writers in prison

I recently had the misfortune of stumbling on Drew DeVault’s list I decided to write one inspired by Jette Steckel. Everyone this one is a writer, poet, journalist, publisher, scholar or lawyer whom a government put in prison, or tried to, for something they wrote or said. Each entry links to its sources, and it was current in the first week of September 2026. Request additions, removals, or changes via email; patches welcome.

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Alaa Abd El-Fattah

Country: Egypt

Known for: Software developer, blogger, and author of You Have Not Yet Been Defeated

Years in prison: Multiple periods since 2011; most recently about six years from Sep 2019 to Sep 2025

Current status: Released in Sep 2025; allowed to leave Egypt in Dec 2025

Imprisoned for: Protest activity and sharing a Facebook post

Alaa Abd El-Fattah is a software developer, blogger and author of You Have Not Yet Been Defeated, and Egypt has imprisoned him under every head of state it has had since 2011. He was jailed under the military council in 2011, under the anti-protest law in 2013, for five years from 2014, and again from September 2019 [Wikipedia]. The last sentence, handed down in December 2021, was five years for sharing a Facebook post, and it was extended past its own end date by not counting the two years he had already served waiting for it. He obtained British citizenship through his mother in 2021, went on hunger strike for most of 2022 and stopped drinking water while COP27 was held in Sharm el-Sheikh, and his mother Laila Soueif spent nine months on hunger strike outside the Foreign Office in London. Sisi pardoned him on 22 September 2025 and he was released the next day. Egypt then refused to let him leave until December 2025; he arrived in Britain on 26 December.

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Ales Bialiatski

Country: Belarus

Known for: Literary scholar and founder of the Viasna human rights centre

Years in prison: 2011-2014, then Jul 2021-Dec 2025

Current status: Released and transferred to Lithuania in Dec 2025

Imprisoned for: Tax evasion, then smuggling and financing protests

Ales Bialiatski is a literary scholar who founded the Viasna human rights centre in Belarus in 1996. He was jailed for tax evasion from 2011 to 2014, arrested again on 14 July 2021 when Viasna’s offices were raided, awarded the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize while in pre-trial detention, and sentenced on 3 March 2023 to ten years for smuggling and financing protests [Wikipedia]. He was released on 13 December 2025 with 122 other prisoners after the United States agreed to ease sanctions on Belarusian potash, and was put across the border into Lithuania [Amnesty]. Two other people released in the same deal are on this list.

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Andrzej Poczobut

Country: Belarus

Known for: Journalist, Gazeta Wyborcza correspondent, and Polish-minority advocate

Years in prison: Mar 2021-Apr 2026

Current status: Released in a prisoner exchange in Apr 2026

Imprisoned for: Reporting on the 2020 protests and defending the Polish minority

Andrzej Poczobut is a Belarusian journalist of Polish descent, the Belarus correspondent of Gazeta Wyborcza and deputy chairman of the Union of Poles in Belarus. He was given a suspended sentence for libelling Lukashenko in 2011, detained in the crackdown on the Union of Poles on 25 March 2021, and sentenced in February 2023 to eight years in a labour camp for “inciting hatred” and “calling for sanctions”, meaning his reporting on the 2020 protests and his defence of the Polish minority [CPJ]. He was denied medication in prison and had lost nineteen kilograms when he was handed over at the Polish border on 28 April 2026 in a ten-person exchange brokered by the United States. Poland gave him the Order of the White Eagle five days later. He shared the 2025 Sakharov Prize with the Georgian journalist Mzia Amaglobeli, who is still in prison.

