PEN America champions the freedom to write, recognizing the power of the word to transform the world. The bedrock work of the global PEN network is advocacy and assistance on behalf of individuals persecuted for their use of the written word or other forms of expression. PEN America’s Writers at Risk Database is a searchable catalog of the writers, journalists, academics, public intellectuals and others under threat around the world. The database includes historical cases PEN America has worked on from 1987 onwards; non-active cases are color-coded black. PEN America is grateful to the John Templeton Foundation for support that enabled the establishment of the Writers at Risk Database and to PEN International for their collaboration in assembling this database.
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On May 16, 2020, state security officers arrested Haneen, a freelance journalist and documentary producer, on charges of spreading false news, threatening national security, and joining a terrorist organization allegedly after producing video for Al-Jazeera. He was released in November 2021 after nearly six months in pretrial detention.
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Ebrahimi is a blogger who wrote online commentary in support of the Iranian protests. According to IWAC, she was arrested on December 11, 2022. She was beaten severely and taken to the hospital by authorities. She died of her injuries 2 days later. Her body was then abducted from the…
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San San Nwe, a Burmese novelist, journalist, and activist, was sentenced in 1994 to ten years imprisonment in relation to her activism and support for then-imprisoned politician Aung San Suu Kyi. She was released in 2001, having served seven years of her sentence.
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Seif, an opinion writer and filmmaker, went to Tora Prison to receive a letter from her brother, blogger Alaa Abd El Fattah, where she was attacked. When reporting the crime against her, Seif was abducted by plainclothes policemen. She was then detained on charges of “spreading false news,” “inciting terrorist…
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A columnist, literary writer, and online commentator, Cotto has been facing continued harassment since 2018. She is accused of playing a role in the 2019 protests. in June 2022, she claimed that there is an ongoing smear campaign against her, she was also threatened with a lawsuit later that summer.
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A poet and online commentator, Mottaghi was summoned to court after writing a piece favoring the preservation of a pre-Islamic Iranian celebration of Sepandarmazgan. She was charged with blasphemy on February 28, 2023 and transferred to Lakan prison. In May 2023, she was given a suspended sentence of six months…
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Chamanara is a Kurdish singer and activist. He was arrested in October 2022 for participating in the Mahsa Amini protests. He was sentenced to 5 years in prison in December for charges including “propaganda.” He was temporarily released in January 2023 but rearrested and detained for a week in January…
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Filipenka is an exiled Belarusian writer and activist. He left the country in 2020 after participating in anti-government protests. In May 2021, a theater group was forced to leave Belarus after performing a play based on a novel by Filipenka. In November 2023, Filipenka’s father was arrested for 2 weeks…
Writers at Risk Database Key:
STATUS box that is red: Active case
STATUS box that is black: Inactive case
PEN America is deeply grateful to the John Templeton Foundation for its generous support of the Freedom to Write Index and Writers at Risk Database.
PEN America thanks the PEN International Secretariat and the Writers in Prison Committee for their extensive contributions to and collaboration on compiling the cases included in this database.