César Montaña Lehmann César Strawberry
For tweets allegedly “glorifying terrorism” and “humiliating its victims,” musician Lehmann was sentenced in 2017 to 1 year in prison and barred from public office for 6.5 years. In… More
Warsame Shire Awale
Poet, playwright, radio actor, and singer-songwriter Awale was shot near his house in Mogadishu in October 2012. He had received threats for comments he made about gunmen targeting civilians,… More
Matsemela Manaka
Manaka was an artist, poet, and playwright who was honored with the first PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award in 1987, and funded a playwright workshop for young authors… More
Roman Sushchenko
A Ukrainian journalist and artist who reported on Russian propaganda, Sushchenko was arrested in Moscow in September 2016 and sentenced to 12 years in prison for "spying." He was… More
Kirill Serebrennikov
Playwright and theater director Serebrennikov was placed on house arrest in 2017 for embezzlement and convicted in June 2020. The court handed him a three-year suspended sentence and fine… More
Oleg Sentsov
After being arrested in Crimea, Ukrainian filmmaker was Sentsov given a 20-year sentence on terrorism charges in August 2015. Following five years in a Russian jail—including a hunger strike… More
Ashraf Fayadh
Fayadh, a poet and artist, was jailed on charges of apostasy for writing about humanistic themes in his poetry collection Instructions Within, which explores Fayadh’s experience as a Palestinian… More
Pierre Pierson Vilchez
Writer and artist Pierson Vilchez was one of three PEN Nicaragua members to be subjected to harassment through the circulation of an anonymous video which identified them as behind… More
Sadiq Usman Saleh Sadiq Zazzabi
Popular R&B singer Saleh received a court summons for a song he released that allegedly contained “immorality by featuring seductive dances;” Saleh claimed his arrest was political. He pled… More
Abdullah Habib
In recent years, writer and filmmaker Abdullah Habib has been subjected to multiple detentions for his criticism of the Omani government and controversial online statements on religion. Most recently,… More
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