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Arnon Nampa

Country: Thailand

Known for: Human-rights lawyer and poet

Years in prison: In prison since Sep 2023

Current status: Imprisoned; appeals pending as of the source date

Imprisoned for: Lese-majeste convictions for speeches and social-media posts

Arnon Nampa is a Thai human rights lawyer and poet. On 3 August 2020, at a Harry Potter-themed rally, he became the first person in a generation to call for reform of the Thai monarchy from a public stage, and he said explicitly that he wanted it reformed, not abolished. Thailand has since convicted him under Section 112, the lèse-majesté law, in eleven separate cases for speeches and social media posts from 2020 and 2021, most recently on 20 February 2026, and the sentences add up to more than thirty years [Malay Mail]. He has been in prison since September 2023, the Supreme Court refused him bail on 25 December 2025 while his appeals are pending, and the Bangkok Criminal Court has pursued his disbarment on the ground that representing clients in a prison uniform breaches its dress code [PEN case list 2026]. He was shackled in court for his latest sentencing [Front Line Defenders].

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Ashraf Omar

Country: Egypt

Known for: Editorial cartoonist and translator for Al-Manassa

Years in prison: In pre-trial detention since Jul 2024

Current status: Detained; trial listed for Oct 2026

Imprisoned for: Accused of financing terrorism and participating in a terrorist group

Ashraf Omar is an Egyptian editorial cartoonist and translator who drew for Al-Manassa about the sale of state assets and the electricity cuts. Security forces took him from his home on 22 July 2024, and the State Security Prosecution has renewed his pre-trial detention ever since [CPJ]. In November 2025 he and eleven others were referred to the Cairo Criminal Court for “financing terrorism” and “participation in a terrorist group”. The trial was set for May 2026, then July, and is now set for 12 October 2026. His wife, Nada Mougheeth, was arrested in January 2025 and accused of membership in a terrorist group and spreading false news. No photograph of him under a licence that permits reuse exists.

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Boualem Sansal

Country: Algeria

Known for: Franco-Algerian novelist; author of 2084 and The German Mujahid

Years in prison: 361 days, Nov 2024-Nov 2025

Current status: Pardoned and transferred to Germany in Nov 2025

Imprisoned for: Undermining national unity over comments in an interview

Boualem Sansal is a Franco-Algerian novelist, the author of 2084 and The German Mujahid, and a winner of the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade and the Académie française’s Grand Prix du roman. Algeria detained him at Algiers airport on 16 November 2024, at the age of 75 and with prostate cancer, over an interview in which he said that France had given Morocco’s territory to Algeria when it drew the colonial border. He was charged with undermining national unity, sentenced on 27 March 2025 to five years, and lost his appeal on 1 July 2025 [Wikipedia]. Algeria pardoned him in November 2025 after Germany’s president asked, 361 days after his arrest, and flew him to a hospital in Germany. The Académie française elected him on 29 January 2026 with 25 votes out of 26 [franceinfo].

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Chow Hang-tung

Country: Hong Kong

Known for: Barrister and former vice-chair of the Hong Kong Alliance

Years in prison: In custody since Sep 2021

Current status: Convicted on national-security charges; sentencing pending in the source

Imprisoned for: Tiananmen vigil activity and alleged incitement to subversion

Chow Hang-tung is a Hong Kong barrister and was vice-chair of the Hong Kong Alliance, which held the Victoria Park vigil for the Tiananmen dead every 4 June for thirty years. She was convicted for the 2020 and 2021 vigils, which were banned, and served those sentences. She has been in custody since September 2021, refused bail on the national security charge of inciting subversion, and she represented herself. On 21 August 2026 the High Court convicted her, Lee Cheuk-yan and the Alliance itself; the judgment treated the Alliance’s slogan “end one-party dictatorship” as an attempt to undermine the Communist Party [HKFP]. The judge interrupted her mitigation on 28 August and she published the full text online [HKFP]. Sentencing is pending and the maximum is ten years. She was separately arrested in May 2024 for social media posts under the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance.

