Writers Behind Bars - Ubud Writers and Readers Festival

At Ubud Writers & Readers Festival 2025, the Writers in Prison Committee brought the realities documented in our 2025 Case List to the stage. Across literary history, truth-tellers have been punished and silenced and today we are witnessing unprecedented levels of persecution and imprisonment of writers, commentators, and journalists under authoritarian regimes worldwide. This panel was our opportunity to ask: what happens to social knowledge when individual thought is quashed? Is the repression of information the most effective weapon power has?

The panel was led by Ma Thida, Chair of the Writers in Prison Committee, a Myanmar dissident writer, surgeon, and human rights activist who has herself endured imprisonment for her writing. She was joined by our youngest board member, Ege Dündar, PEN International Board Member, Turkish poet and youth activist, and academic Krishna Sen, an expert on Indonesian media, culture, and society, with journalist Peter Greste chairing the discussion.

An empty chair was held on stage for Pham Doan Trang, in solidarity with the imprisoned writers whose voices could not be present.

Sessions like this are central to our work: bearing witness to the writers we defend, and reminding audiences that protecting literary freedom is inseparable from protecting the free flow of ideas itself.