Michel Maas
(Roermond, NL 1954) is De Volkskrant and NOS Journaal (Dutch 8 o' clock news) correspondent in southeast Asia. He studied philosophy and worked as a journalist for De Volkskrant from 1986. As a literary reporter he talked to A.F.Th. van der Heijden, W.F. Hermans, Hugo Claus among others and Nobel Prize winners Derek Walcott and Seamus Heaney. In 1994 his first novel was published, De Vleugels van Lieu Hanh (Lieu Hanh's Wings), on a journey through Vietnam in which history plays a prominent role. It won him the Geertjan Lubberhuizen Prize. In 1996 he settled as eastern Europe correspondent in Budapest and covered the war in Kosovo. His reports were collected in Kosovo: Verslag van een oorlog (Kosovo: Report of a War). It was awarded the NDP Prize for daily newspaper journalism. In 2001 he exchanged eastern Europe for southeast Asia and started working for NOS (a public network). In 2010 he himself was in the news when during a live radio broadcast of the eviction of a protest camp in Bangkok he was shot at.
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Archive available for: Michel Maas
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Adriaan van Dis and Ahmad Tohari on the future of Indonesia
With: Adriaan van Dis, Ahmad Tohari, Michel Maas
After Soeharto's downfall Indonesia opened up to transparency and democracy. However, in reality corruption is rampant, while ethnic tensions remain. Writer Ahmad Tohari wrote about the love-hate relationship with his country. Adriaan van Dis made the documentary series Van Dis in Indonesië and as a correspondent in Jakarta Michel Maas is witness daily to Indonesia's fitful growing pains. A discussion about the challenge for the future of the island-empire, with the use of fragments from Van Dis' documentary. In English.
The participation of Andrea Hirata, announced in our brochure, has been cancelled. -
Oxfam Novib PEN Awards
With: Joris van Casteren, Manon Uphoff, Michel Maas, Petra Stienen, Remco Breuker, Samar Yazbek, Sheila Sitalsing
With the PEN Awards Oxfam Novib and Dutch PEN honour writers, journalists and filmmakers who, against the current, and at the risk of their own lives, search for the truth and spread it. Writer an secretary of PEN Netherlands Manon Uphoff will present the Oxfam Novib/PEN Award in Theater aan het Spui, as part of the Writers Unlimited Winternachten festival The Hague. The Syrian writer Samar Yazbek witnessed the brutal violence against demonstrating citizens in her country. She published about it, was severely threatened and consequently had to leave the country.
The other prize winners this year are Enoh Meyomesse (Cameroun), Nargess Mohammadi (Iran), Déo Namujimbo (Congo) and Büþra Ersanlý (Turkey). Samar Yazbek is the only winner present during the ceremony.
The prize-winning ceremony is followed by a debate organised by Dutch PEN about censorship, self-censorship and the ethics of writers, journalists and bloggers, chaired by Volkskrant columnist Sheila Sitalsing. Arabist Petra Stienen, Remco Breuker (a professor and an expert on East Asia), Michel Maas (a correspondent in Indonesia) and writer Joris van Casteren. Prizewinning ceremony is in English, the debate in Dutch.