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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Mohtadi is a writer, translator, and labor activist. In recent years, his membership in the Iranian Writers’ Association and support of workers’ rights have made him a target. On May 9, 2022, Iranian authorities raided his home, arresting him along with his wife. He was sentenced to six years in…
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Feminist writer Al-Harbi was arrested and her home raided during a crackdown on dissents in April 2019. She was reportedly in the late stages of pregnancy at the time of her arrest. She was detained without charge until March 2021, when she was conditionally released.
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Ismayilova has long been targeted for her investigative reporting on government corruption. She was detained in December 2014 and later convicted of retaliatory charges, including tax evasion. In May 2016, she was released on probation for five years. In 2020 the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the actions…
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Tibetan lyricist Khado Tsetan was detained in 2019 due to a song he wrote that praised the Dalai Lama. In July 2020 the Chinese government sentenced him to seven years of imprisonment for “leaking state secrets” due to the content of the song.
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The former leader of the Egyptian Constitution Party, Daoud was arrested during the September 2019 protests against the Sisi regime after he made a video calling for investigations into the president’s corruption. After 18 months in pretrial detention, the prosecutor decided to release Daoud without any charges against him.
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Lofty was arrested and imprisoned on charges of false news and divulging military secrets for translating and distributing The Angel: The Egyptian Spy Who Saved Israel, a book by an Israeli author. He was sentenced to five years in prison in 2018, and his appeal was rejected. He was released…
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Al-Alkami is an online commentator and blogger who posted negative tweets about austerity in Saudi Arabia. He was arrested on September 12, 2017, right after a McKinsey report that measured Saudis’ public opinion on economic policies was launched. Al-Alkami’s tweets were cited and described as getting twice more coverage than…
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An activist, journalist, and poet from Herat, Qadiry was arrested by the Taliban on March 17, 2022. He was sentenced a couple months later to 1 year in prison. He was finally released on January 3, 2023 after spending 10 months in prison.
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Researcher and Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine member Jarrar was arrested from her home in the West Bank in December 2023, shortly after the Independent Commission for Human Rights (ICHR) published Jarrar’s report, “Violations against Female and Male Prisoners during the Genocidal War on Gaza,” and a video…
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.