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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Ahmed was a professor at the University of Dhaka and author of Historicising 1971 Genocide: State versus Person. After an article by former Bangladesh Supreme Court Justice Chowdhury was released accusing him of falsification of history and defamation of the country’s founder president Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Ahmed was fired and…
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Altın is a member of activist collective and band Grup Yorum. Since the band’s inception, its critical songs have angered the Turkish government and members have faced serious threats. Altın is on the wanted terrorists list of the Ministry of Interior.
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After two detentions in 1985 and 1991, Restano was arrested again in late 1991 and handed a ten-year prison sentence on charges of rebellion for organizing an opposition group. He was released in 1995 after receiving the PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award.
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Poet and teacher Innocent Bahati disappeared in 2021 after meeting an unknown person at a hotel in Nyanza district. Shortly after the disappearance, the Rwandan Secretary of State asked the public in a speech to “forget the difficulties that Rwandan poetry community has known in recent times” but following international…
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Kordzaia has spoken out against extrajudicial murders and corruption for nearly a decade. In 2017, Kordzaia fled Tbilisi due to unrelenting and escalating persecution by domestic authorities; he had at least four open cases against him and had been illegally surveilled.
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Choulandim, an artist, writer, and activist, is known for his outspoken opposition to child marriage, which he advocates against through his art. He was arrested in a home raid in January 2023. Officers seized personal items including electronics and his embroidery depicting fallen protesters. He was released on bail in…
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Kholboev is an Uzbek journalist living in exile in Türkiye. He took an active part in the formation of the Birlik people’s movement and the Erk party in the late 1980s and has faced continued harassment, including an arrest along with journalist Bobomurad Abdullayev in 2017.
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Officers in the Hamas-controlled General Investigation Unit arrested El-Bozom on March 20, 2020 over cartoons he had posted on Facebook calling for the release of writer Abdullah Abu Sharkh. El-Bozom was released conditionally on March 22, but he was arrested again four days later. On March 29, he was released…
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.