THE DEADLIEST YEAR FOR PRESS IN THE AMERICAS, AS MEXICO REMAINS ONE OF MOST LETHAL COUNTRIES FOR JOURNALISTS; A TRAGIC ONE FOR EUROPE, AS THE WAR AGAINST UKRAINE RAGES AND TURKEY AND BELARUS AMONG THE WORST JAILERS
21 March 2023
Read Here: the PEN Case List 2022 PROOF 4 1UP
PEN International launches Impunity Reigns – Writers Resist, its 2022 Case List which documents 115 cases of writers facing harassment, arrest, violence and even death, worldwide.
According to PEN International research, 2022 was the deadliest year for press in the Americas in the last 24 years. Almost half of the 68 media workers reported murdered worldwide in 2022 were killed in the Americas, including: 13 in Mexico, 7 in Haiti, 2 in Brazil, 2 in Colombia, 2 in Honduras, 1 in Chile, 1 in Ecuador, 1 in the United States, 1 in Guatemala, and 1 in Paraguay. Mexico remains the deadliest country in the region for journalists, and the most dangerous country in the world for journalists outside active war zones. According to PEN International research, three journalists were murdered in Mexico relation to their work: Ciro Gómez Leyva, Antonio de la Cruz, and Lourdes Maldonado López.
In Cuba, nine artists were detained and 15 forced into exile in 2022. Two prominent independent artists, Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara and Maykel Osorbo, were given unjust prison sentences of five and nine years. In Nicaragua, at least 703 cases of press freedom violations were documented, with abusive use of state power (498 cases), assaults and attacks (159) and stigmatising discourse (15) being the main violations against journalists and media. Fourteen journalists or media workers were imprisoned at the time of writing.
As documented by PEN International, freedom of expression was increasingly threatened in more countries across Asia/Pacific in 2022. China (PRC) saw numerous writers receiving lengthy prison sentences for peaceful expression, including members of the Independent Chinese PEN Centre Gui Minhai, Yang Hengjun, Qin Yongmin and Zhang Guiqi, among many others. In Hong Kong, writer and publisher Jimmy Lai, who has been detained continuously since 2020, faces several further charges which could result in a maximum sentence of life imprisonment if convicted. In Myanmar, writer Ko Jimmy, arrested days after the February 2021 coup which he criticised on social media, was among four activists who were executed by the military junta following a sham trial, the first executions carried out in Myanmar in over 30 years.
In Europe and Central Asia, 2022 was marked by the Russian Federation’s war against Ukraine. Safety concerns for writers and journalists in Ukraine remained high, with at least 13 journalists killed while reporting on the war. In occupied Crimea and in the Russian Federation, citizen journalists and human rights activists remained imprisoned on politically motivated grounds, including Ukrainian Server Mustafayev.
40 journalists were behind bars in Türkiye and 26 in Belarus as of 1 December – with the countries holding the record of the fourth and fifth worst jailers of journalists in the world, respectively. In Türkiye, 24 Kurdish journalists and one media worker were detained in separate raids following some of the biggest operations conducted against journalists in the predominantly Kurdish south-east in recent years. To date, the authorities are yet to abide by biding rulings of the European Court of Human Rights urging the immediate release of publisher Osman Kavala and writer and opposition politician Selahattin Demirtaş.
In Egypt, PEN International documented several cases of imprisoned writers who were subjected to torture and ill-treatment and faced heavy jail sentences following unfair trials, including Alaa Abd El-Fattah, Galal El-Behiry and Ahmed Douma. In Israel, authorities sustained strict online censorship of Palestinian content on social media amid an escalation of Israeli attacks on Palestinians. In August, the Israeli military raided the offices of seven leading independent Palestinian organisations, confiscated documents and equipment and ordered the closure of the offices.
Globally, women writers continued to be disproportionally silenced: Turkish journalist Sedef Kabaş, handed a 28-month suspended prison sentence following critical comments she had made about President Erdoğan; Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, shot by the Israeli army while reporting on behalf on Al Jazeera in the occupied West Bank; Zimbabwean writer, playwright and filmmaker Tsitsi Dangarembga, sentenced to a six-month jail term, suspended for five years, following a legal and judicial persecution endured since July 2020; prominent Uyghur anthropologist Rahile Dawut, disappeared by the Chinese authorities since 2017, and Nicaraguan-Argentinian journalist Gabriela Selser, harassed by the authorities and paramilitaries because of her writings, to name a few.
JOIN THE LAUNCH
To mark the launch of Impunity Reigns – Writers Resist, PEN International will host a live event with four panellists, who speak of their personal experiences as writers as well as about the writers featured in the 2022 Case List: Ma Thida, Chair of PEN International’s Writers in Prison Committee and former President of PEN Myanmar, philosopher, journalist, and President of PEN Ukraine Volodymyr Yermolenko, author and President of PEN Nicaragua Gioconda Belli and Egyptian novelist and activist Ahdaf Soueif. The event will be live streamed on March 21 at 1pm GMT, on PEN International’s Facebook page. Click here to join.
Notes to editors
- For further information, please contact Sabrina Tucci, Communications and Campaigns Manager, Sabrina.Tucci@pen-international.org
