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 arrested alongside ten people under the Digital Security Act for writing online about the government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. After nearly 11 months in detention, Ahmed died in jail on February 25, 2021. A week later, the Home Ministry published an investigative committee finding that Ahmed died…
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Acar, an author and editor for Zaman, a newspaper forced to close after the failed 2016 coup, was sentenced to seven-and-a-half years in prison in 2018 after a mass trial. His conviction was upheld in March 2020. On June 30, 2021, Acar was released from Silivri Prison upon the completion…
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Sheta, known for his activism, is a columnist and producer at The Freedom Theatre. In early December 2023, the Israeli Army forces broke into and destroyed The Freedom Theatre and its offices during a raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank. They then stormed Sheta’s house and…
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Economist and columnist Sönmez was briefly arrested in April 2019 and charged with “insulting the president” for tweets he posted calling President Erdoğan “the chief of a thief gang” and “piece of dictator.” He was acquitted of this charge in June 2021. In February 2024, he was acquitted after he…
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Imin, a student of Ilham Tohti, was arrested for his involvement with Tohti’s website Uyghurbiz, which promotes mutual ethnic understanding. He was sentenced in a 2014 secret trial and has been held incommunicado since 2018. A report suggests that Imin has been released some time in 2023. We are unable…
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Mya Aye was surrounded at gunpoint and arrested on February 1, 2021, the first day of the coup. He was charged with “inciting ethnic hatred” using a 2014 email to a Chinese official regarding the peace process in Myanmar. He was sentenced on March 10, 2022 to two years in…
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Poet and teacher Myint Myint Zin was killed on March 3, 2021 along with another poet, when police opened fire into the crowd at a demonstration in Monywa against the military junta.
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Police arrested opinion writer and reporter Semana 7 months after he wrote an article in 2015 denouncing Russia’s annexation of Crimea. On conditional release post-arrest, he received a 2 year suspended sentence in 2017 for separatism. He was cleared of all charges in 2020.
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.