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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Poet, translator, and teacher Myo Tazar Maung was arrested on September 20, 2021, after he posted on Facebook expressing criticism regarding the military government. He was charged with Section 505(b) of the Penal Code, which criminalizes speech that “is likely to cause fear or alarm in the public,” and was…
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Award-winning academic, researcher, and professor at Minzu and Xinjiang Universities, Habibullah is serving a 15-year sentence for unknown charges. His arrest and imprisonment are suspected to be tied to the Chinese crusade on Uyghur intellectuals, as his area of expertise and published works focused on Uyghur culture and language.
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Al-Majid was arrested and sentenced to seven years in prison in January 2017 in connection with an opinion piece he wrote in 2011 titled “I protest, therefore I am,” supporting the right to protest in the Shia city of Al-Qatif. He was released conditionally from prison on July 23, 2022…
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Ibrahim, a poet, was arrested without charge in January 2018, and held incommunicado at the Central Police Station. In March, she was charged with “bringing the nation or the state into contempt” and sentenced to 3 years in prison. She was released via a pardon in May 2018.
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Zamanzadeh was an Iranian poet and online commentator. She was briefly arrested during the ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ protests in 2022 and also wrote poems in support of the movement. In April 2023, she passed away after her house burned down through arson. Her death is widely suspected to have been…
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Muhammed worked in Altay’s State Intangible Cultural Heritage Office and was arrested for gathering with friends and expressing his opinion on policies in Xinjiang in 2018. He was sentenced to life in prison for “separatism” after refusing to plead guilty in September 2020.
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Al-Hindas was arrested in the April 2019 wave of arrests and detained without charge. Mostly a freelance writer, Al-Hindas translated and wrote about philosophy, feminism, film, and other cultural and political topics on various blogs. In early 2021, he was conditionally released alongside over a dozen other activists and writers…
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A filmmaker known for his work exposing the realities of the Syrian Civil War, Jerf was killed by ISIS militants in Gaziantep, Türkiye in December 2015. Prior to his death, he produced an acclaimed documentary about Syrian activists who were slaughtered by the Islamic State.
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.