Our Society will be a Free Society: Please sign the online petition before MARCH 19

In response to the brutal crackdown against journalists, writers, and bloggers in Iran, a coalition of leading press freedom and free expression groups, including International PEN, have launched a petition drive calling for the release of those imprisoned. More such professionals are now in prison in Iran than in any other country in the world—at least 60, 47 of them journalists.

In 1981 International PEN's Writers in Prison Committee launched the first annual Day of the Imprisoned Writer to recognize and support writers who resist repression of the basic human right to freedom of expression. On this day, observed each year on November 15, we are all encouraged to take action on behalf of these courageous writers in the form of donations, letters of appeal, petitions, vigils, or however you chose to act.

International PEN Writers in Prison Committee (WiPC)
     
The International PEN WiPC half year caselist – January to June 2009 – records 644 cases in this period of imprisonment, attack and even killings of writers, journalists, and publishers in 98 countries. It includes details of 22 deaths directly attributable to the individual’s work, or whose deaths are suspicious. There are also over 200 writers and journalists serving long sentences in contravention of their rights to freedom of expression and association.

International PEN was founded in London in 1921 in the aftermath of World War I during a period of hatred between nations. The founder, Catharine Amy Dawson Scott, was convinced that if the writers of the world could reach out to each other, then the nations of the world could eventually learn to do the same. She was joined by eminent writers of her day, including Joseph Conrad, George Bernard Shaw and John Galsworthy, PEN’s first president. The early founders of PEN realized that for any community of letters to thrive, the freedom of the individual writer must also be protected.