This year PEN International is using the occasion both to commemorate the 34 writers who have been killed in the last year and to draw particular attention to a number of recent cases from around the world which demonstrate the kinds of persecution writers and journalists continue to face in carrying out their day-to-day activities.

“For thirty years, on this day, PEN members worldwide have stood, spoken, written in solidarity with our imprisoned, murdered and threatened colleagues,” said Marian Botsford Fraser, Chair of PEN International’s Writers in Prison Committee. “The writers we honour today are emblematic of the courage writers everywhere show in defiance of brutal, systemic censorship”.

This year PEN International will be advocating in particular on behalf of the following writers:

 

Susana Chavez (Mexico Susana Chávez Castillo (born 5 November 1974) was a prominent poet who led protests against the unsolved killings of women raped and killed in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua state, on the border with the United States, since the 1990s. She was also active in organisations supporting the families and friends of the deceased women, including the group Return Our Daughters (Nuestras Hijas de Regreso a Casa). Chávez was herself murdered and mutilated in Ciudad Juárez in early January 2011. Her body was found strangled with a bag over her head and her left hand cut off in the city centre on 6 January but was only identified five days later.

 

Tashi Rabten (Tibet): Tibetan writer from Dzoege (Ch: Ruo’ergai) county in Ngaba, Sichuan Province, and editor of the banned literary magazineShar Dungri (Eastern Snow Mountain), arrested April 6, 2010, after approximately 16 security personnel raided students’ rooms at the Northwestern Minorities University in Lanzhou, where Tashi Rabten is a student. He was briefly held in July 2009, possibly for his book, a collection of political articles focusing on democracy, freedom, and equality entitledWritten in Blood, as well as his participation in the publication of Shar Dungri, which dealt with the suppression of the 2008 protests throughout Tibet. PEN has received reports that Tashi Rabten is being held in a detention center in Barkham county, Ngaba Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province. Any charges against him are still unknown.

 

Abdul-Jalil Al-Singace (Bahrain): According to PEN’s information, Dr Alsingace, head of the human rights office of the Haq Movement for Liberty and Democracy, was among twenty-one opposition activists to be convicted by a special security court on 22 June 2011 of ‘plotting to overthrow the government’ following a wave of protests which swept the country in February and March this year. Eight of those convicted received life sentences, including Dr Alsingace. A further ten were sentenced to fifteen years in prison, two received five-year terms and one a two-year prison sentence. PEN calls for the immediate and unconditional release of all those currently detained in Bahrain for the peaceful exercise of their opinions, including Dr Alsingace, and seeks immediate guarantees of their safety. It reminds the Bahraini authorities of their obligations to protect the right to freedom of expression as guaranteed by Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Bahrain is a signatory, and is alarmed at the apparent use of excessive force to suppress peaceful dissent.   

Nadim Sener and Ahmet Shik (Turkey): journalists who have been detained for writing books and articles disclosing police and other high level links to individuals arrested in the Ergenekon case under which over 200 people are accused of being involved in coup plots. 

PEN members around the world have also been using the occasion to campaign on behalf of imprisoned or persecuted writers in their own countries. “This tool of imprisonment is used to send a message – that writers can be controlled; somehow re-educated to mind their words”, said John Ralston Saul, International President of PEN International, “That message was always wrong. It is wrong today. PEN will continue to work for the release of our colleagues”.