Truth-Telling And Its Dire Consequences: PEN America Hosts Conversation with Writers Targeted by Authoritarians Around the Globe
The difficult plight of writers living under authoritarian rule has been well-documented over decades, with some enduring impossibly harsh treatment for their truth-telling and resistance to repression. More
Uladzimir Matskevich
Matskevich is a philosopher who was arrested in a home raid on August 4, 2021 and detained in restrictive conditions, justified by the authorities’ claims that he is “prone… More
Valeria Kostyugova
Political analyst and writer Kostyugova is editor of the online community Our Opinion and its annual publication Belarusian Yearbook. In June 2021, she was detained in a home raid… More
Ales Bialacki
Bialacki is a writer, literary critic, and head of the human rights organization Viasna. On July 14, 2021, he was arrested on feigned “tax evasion” charges targeting his work… More
Alexander Feduta
Literary intellectual and PEN Belarus member Feduta was arrested in April 2021 in Moscow and quickly extradited to Belarus on “suspicion of committing a crime.” On September 5, 2022,… More
Andrzej Poczobut
Belarusian-Polish political writer and minority rights activist Poczobut comments on politics in his blog and columns, for Polish newspapers, and has published a book on Lukashenka’s impact. He was… More
Eduard Palchys Jhon Silver
Writing under the pen name Jhon Silver, Palchys ran a website called 1863x where he published articles criticizing Belarusian and Russian authorities. He was jailed in 2016 for his… More
PEN America Condemns Ihar Losik’s Politically Motivated Sentencing
“Ihar Losik is guilty of nothing more than exercising his fundamental right to freedom of expression,” said PEN America’s Eurasia Director Polina Sadovskaya. More
PEN America Welcomes PEN Belarus Report Detailing Persecution of Cultural Workers
PEN Belarus’s report documents the persecution of writers, artists, poets, and other cultural figures between January and September 2021. More
Support for the freedom to read with exclusive designs by Todd Parr, Mike Curato, Art Spiegelman, and more!