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Dawit Isaak

Country: Eritrea

Known for: Playwright and co-owner of the independent newspaper Setit

Years in prison: Since Sep 2001; nearly 25 years by Sep 2026

Current status: Detained without charge or trial; no family contact for years

Imprisoned for: Arrested in the crackdown following an open letter calling for reform

Dawit Isaak is a playwright, a Swedish citizen since 1992, and was part-owner of Setit, Eritrea’s first independent newspaper. He was arrested at his home in Asmara on 23 September 2001 in the crackdown that followed an open letter for reform signed by fifteen members of the government, and Setit was closed the same day [Wikipedia]. He has never been charged or tried. He was let out for two days in November 2005 to see a doctor and rearrested on the way to the hospital. He has had no contact with his family in that time. May 2026 was his nine-thousandth day in detention and 23 September 2026 is the twenty-fifth anniversary [Raoul Wallenberg Centre]. Sweden’s foreign minister visited Eritrea in December 2025 and came back without proof that he is alive.

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Dong Yuyu

Country: China

Known for: Journalist, editor, Nieman fellow, and former New York Times Chinese-edition columnist

Years in prison: Since Feb 2022; seven-year sentence imposed in Nov 2024

Current status: Imprisoned at Chaobai Prison in Tianjin

Imprisoned for: Espionage, after meeting a Japanese diplomat

Dong Yuyu was deputy head of the editorial department at Guangming Daily, a state newspaper, a Nieman fellow, and a columnist for the Chinese edition of the New York Times. He was detained on 21 February 2022 while having lunch with a Japanese diplomat at a Beijing hotel, held for six months under “residential surveillance at a designated location”, charged with espionage in March 2023, and sentenced in November 2024 to seven years [Wikipedia]. The Beijing High People’s Court rejected his appeal on 13 November 2025 without giving reasons. Through his family he said the case was about warning others not to engage with the outside world. He was moved from Beijing No. 2 Prison to Chaobai Prison in Tianjin on 17 March 2026.

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Eskinder Nega

Country: Ethiopia

Known for: Journalist and newspaper founder

Years in prison: Seventeen months after 2005; about seven years from 2011-2018; detained again 2020-2022

Current status: Released; later became involved in the Fano insurgency

Imprisoned for: Election-related journalism and later anti-terrorism charges tied to a column about the Arab Spring

Eskinder Nega is an Ethiopian journalist who founded four newspapers. He was imprisoned for seventeen months after the 2005 election, sentenced in 2012 to eighteen years under the anti-terrorism law for a column about the Arab Spring, and released in 2018 after seven years, with the PEN/Barbara Goldsmith award and the Golden Pen of Freedom collected in his absence [Wikipedia]. He was arrested again in June 2020 and released in January 2022. In 2023 he went to the Amhara region and became a commander in the Fano insurgency against the government that had jailed him, and in 2024 an attempt was made to put all of Fano under his leadership, which several factions rejected. In January 2026 he declined a politburo seat in the merged Amhara Fano National Movement and said he would serve as an ordinary member.

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Floriane Irangabiye

Country: Burundi

Known for: Journalist and co-founder of Radio Igicaniro

Years in prison: About two years, Aug 2022-Aug 2024

Current status: Pardoned and released in Aug 2024

Imprisoned for: Undermining territorial integrity after a program critical of the government

Floriane Irangabiye is a Burundian journalist who co-founded Radio Igicaniro, an online station run from Rwanda by exiles. She went home in August 2022 and was intercepted on the way to a parent’s funeral, after a programme in which guests criticised the government. On 2 January 2023 she was convicted of undermining the integrity of the national territory and sentenced to ten years and a fine, and the appeal court upheld it in May [CPJ]. President Ndayishimiye pardoned her on 14 August 2024 and she was released from Bubanza prison two days later.

