Hong Kong in turmoil and China in the last 30 years
Institutional Communication Service
22 November 2019
USI will host on Tuesday, 26 November the journalist and sinologist Ilaria Maria Sala, vice-president and co-founder of PEN Hong Kong. She will share with the audience her first-hand experience with the events that shook the former British colony, the fears and uncertainties of the residents, the gap between the identity of the city and its destiny. The public conference "From Tiananmen to Hong Kong: Thirty Years in China" will be held in Italian on Lugano campus in room A13 at 6 pm and is promoted by PEN International – Swiss Italian and Reto-Romansch Center in collaboration with USI Institute for Public Communication.
Ilaria Maria Sala, Italian journalist, writer and sinologist, has lived in China for 30 years and in Hong Kong for 15 years, where she was president of the Foreign Correspondents' Club. She collaborates with The Guardian, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, La Repubblica, Il Sole 24ore, Le Monde, Qartz. She studied at the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London and, later, at the Beijing Normal University and the University of Beijing. Her writing was encouraged by Tiziano Terzani. Her book "The God of Asia: Religion and Politics in the East", a reportage and at the same time an essay, won the Bruce Chatwin Award for Travel Literature.
The conference, which is part of the annual events for the Day of the Imprisoned Writer, is a perfect chance to delve into what is really happening in the autonomous region of Hong Kong, whose population is almost equal to that of Switzerland.
Tuesday's event will be preceded on Monday by a talk with the same guest speaker at Franklin University Switzerland, where she will hold a conference in English. Both conferences are coordinated by Maria Emilia Arioli, president of PEN International – Swiss Italian and Reto-Romansch Center.
PEN International – Swiss Italian and Reto-Romansch Center - is the PEN International Swiss chapter for the Italian and Reto-Romansch languages. It is an apolitical international association of writers, journalists, essayist and publishers, whose aim is to promote freedom of expression, oppose all forms of oppression of intellectual freedom, and foster contacts between writers from different countries. Established in London in 1921, the association counts centres in more than 100 countries, three of which are in Switzerland. Each year the Swiss Italian and Reto-Roamnsch Center commemorates with the other PEN Centers worldwide the Day of the Imprisoned Writer to raise awareness on unjust imprisonments and other forms of attack against writers from all countries.
Photo: Studio Incendo, https://flickr.com/photos/studiokanu/
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