Connect to Writers in Prison Campaigns for Women
Around the world, many writers and journalists are unjustly imprisoned for speaking the truth. Their voices are silenced behind bars, but your support can remind them — and the world — that they are not forgotten. By connecting with a writer in prison, you help defend freedom of expression, bring hope in isolation, and stand in solidarity with those who risk everything for the right to write.
Rahile Dawut
Professor Rahile Dawut is an internationally acclaimed academic, anthropologist, and a leading expert on Uyghur folklore and cultural traditions.
In December 2017, Rahile Dawut was due to travel to Beijing for an academic conference, but never reached her destination. It was widely believed that she had been disappeared by the Chinese authorities.
Despite international condemnation of her disappearance and a campaign led by her daughter calling for her release, more than three years passed before her former co-workers were able to confirm that the Chinese authorities had sentenced and imprisoned her.
In September 2023, it was widely reported that a sentence of life imprisonment on charges of endangering state security by promoting ‘splittism’, originally handed down in 2018, has now been upheld.
The following month, Rahile Dawut was announced as the winner of the PEN Pinter Prize for a Writer of Courage.
Rahile Dawut continues to be held incommunicado and her whereabouts remain unknown.
Mahvesh Sabet
Mahvash Sabet is an award-winning poet and teacher from Iran. In 2017, she was chosen as the winner of the PEN Pinter Prize for a Writer of Courage by fellow poet Michael Longley.
Having already spent several long years in detention between 2008 and 2017, Mahvash Sabet was once again arrested in Iran in July 2022. She has since been sentenced to a further ten years in prison on spurious charges.
PEN is deeply concerned by reports that Sabet has been subjected to torture in detention. We continue to call for her immediate and unconditional release, and for the release of the many other Iranians currently in detention in violation of their rights to freedom of expression and peaceful protest.
Amanda Echanis
Amanda Echanis is a peasant woman organizer under AMIHAN Cagayan provincial chapter and the daughter of assassinated peasant leader and peace advocate Randall “Ka Randy” Echanis. On December 2, she was illegally arrested along with her month-old baby.