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Galal El-Behairy

Country: Egypt

Known for: Poet and lyricist

Years in prison: Since Mar 2018; ninth birthday in prison by Jun 2026

Current status: Imprisoned / repeatedly held in renewed pre-trial detention

Imprisoned for: Poetry and lyrics deemed insulting to the army or spreading false news; later terrorism-related accusations

Galal El-Behairy is an Egyptian poet and lyricist. He wrote the words to Ramy Essam’s song “Balaha”, which mocked Sisi, and was arrested on 5 March 2018, a week after it came out. The civilian prosecution over the song was dropped; a military court then tried him over an unpublished poetry collection, The Finest Women on Earth, for insulting the army and spreading false news, and gave him three years [PEN America]. When the sentence ended in July 2021 he was disappeared for three weeks and then put back into pre-trial detention on a new case, which by 2025 had run past every limit Egyptian law sets for pre-trial detention. He went on hunger strike in March 2023 and again in September 2023, and attempted suicide on 9 September 2023. In August 2025 the State Security Prosecution opened two more cases against him, one for communicating with terrorist groups, based on a 2023 National Security report [PEN case list 2026]. He received PEN America’s Freedom to Write Award in May 2025. His thirty-sixth birthday, on 27 June 2026, was his ninth in prison.

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Gautam Navlakha

Country: India

Known for: Journalist and civil-rights activist

Years in prison: Apr 2020-Nov 2022 in jail, then house arrest until bail in May 2024

Current status: On bail; trial had not started in the source

Imprisoned for: Bhima Koregaon UAPA case alleging involvement in a Maoist plot

Gautam Navlakha is an Indian journalist, an editorial consultant at the Economic and Political Weekly, and a former secretary of the People’s Union for Democratic Rights. He is one of sixteen people arrested under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act over a rally at Bhima Koregaon in January 2018, on the theory that they were part of a Maoist plot against the prime minister [Wikipedia]. Arsenal Consulting, an American forensics firm, found that the letters the plot rests on were planted on two co-accused’s computers by an attacker, and SentinelOne traced the attacker to Pune police. Navlakha surrendered to the National Investigation Agency in April 2020, was moved to house arrest in November 2022, and was bailed by the Supreme Court on 14 May 2024, on condition that he pay two million rupees for the cost of the guards who had held him. The trial has not started. Another of the sixteen, Stan Swamy, an 84-year-old priest with Parkinson’s, died in custody in 2021.

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Gui Minhai

Country: China

Known for: Poet, publisher, and co-owner of Causeway Bay Books / Mighty Current

Years in prison: Detained 2015-2017, then again from Jan 2018; ten-year sentence from 2020

Current status: Imprisoned; Sweden denied consular access

Imprisoned for: Illegally providing intelligence abroad; earlier detention followed politically sensitive publishing

Gui Minhai is a Swedish citizen, poet and publisher, co-owner of Causeway Bay Books in Hong Kong and of Mighty Current, which published gossip about China’s leaders. He was taken from his holiday flat in Pattaya, Thailand, on 17 October 2015, and appeared on Chinese state television three months later confessing to a 2003 traffic accident [Wikipedia]. He was released under surveillance in October 2017, and on 20 January 2018 plainclothes police pulled him off a train to Beijing on which he was travelling with two Swedish diplomats to a medical appointment for a neurodegenerative disease. In February 2020 he was sentenced to ten years for illegally providing intelligence abroad, and China announced that he had resumed Chinese citizenship, which is used to deny Sweden consular access. In August 2025 the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention called for his release [PEN case list 2026].

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Ilham Tohti

Country: China

Known for: Uyghur economist and founder of Uyghur Online

Years in prison: Since Jan 2014; life sentence

Current status: Imprisoned, believed to be in Urumqi No. 1 Prison

Imprisoned for: Separatism, despite advocating dialogue and opposing separatism

Ilham Tohti is a Uyghur economist who taught at Minzu University in Beijing and ran Uyghur Online, a site for discussion between Uyghurs and Han in both languages. He argued for dialogue and against separatism, in writing, for years. He was detained on 15 January 2014, tried for two days in September, convicted of separatism and sentenced to life [Wikipedia]. Seven of his students were sentenced to between three and a half and eight years for helping with the website. He received the Martin Ennals Award in 2016, and the Václav Havel Prize and the Sakharov Prize in 2019, accepted by his daughter, who said she did not know where her father was. Nobody in his family has seen him since 2017, when the quarterly prison visits stopped, and when they call the prison nobody answers [ISHR]. He is believed to be in Urumqi No. 1 Prison.

