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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Martinez Vallejo is an award-winning investigative journalist and author of ChuzaDAS. His writing is focused on illegal surveillance of journalists. On February 22, 2022, Vallejo was attacked by armed individuals. He was granted temporary asylum status in Argentina following international pressure in June 2022.
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Author of Resistance, Fuks has faced harassment for a column he wrote about Brazilian then-president Bolsonaro. The 2016 winner of Brazil’s prestigious Jabuti literary prize, he has received death threats from Bolsonaro sympathizers.
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González is a cartoonist whose work satirizes Colombian politicians. In April 2018, he announced that due to death threats he received from supporters of former president Alvaro Uribe, who he depicted in his work, he would no longer publish his work on social media.
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Hafeez, a liberal academic, was arrested for blasphemy in 2013 and has been in solitary confinement since 2014. An Islamist group lodged the accusation against him to prevent his promotion to a permanent faculty position. He was sentenced to death in 2019.
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In August 2018, Russia-based Tajik blogger Khodyorov was sentenced to 5 years in prison in Tajikistan for “supporting terrorism” in relation to his writing about a trip to the country. He was released in October 2019. He returned to Russia but was rearrested there in June 2023 at Tajik authorities’…
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In March 2018, Jung’s invitation to a literary festival in Macau was revoked after authorities said that her appearance there would be “untimely.” She and her husband co-wrote a critical biography of Mao, and her best-selling family autobiography is banned in China.
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Goktas is journalist and online commentator who writes on cybersecurity. He was sentenced to two years in prison in 2021 for sharing a poem by Ottoman poet Sunbulzade Vehi Efendi. He was charged with insulting the president. He was physically attacked in 2022 for an article due to be published…
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In late December 2021, novelist Rukirabashaija was detained for a month on charges of “offensive communication” over tweets criticizing President Museveni and his son. After his release, he fled Uganda to seek medical treatment for abuse he suffered while in custody. Rukirabashaija had previously been arrested twice over his books…
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.