Writers in Prison Committee
International PEN's Writers in Prison Committee works on behalf of persecuted writers worldwide. Established in 1960 in response to increasing attempts to silence voices of dissent by imprisoning writers, the Writers in Prison Committee monitors the cases of over 900 writers who have been imprisoned, tortured, threatened, attacked, made to disappear, and killed for the peaceful practice of their profession. It publishes a bi-annual Case List documenting free expression violations against writers around the world.
The Committee also coordinates the International PEN membership's campaign towards an end to these attacks and to the suppression of freedom of expression world wide.
International PEN's Writers in Prison Committee is a founding member of the International Freedom of Expression Exchange, a global network of non-governmental organisations that monitors censorship worldwide and defends journalists, writers, internet users and others who are persecuted for exercising their right to freedom of expression.
It is also a member of the Tunisia Monitoring Group, a coalition of 16 free expression organisations that lobbies the Tunisian government to improve its human rights record.
Read more about this topic: International PEN
Famous quotes containing the words writers, prison and/or committee:
“If there is a special Hell for writers it would be in the forced contemplation of their own works, with all the misconceptions, the omissions, the failures that any finished work of art implies.”
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“So must pure lovers’ souls descend
T’affections, and to faculties,
Which sense may reach and apprehend,
Else a great Prince in prison lies.”
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“It is easy to carp at colleges, and the college, if he will wait for it, will have its own turn. Genius exists there also, but will not answer a call of a committee of the House of Commons. It is rare, precious, eccentric, and darkling.”
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