PEN America

“Culture – past, present, and future – is on the front lines of the brutal war on Ukraine and cultural erasure is a central tactic of Russia’s campaign of aggression and violence in Ukraine, which has gone on for over eight years.”

The report, “Connecting the Dots: Artist Protection & Artistic Freedom in Asia”, captures growing anxiety over efforts to stifle artistic expression in 19 countries in South, Southeast, Central, and East Asia

Burmese artist and former political prisoner Htein Lin, and Vicky Bowman, the former British ambassador to Myanmar, were arrested on arbitrary charges in Yangon.

The execution of two activists, Ko Jimmy and Phyo Zayar Thaw, would be an irrevocable rejection of human rights and would mark a dramatic escalation in the military’s tactics of repression

In the face of authoritarian resurgence around the world, PEN America’s Freedom to Write Index documents cases of writers and public intellectuals who have been unjustly locked up for their exercise of free expression. At least 277 of them (in 36 countries) were in jail last year.

“Abel Lescay is a brave and talented musician who should never have been in jail in the first place (…) His sentencing is a very worrisome development in the Cuban government’s relentless crackdown on artistic expression…”

The effort to censor anti-LGBTQ identities is expanding rapidly.

PEN America urges the school board not to pass Resolution No. 21-12, “Resolution Opposing the Teaching of Critical Race Theory.”