PEN International

PEN International welcomes the 29 March 2014 release of Tibetan writer and editor Tashi Rabten (pen-name Te’urang) who had been serving a four-year prison sentence in connection with his critical writings.

Vietnamese blogger Dinh Dang Dinh and writer and activist Nguyen Huu Cau were released under an amnesty. However, poet, essayist and Catholic priest Father Nguyen Van Ly continues to serve a lengthy prison sentence and is seriously ill.

An advocate for freedom of expression, Alaa Abd El Fattah became one of the first Egyptian netizens facilitating a movement for political change. He was arrested on 28 November 2013 and released on bail pending trial on 23 March 2014.

To mark World Poetry Day, PEN is focusing on a number of cases which are emblematic of the threats faced by poets around the world and highlighting their continued contribution to freedom of expression. The cases are from Kazakshtan, China, Qatar, Cameroon and Mexico.

The government of Syria should immediately and unconditionally release the arbitrarily detained human rights defender Mazen Darwish and his colleagues Hani Al-Zitani and Hussein Ghareer, 61 human rights organizations said on 17 March 2014.

Vietnamese blogger Dinh Dang Dinh is suffering from end-stage stomach cancer and was transferred to hospital on 15 February 2014. PEN is also seriously concerned for the health of poet, essayist and, scholar and Catholic Priest Father Nguyen Van Ly, and writer and activist Nguyen Huu Cau, both of whom are serving lengthy prison sentences.

After a series of increasingly violent events, IFEX members and supporters call on Chief Executive Leung Chun-Ying to take clear and deliberate steps to defend press freedom.

On 8 March PEN International and PEN Centres around the world mark International Women’s Day by highlighting the continued contributions and achievements of women writers and journalists to freedom of expression and the challenges and threats they face in the course of their work.