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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Journalist Morazán was one of three PEN Nicaragua members to be subjected to harassment through the circulation of an anonymous video which identified them as behind a terrorist conspiracy against the Nicaraguan government. In April 2021, he was interrogated and detained briefly at Augusto C. Sandino International Airport after living…
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A member of the Sunni minority in Iran who writes on politics and religion, Yasin Qasemi Bajd was arrested and reportedly interrogated in February 2021 on a number of charges before being released on bail a month later. In September, he was acquitted of two charges, blasphemy and spreading lies…
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Yasin Zilal is a poet and the editor of Tarim, a monthly Uyghur literary magazine. In 2018, Zilal was arrested without charge and detained in a concentration camp as part of the mass internment of Turkic ethnic minorities in Xinjiang.
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Human rights defender Ali was shot by a sniper while at a December 2018 protest in Khartoum. The bullet punctured his lung and is resting in his spinal cord. After being arrested in January 2019, he was detained without charge. He was released January 31, 2019.
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Yavuz Ekinci is a literary writer whose work focuses on the Kurdish minority in Türkiye. His pro-Kurdish tweets led to his indictment for “making terrorist propaganda.” His trial began in September 2021 and he was sentenced on March 31, 2022 to over a year in prison, but the court deferred…
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The lead opinion writer for Apple Daily, Yeung has written over 800 editorials and opinion pieces in which he has been critical of government crackdowns on dissent. On June 23, 2021, following a police raid and forced closure of Apple Daily, Yeung was arrested, charged under the National Security Law,…
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Yevhen Bal authored several books about the early years of war in Donbas, drawing on his experience as a retired naval captain in memoirs, and wrote about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine for local press. On March 18, 2022, Russian soldiers raided his house in the suburbs of Mariupol. He was…
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A historian and literary writer, Yihe has seen her work continually be censored by the Chinese government. She reported on her Facebook account that she was a victim of surveillance by Chinese officials. In addition to her books being banned, she is prohibited from leaving the country.
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.