Writers At Risk
PEN’s bedrock work is long-term advocacy on behalf of individual writers who are being persecuted because of their work. This page features our highest priority cases. With the help of our members and supporters, we are carrying out campaigns to win their release and ensure they are safe and can write and publish freely.
PEN America examines threats to free expression in our annual Freedom to Write Index, a year-end count of imprisoned writers worldwide. Explore our Writers at Risk Database for updated tracking of cases of writers, journalists, artists, academics, and public intellectuals around the world facing myriad threats for their writing and expression. Read the most recent PEN International case list here.
Take a moment to share information about these writers and take action on their behalf. This is only a small sampling of writers under threat around the world.
Normando Hernández González | Status: Released | Cuba
Normando Hernández González is a Cuban writer and independent journalist imprisoned during Cuba's Black Spring on March 18, 2003. He was released in a wave of amnesty on July… More
Enoh Meyomesse | Status: Released | Cameroon
Enoh Meyomesse, 57, is a writer, blogger, historian and political activist who has published more than 15 books of poetry, prose, essays, and works on political and cultural themes… More
Akbar Ganji | Status: Displaced/In Exile | Iran
Akbar Ganji is considered Iran's leading investigative journalist. He is also the author of the best-selling book Dungeon of Ghosts, a collection of Ganji's newspaper articles published in early… More
Hojjatoleslam Hasan Yousefi Eshkevari | Status: Released | Iran
Eshkevari was released from prison on February 6, 2005. He was freed after serving two-thirds of his seven-year jail term. A condition of his release is that Eshkevari will… More
Kareem Amer | Status: Released | Egypt
Kareem Amer is an Egyptian blogger and former al-Azhyar University student known for his secular views and his critical writings about Islam and Egypt's highest religious authorities. His writings… More
Léster Luis González Pentón | Status: Released | Cuba
Léster Luis González Pentón is an independent journalist and political activist. In 2002, he co-founded El Movimiento por la Democracia (the Movement for Democracy) and later the ALFA-3 Movement,… More
José Luis García Paneque | Status: Released | Cuba
Dr. José Luis García Paneque is an independent journalist and librarian. He is a member of the Manuel Marquez Sterling Journalists’ Association, an independent association that the Cuban government… More
Jean-Claude Kavumbagu | Status: Released | Burundi
Following his July 2010 arrest, Jean-Claude Kavumbagu was charged with treason, which carries a life sentence in Burundi. Kavumbagu's trial was held on April 13, 2011. On May 13, 2011, the… More
Huang Jinqiu | Status: Released | China
Born in 1974 in Shangdong Province, Huang Jinqiu is an Internet essayist, writer and journalist. A graduate of Beijing's respected Lu Xun Literature Institute and the University of Lincoln… More
Mohammed Abbou | Status: Released | Tunisia
Mohammed Abbou, an Internet writer, lawyer, and human rights activist, was arrested on March 1, 2005, for an article published on the Internet nine months earlier that denounced torture… More
Support for the freedom to read with exclusive designs by Todd Parr, Mike Curato, Art Spiegelman, and more!
