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 August 28, 2018 Bharadwaj’s house was raided, and she was detained for ‘inciting violence’ as part of a coordinated series of politically-motivated arrests of activists in the Bhima-Koregaon case. She applied for medical bail in 2020 due to her declining health and vulnerability to contracting COVID-19 but was denied.…
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In March 2018, Kim’s invitation to a literary festival in Macau was revoked after authorities stated that her appearance there would be “untimely.” The essayist and nonfiction author spent six months undercover in Pyongyang on research for one of her books.
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A banker and prominent analyst who was arrested in a wave of detentions targeting Saudi intellectual and reformist circles in mid-November 2019, Al-Nasser was released later that month after international criticism of the arrests.
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Al-Jumairi was arrested in September 2018 in connection with activist comments on Twitter. It is unknown whether he has been formally charged or sentenced.
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Gökçek is a member of activist collective and band Grup Yorum, whose critical songs have angered the Turkish government since its inception. She has been arrested in police raids on the band’s cultural center, though conditionally released shortly after. In December 2021, she was arrested and kept in prison. She…
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A long-time writer and dissident, Sun was arrested in June 2021 for publishing books abroad and authoring online articles that criticized leaders of the Chinese Communist Party. He was tried secretly on December 5, 2021 for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” a common charge used for dissidents, and is currently…
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Sun Lin was an independent journalist who reported on human rights violations and former editor of Metropolis. He was detained multiple times throughout the years for his criticism of the Communist Party both on social media and in Metropolis. In November 2023, Sun was beaten by the police in his…
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Long-time online commentator Sun has a been a vocal critic of the Chinese Communist Party since 2014. In May 2020, he was arrested on suspicion of “inciting subversion of state power” for content posted on WeChat and Twitter between 2014 and 2019. He is accused of slandering the social system,…
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.