume all the needed risks. One of our important mission is to unit the diversity of languages because they are forming the basic of our international standing.

I was elected in Mexico to president of this organisation and my first sentences after the election have been: The 21st century is more than a turning-point in the calendar. The conditions of our existence have changed from the ground up. The spread of the new technologies has made mankind richer and more uncertain at one and the same time. Heredity no longer guarantees the future. The past as description and literature is told in a different fashion and has even begun to disappear. Salvage efforts are becoming risk-taking tests. The global web does not only connect; it creates holes in the net and new fears, both among individuals and the masses. We have to go against getting speechless. Our opinion has to be, that words don't become the nomenclature of silence, or the prophetic slogans of hate.

With best regards Jiri Grusa