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Innocent Bahati

Country: Rwanda

Known for: Poet and technology teacher

Years in prison: Disappeared since Feb 2021; prior three-month detention in 2017

Current status: Whereabouts unknown; government denies holding him

Imprisoned for: No formal charge disclosed; disappearance followed critical poetry and a prior Facebook comment

Innocent Bahati is a Rwandan poet who performed on YouTube about poverty, refugees and the church, and taught technology at a school in Kigali. On 7 February 2021 he went to dinner with an unidentified person at a hotel in Nyanza district and did not come back; his phone was off that evening [PEN]. The Rwanda Investigation Bureau said it was not holding him and that an investigation was ongoing. Since then the government’s answers have included a promise of a full report, and a claim that he left to join an armed group in Uganda. He had disappeared once before, in 2017, after a Facebook comment, and reappeared in police custody, where he was held for three months without charge. More than a hundred writers, including Atwood, Coetzee and Okri, signed a letter to Kagame about him. As of September 2026, he had been missing for five and a half years.

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Jimmy Lai

Country: Hong Kong

Known for: Founder of Next Digital and Apple Daily

Years in prison: Held since Dec 2020; twenty-year sentence imposed Feb 2026

Current status: Imprisoned

Imprisoned for: Collusion with foreign forces and conspiracy to publish seditious material

Jimmy Lai founded the clothing chain Giordano, then Next Digital, then Apple Daily, the largest pro-democracy newspaper in Hong Kong. He is a British citizen. He was arrested under the national security law on 10 August 2020, Apple Daily was raided and its accounts frozen until it closed in June 2021, and he has been held since December 2020, in solitary confinement, which the government says is at his own request [Wikipedia]. On 15 December 2025 he was convicted of two counts of conspiracy to collude with foreign forces and one of conspiracy to publish seditious material, and on 9 February 2026 he was sentenced to twenty years, twice the previous record under the law [CPJ]. He is 78 and diabetic. On 26 February 2026 the Court of Appeal quashed his earlier fraud conviction, which was over the terms of an office lease. His lawyers say he will not appeal the security conviction.

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Katsiaryna Andreyeva

Country: Belarus

Known for: Belsat journalist

Years in prison: Nov 2020-Mar 2026

Current status: Pardoned, released, and sent to Lithuania in Mar 2026

Imprisoned for: Livestreaming a police crackdown; later convicted of treason

Katsiaryna Andreyeva is a reporter for Belsat, the Polish-based Belarusian channel. On 15 November 2020 she and her colleague Darya Chultsova were arrested while livestreaming from a Minsk flat as police broke up a memorial for Raman Bandarenka, who had been beaten to death days earlier. They were sentenced in February 2021 to two years for organising actions that violate public order, the actions being the livestream [CPJ]. In July 2022 she was tried again, behind closed doors, for treason, and given eight more years. She was pardoned in March 2026 with 249 other prisoners after the United States lifted sanctions on Belarusian potash and banks, and was among fifteen put over the border into Lithuania without a passport. She said that if she had been given a choice she would have stayed in Belarus.

