The number of writers jailed worldwide reached a record high in 2024, according to PEN America’s latest Freedom to Write Index, published earlier this month. The annual survey recorded 375 writers in prison across 40 countries – up from 339 in 2023 – with a growing proportion held without charge, targeted for online commentary, or subjected to harassment even in exile.
The most prevalent professions of those incarcerated in 2024 were online commentators (203), journalists (127), literary writers (115), activists (92), scholars (68), poets (67), creative artists (37), singer/songwriters (35), translators (14), editors (12), publishers (11), and dramatists (4).
While PEN America’s report continues to document the persistence of state repression in authoritarian regimes such as China, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, this year’s report highlights a particularly alarming trend: the sharp rise in transnational repression. Writers who flee persecution are increasingly pursued across borders, with their families and networks subjected to threats, intimidation, or worse.
The global picture in 2024 is bleak. China remained the world’s leading jailer of writers, with 118 behind bars, followed by Iran (43), Saudi Arabia and Vietnam (23 each). In total, 80 writers were held in pre-trial detention, and 59 of those jailed were women – up from 51 in 2023.
While PEN America identifies ten countries of particular concern, Saudi Arabia’s inclusion among the worst offenders – ranking third globally – should give pause to the UK and other Western governments. The Kingdom’s projection of a modernising, reformist image abroad appears to bear little resemblance to the day-to-day reality faced by its own citizens, where peaceful dissent continues to be met with harsh repression, both within and beyond its borders.
Saudi Arabia invests heavily in soft power through sport, owning Newcastle United Football Club via its sovereign wealth fund, promoting and financing high-profile pay-per-view boxing bouts in the UK, and backing the LIV Golf tour, which now stages tournaments on British soil – ventures that have been warmly welcomed by Western institutions and sporting bodies. Yet behind the international brand-building lies a system that continues to imprison writers for peaceful speech, detain women’s rights advocates without charge, and sentence commentators to lengthy prison terms simply for challenging the country’s severe restrictions on basic freedoms.
Many of those serving sentences have been imprisoned since Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman launched a wide-ranging crackdown on perceived opposition in 2017. In 2024, Palestinian journalist and online commentator Hatem al-Najjar was detained in Saudi Arabia for nine months after pro-government social media accounts engaged in “offence archaeology”, resurfacing dissenting posts from 2014 and flooding the internet with the hashtag “#Arrest_Hatem_AlNajjer”.
A significant proportion of online commentators have been arrested and detained for advocacy related to women’s rights or criticising state-imposed restrictions on women. In January 2024, blogger and social media influencer Manahel al-Otaibi, who was first arrested in 2022 for utilizing her platforms to voice her opinion on women’s rights in Saudi Arabia, was sentenced to 11 years in prison, partly for her public calls to end male guardianship rules across the kingdom, which require women to obtain permission from a male relative for key life decisions such as travel, marriage, and access to healthcare. Asma al-Subaie, an online commentator and scholar who criticised the guardianship system during her time as a university student, has been detained without charge since 2021.
In parallel with these domestic crackdowns, the 2024 report details the increasingly borderless nature of repression. A total of 143 writers were recorded as living in exile or forced displacement, with at least 59 continuing to face harassment abroad, often accompanied by pressure on their families at home. PEN America warns of a “systematic pattern of transnational repression aimed at silencing independent thought and critical expression.”
China features prominently in this trend. The country’s internal controls are well documented: over one-third of its imprisoned writers are online commentators, and nearly half are from ethnic minorities such as the Uyghur, Tibetan, and Mongolian communities. Authorities continue to prosecute writers for charges such as “separatism” or “endangering national security,” often linked to advocacy for cultural rights or critical commentary on economic policy.
But China’s reach does not end at its borders. In recent years, exiled Chinese writers in Japan, Europe, and North America have reported harassment, including surveillance and threats directed at their families.
The case of Yang Hengjun, a Chinese-born Australian writer and political blogger who has long criticised human rights abuses in China, has become emblematic of how far the country’s reach can extend. Hengjun lived and worked in exile in New York before being detained during a visit to China in 2019. He had travelled to Guangzhou that January with his wife and her child – both Chinese citizens – on a visa run when he was intercepted at the airport. In February 2024, more than five years later, he was handed a suspended death sentence. Because he was targeted after years of critical writing from abroad, many analysts consider his case a borderline instance of transnational repression and a warning that even foreign citizenship may offer little protection to overseas Chinese dissidents.
2024 also saw an uptick in transnational repression targeting Turkish writers and dissidents perceived to support President Erdoğan’s political or ideological opponents. In early 2024, the Turkish government sought the extradition of feminist writer Pınar Selek from France, where she remains the subject of an international arrest warrant. Her trial has been repeatedly postponed, most recently to April 2025, prolonging her legal uncertainty and restricting her ability to live and work freely abroad.
Selek is not the only exiled Turkish writer facing continued harassment. According to PEN America’s research, at least seven others who fled Turkey to escape prosecution for exercising their free expression rights are currently being targeted beyond the country’s borders. Among them is Ahmet Dönmez, a journalist assaulted in Sweden after tweeting that he had received death threats for writing about government corruption.
Another prominent case is that of Deniz Yücel, now living in Germany, who has been charged in absentia, including for “insulting the president.” As in Selek’s case, the court hearings for these charges have been repeatedly adjourned, leaving him trapped in legal limbo. In both cases, the process itself has become a form of punishment, prolonging uncertainty, restricting freedom, and exerting pressure without the need for a final verdict.
Read the full report here.
