PEN America Calls for the Immediate Release of Vietnamese Human Rights Defender Pham Doan Trang, and Raises Grave Concerns For Her Health
“The unjust imprisonment of Pham Doan Trang on the arbitrary charge of anti-state propaganda is, unfortunately, another example of the Vietnamese government’s persecution of journalists and human rights defenders… More
Grave Concern for Poet Zhang Guiqi, Sentenced to Six Years in Prison, for Calling on Xi Jinping to Step Down
PEN America and the Independent Chinese PEN Centre condemn the conviction of poet Zhang Guiqi and calls for his immediate release. More
PEN America Condemns “Grotesque” Sentencing of Saudi Student to 34 Years in Prison for Her Tweets
PEN America condemns the imprisonment of Salma Al-Shehab, who was sentenced to 34 years in prison for her Twitter activity. More
On World Press Freedom Day, PEN America Welcomes Congressional Resolution to Affirm Critical Role of Journalists
Nadine Farid Johnson, PEN America’s Washington director, said: “Journalists are operating under increasingly oppressive and dangerous conditions, yet their role in upholding the most basic tenets of democracy has… More
PEN America Announces $10 Million Gift from Edwin Barbey Charitable Trust at the Arizona Community Foundation to Create Freedom to Write Center
The literary and free expression group PEN America announced today that it has received a transformative gift of $10 million from the Edwin Barbey Charitable Trust. More
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Another bit of sound legal judgement this week, from TX, where a judge found that conservative library board members had likely exercised unconstitutional content-based restrictions when banning books from the Llano public library. The books ordered back.
https://www.texastribune.org/2023/03/31/texas-llano-library-books/
Talking to @AliVelshi, historian @TimothyDSnyder likens book bans in #Florida to Communism: “All this stuff is supposed to be anti-communist but as a historian of communism, that reminds me of some of the basic things that were wrong about communism.” https://www.huffpost.com/entry/yale-professor-ron-desantis-book-bans_n_642696c7e4b02a8d518df5a9
Douglass Mackey, also known as “Ricky Vaughn,” was convicted today of the charge of Conspiracy Against Rights. Mackey sent fraudulent messages encouraging supporters of Hillary Clinton to “vote” via text message or social media which was legally invalid. https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/pr/social-media-influencer-douglass-mackey-convicted-election-interference-2016