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Khadija Ismayilova

Country: Azerbaijan

Known for: Investigative journalist known for reporting on the Aliyev family

Years in prison: Dec 2014-May 2016

Current status: Released on probation; remained under a travel ban in the source

Imprisoned for: Tax evasion and abuse of power; ECHR later found retaliation for journalism

Khadija Ismayilova is an Azerbaijani investigative journalist, formerly of Radio Free Europe, who documented the Aliyev family’s offshore companies, mines and hotels. In 2012 she was sent stills from a camera hidden in her bedroom with a demand that she stop, and she published the demand instead [Wikipedia]. She was arrested in December 2014 for inciting a colleague’s suicide, acquitted of that, and convicted instead of tax evasion and abuse of power, for seven and a half years. She was released on probation in May 2016 and kept under a travel ban, which is why the UNESCO press freedom prize and the Right Livelihood Award were collected without her. In January 2026 the European Court of Human Rights found that the prosecution was retaliation for her journalism and violated four articles of the Convention [CPJ]. She is editor-in-chief of Toplum TV, whose office was raided and six staff detained in March 2024. She still lives in Baku.

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Mahvash Sabet

Country: Iran

Known for: Teacher, poet, and former administrator of the Baha’i Institute for Higher Education

Years in prison: Ten years served after the 2008 arrest; Jul 2022-Dec 2024 in custody before medical leave

Current status: At home on medical grounds, under a travel ban and liable to return to prison

Imprisoned for: Espionage and propaganda charges tied to Baha’i activity

Mahvash Sabet is an Iranian teacher and poet, a Baha’i, who ran the Baha’i Institute for Higher Education for fifteen years because Baha’is are barred from Iranian universities. She was the first of the seven Baha’i leaders arrested in 2008, was sentenced to twenty years for espionage and propaganda, reduced to ten, and served all of it [Wikipedia]. She began writing poetry in prison; Prison Poems was published in English in 2013 and she was PEN’s International Writer of Courage in 2017. She was rearrested on 31 July 2022, beaten during interrogation, held in solitary for 42 days, and given a second ten years in November 2023 after a one-hour trial. She has pulmonary fibrosis and heart disease, had open-heart surgery in December 2024, and has been at home on medical grounds since, under a travel ban and liable to be returned to prison [PEN case list 2026]. Her memoir Open Wide the Doors came out in July 2026. She is 73.

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Maksim Znak

Country: Belarus

Known for: Lawyer for opposition presidential campaigns and Coordination Council member

Years in prison: Sep 2020-Dec 2025

Current status: Released in Dec 2025 and sent abroad

Imprisoned for: Conspiracy to seize power and leading an extremist organisation

Maksim Znak is a Belarusian lawyer who represented the presidential candidate Viktar Babaryka and then Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, and sat on the Coordination Council formed after the 2020 election. On 9 September 2020 masked men in plain clothes took him from his office; he managed to text one word, “masks”, to colleagues. He was tried behind closed doors with Maryia Kalesnikava and sentenced on 6 September 2021 to ten years for conspiracy to seize power and leading an extremist organisation [Wikipedia]. His lawyer last saw him in February 2023. In prison he wrote Zekameron, a hundred stories from the cells. He was released on 13 December 2025 in the same deal as Bialiatski and Kalesnikava, sent first to Ukraine and then to Poland.

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Maryia Kalesnikava

Country: Belarus

Known for: Musician, campaign manager, and Coordination Council member

Years in prison: Sep 2020-Dec 2025

Current status: Released in Dec 2025 and taken to Germany

Imprisoned for: Conspiracy to seize power

Maryia Kalesnikava is a flautist and conductor who ran Viktar Babaryka’s presidential campaign in Belarus in 2020 and then joined the Coordination Council. On 7 September 2020 she was abducted in Minsk and driven to the Ukrainian border to be deported; in the neutral zone she climbed out of the car’s rear window, tore up her passport, and walked back into Belarus, where she was arrested [Wikipedia]. On 6 September 2021 she was sentenced to eleven years for conspiracy to seize power. In November 2022, after being put in a punishment cell, she was operated on for a perforated ulcer. Nobody heard from her between February 2023 and November 2024, when her father was allowed a visit. She was released on 13 December 2025 with 122 others and taken to Germany, where she performed again in April 2026 [Amnesty].

