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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Maror, a columnist in several local dailies, was arrested on April 18, 2020 for alleged defamation in his writing and social media posts criticizing South Sudan’s Ministry of Finance. On September 14, 2020, he was fined and sentenced to a year in prison for criminal defamation. On December 15, an…
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In July 2016, Doğan was arrested for creating a painting of Turkish city Nusaybin bombarded by state security forces. In 2017, she was sentenced to nearly three years in prison for spreading ‘terrorist propaganda.’ In February 2019, she was released after 600 days in prison.
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Kiberet is one of the Zone 9 Bloggers, a group formed in 2012 to publish political commentary online in the face of tightening restrictions on expression. Following his initial arrest in 2014, he was released in 2015.
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Zeya Aung and Aung Than collaboratively wrote a book of poems and were subsequently arrested on politically motivated charges. Others involved in the production of the book were also arrested. Originally sentenced to 19 years in prison, Zeya Aung was released under amnesty.
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Poet Zhang was taken into police custody in May 2020 and charged with “inciting subversion of state power” a month later. The charge cites as evidence a video of Zhang caling for Xi Jinping to step down. In July 2022, nine months after his trial, Zhang was sentenced to six…
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Zhang was detained in August 2019 in relation to his outspoken criticism of Chinese government censorship. The court accepted his tweets on digital freedom as evidence, and, on January 8, 2021, he was handed an 18-month sentence for “picking quarrels and provoking troubles.” Taking into account time served, Zhang was…
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.