THE Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa urged the developed world to impose economic sanctions on countries which violate human rights, as he accepted Germany's top literary award at the Frankfurt Book Fair yesterday.
Vargas Llosa (60), who was an unsuccessful candidate for his country's presidency six years ago, accused governments of turning a blind eye to human rights abuses in order to safeguard their investments in developing regions.
"This policy is immoral and also impractical," he said. "The security of regimes which assassinate their dissidents, such as that of General Abacha of Nigeria, or a China which enslaves Tibet, or the tropical gulag of Cuba, is precarious and can collapse into anarchy and violence, as happened in the "Soviet Union."
Vargas Llosa was speaking at a ceremony in Frankfurt's Paulskirche church at which he received the German Book Trade's peace prize for his lifelong efforts to promote a "culture of freedom".
A prolific essayist and author of 25 novels, Vargas Llosa is now estranged from his native Peru but remains a harsh critic of the regime of President Alberto Fjimon, to whom he lost the 1990 elections.
The writer called on his peers to become more involved in the political arena and denounced the "increasing frivolity" which, he said, had debased literature into pure light entertainment.
The "paralysis" of the European Union over the recent crisis in Bosnia was dramatic proof, he said, of the dangers of complacency, and demanded a vigorous initiative to arouse a sense of responsibility in people.
Past winners of the German Peace Prize, worth DM25,000 marks (£10,000), include the Czech president, Mr Vaclav Havel.
Presenting the award, Spanish writer, Jorge Semprun, also a former Peace Prize winner, praised Vargas Llosa's civic courage and the beauty and precision of his language.
Vargas Llosa, who now divides his time between London and Spain, says he has no more personal political ambitions.
Among Vargas Llosa's best known titles are The War of the End of the World, an account of a peasant revolt in 19th century Brazil, and Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, a satire on Latin America's popular soap operas.