Leading authors mount international open-letter protest to defend 900 persecuted colleagues

Writers including Yann Martel and Alberto Manguel hope to let incarcerated writers and the wider world know that they are not forgotten

News: Major international authors defend 900 persecuted colleagues

Nine hundred writers around the world were harassed, imprisoned, murdered or disappeared last year, according to PEN International. On Monday, the writers organisation has selected just five of them, from a teacher and poet currently serving a 20-year prison sentence in Iran to a Paraguayan writer who has just been sentenced to jail for allegedly plagiarising a novel, and has asked its free members to stand in solidarity with their silenced colleagues.

Harnessing its greatest asset its authors PEN is planning to publish an open letter to each of the five imprisoned writers every day this week, in the run up to the 33rd annual Day of the Imprisoned Writer on 15 November. It has begun the exercise with the award-winning Argentina-born author Alberto Manguels open missive to Mahvash Sabet, who has been detained in Iran since 2008 as one of a group of seven Bahái Faith leaders. Her sentence, said PEN, which is calling for her release, relates to her faith and activities related to running the affairs of the Baháí community in Iran, and she has received appalling treatment and deprivations during pre-trial detention.

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