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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Dr. García Paneque was arrested in a 2003 roundup of dissidents known as the Black Spring and sentenced to 24 years in prison. He was released in 2010 after multilateral talks in which Cuba agreed to release a group of Black Spring dissidents.
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An author and journalist, Viñuela received death threats from an unknown telephone number on September 8, 2022. Viñuela has written about the 2023 Argentine presidential election, and is also the author of fiction book El Pacto.
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Musician “Valtònyc” was sentenced to 3 years and 6 months in prison for “grave insults to the crown,” “glorification of terrorism and humiliation of its victims,” and “threats,” for a song that targeted the nationalist group Circulo Balear. In 2018, he fled to Belgium.
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Wong was imprisoned for four months in 2017 for unlawful assembly related to his role in the 2014 Occupy Central protests. Police continued to target Wong after his release. Between 2020 and 2022, he served prison time for protests related to Hong Kong’s extradition law. Wong was sentenced to three…
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Columnist Martinez D’Aubuisson is the author of The Hollywood Kid: The Violent Life and Violent Death of an MS-13 Hitman. He has been researching gang violence in Latin America extensively since 2008. After an interview he gave on gang violence in El Salvador, President Nayib Bukele posted critical comments of…
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In October 2019, after he published Let the Little Children Come to Me, Barrientos was accused of defamation by members of the Catholic Church. During two trials, sales of his book were suspended and he was ordered to reveal his sources. The case was resolved in his favor.
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Assange, publisher of WikiLeaks, was imprisoned in the U.K. in 2019 for violating bail terms. He faces imminent extradition to the U.S. where he has been indicted on multiple charges, including on 17 counts under the Espionage Act, with worrying implications for press freedom. He is appealing his extradition to…
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.