After several days in Beijing, a delegation from PEN arrived safely in Hong Kong last night.
The delegation, which includes prominent authors and artists as well as PEN America President Peter Godwin and Executive Director Suzanne Nossel, is mid-way through a trip aimed at showing solidarity with those persecuted for their writing and activism in the region. The delegates have met with writers, artists, editors, publishers, and dissidents and their families to gather information on the narrowing space for free expression in China in order to more effectively move PEN’s work in the region forward. The trip continues PEN’s long history of drawing attention to the persecution of Chinese writers, a repression that has deepened in recent months with a series of arrests and detentions.
Hong Kong, by contrast, has long enjoyed a vibrant, diverse, and independent media and a unique position for journalists as a window into mainland China. However, deterioration of press freedom there has accelerated over the past year of political crisis as tensions with the central government in Beijing escalate. At a press briefing Friday at the Foreign Correspondents Club in Hong Kong, PEN will release a new report on free expression in Hong Kong, charting the press violations experienced in recent months and providing recommendations to halt this trend.
You read the report in full on PEN’s website starting this Friday, January 16, 2015.