PEN International

Booker-prize winner Kiran Desai spoke on behalf of the PEN Delhi Centre and about threats to freedom of expression in India.

President Ilham Aliyev’s re-election by an overwhelming majority on 10 October 2013 has been followed by new crackdown on the media. Azadliq is now in danger of succumbing to efforts to throttle it financially.

International and local human rights organisations are calling on the Syrian authorities to immediately implement the UN General Assembly resolution and release immediately and unconditionally Mazen Darwish, Hussein Ghareer, and Hani Al-Zitani as well as all human rights defenders in Syria.

On 15 November 2013, Day of the Imprisoned Writer, PEN Centres around the world will commemorate friends and colleagues who resist repression of the basic human right to freedom of expression.

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova’s current whereabouts have not been disclosed by the Russian authorities. On 22 October, she was moved from a penal colony where she was serving a two-year prison sentence and it is believed that she is in transit to – or has already arrived at – an (as yet) unknown prison.

In a letter to the president of Lithuania and the president of the European Council, Index on Censorship and 39 other NGOS call upon leaders of the European Union to discuss the issue of mass surveillance at the European Council meeting on 24 and 25 October.

The climate of impunity which allows attacks on journalists in Mexico to remain unpunished is contributing to the on-going high level of risk to the security of writers in the country, says PEN International at the UN Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review of Mexico’s human rights record.

The press and media in Saudi Arabia are not free and legal provisions governing information were strengthened in 2011 by the enacting of the Anti-Cyber Crimes Law.