PEN International

The undersigned organizations denounce the continued attacks on and threats to journalists, media workers and human rights defenders, most recently the incidents in which human rights defender Pierre Claver Mbonimpa survived an attempt on his life, while journalist Esdras Ndikumana was the victim of a brutal attack by police and intelligence officials.

“Nine journalists slain in Honduras in the first seven months of this year – almost as many as in the entire year following the June 2009 coup d’état. This makes a mockery of the government’s promises to protect this vulnerable group,” said Marian Botsford Fraser, Chair of the Writers in Prison Committee of PEN International.

A string of disappearances and arrests of over 100 human rights lawyers in China in the past week is the boldest move yet in Beijing’s sprawling campaign to destroy China’s human rights movement.

Akhmednabi Akhmednabiyev was shot dead on 9 July 2013 as he left for work in Makhachkala, Dagestan. He had actively reported on human rights violations against Muslims by the police and Russian army.

Society’s use of digital surveillance is here to stay. But we are not wholly powerless in the face of it. Writer Deji Bryce Olukotun maps several paths to follow to secure our protection online.

Pablo Katchadjian is being prosecuted for “intellectual property fraud” on the basis of his 2009 short experimental book El Aleph Engordado, his expansion of Jorge Luis Borges’ El Aleph.

The law would prohibit the so-called “propaganda” of “non-traditional” (i.e. same sex) relations and would specifically target the media and peaceful assemblies.

Emma Wadsworth-Jones speaks to two Ethiopian journalists living as refugees in Kenya, to get a first-hand perspective of what forced them from their country and of their lives as writers in exile.