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Maykel Osorbo

Country: Cuba

Known for: Rapper and performer on “Patria y Vida”

Years in prison: Since May 2021; nine-year sentence

Current status: Imprisoned at Guanajay maximum-security prison

Imprisoned for: Contempt, assault, public disorder, and defamation of institutions

Maykel Castillo Pérez, who records as Maykel Osorbo, is a Cuban rapper and one of the voices on “Patria y Vida”, the song that turned the regime’s slogan around and won two Latin Grammys in 2021. He has been held since 18 May 2021, and on 24 June 2022 was sentenced to nine years for contempt, assault, public disorder and defamation of institutions [Amnesty]. In 2025 he was put in a punishment cell in April, July, August, September and October, and went on hunger strike in June; his family are not allowed his medical records [PEN case list 2026]. In May 2026 State Security offered him exile or prison until 2030, then withdrew the offer. The United States has granted him humanitarian parole. He was moved to the maximum-security prison at Guanajay on 10 July 2026 and turned 43 there in August. His co-defendant Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara was released into exile in Miami.

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Mohamed Tadjadit

Country: Algeria

Known for: Slam poet known as the poet of the Hirak

Years in prison: Repeated imprisonments since 2019; current three-year sentence after Jan 2026 appeal

Current status: Imprisoned and also facing a separate serious trial in the source

Imprisoned for: Speech, protest activity, hashtag campaigning, and “apology of terrorism”

Mohamed Tadjadit is an Algerian slam poet from Bab El Oued, called the poet of the Hirak for what he performed in the streets during the 2019 protests. Algeria has arrested him at least nine times since 2019 and sentenced him to prison in 2019, 2020, 2021, 2024 and 2025 [Amnesty]. The last cycle: pardoned in October 2024, arrested again on 16 January 2025 for joining a hashtag campaign, sentenced four days later to five years, commuted to one; then sentenced on 11 November 2025 to five years for “apology of terrorism”, reduced on appeal in January 2026 to three. He is also on trial with twelve other activists for conspiring to incite citizens against the authority of the state, a charge that carries the death penalty, which UN experts said in April 2026 should be quashed [OHCHR]. That trial was postponed to June 2026 and I have not found its outcome. He won Index on Censorship’s arts award in November 2025, in prison.

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Mohammed al-Roken

Country: United Arab Emirates

Known for: Lawyer, law professor, and former president of the UAE Jurists Association

Years in prison: Since Jul 2012; original sentence ended in 2022, then life sentence imposed in 2024

Current status: Imprisoned under a life sentence

Imprisoned for: Signing a petition calling for elections; later retried under counter-terrorism law

Mohammed al-Roken is an Emirati lawyer and law professor, a former president of the UAE Jurists Association, who defended other dissidents in court. He was arrested on 17 July 2012 while at a police station reporting the disappearance of his son and son-in-law, and in July 2013 was sentenced to ten years in the “UAE 94” mass trial for signing a petition asking for elections [PEN]. His sentence ended in 2022 and he was kept in prison anyway. In December 2023 the state charged him and 83 others again over the same events, under a counter-terrorism law passed in 2014, and on 10 July 2024 he was sentenced to life [OHCHR]. The Federal Supreme Court upheld it on 4 March 2025.

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Nabeel Rajab

Country: Bahrain

Known for: Human-rights activist and president of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights

Years in prison: Multiple terms: 2012-2014 and Jun 2016-Jun 2020 before alternative sentence at home

Current status: Released to an alternative sentence; under travel ban

Imprisoned for: Tweets, speeches, interviews, and reporting on torture and civilian deaths

Nabeel Rajab is president of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights and a co-founder of the Gulf Centre for Human Rights. Bahrain jailed him in 2012 for tweets and for a speech, for two years; in 2014 for a tweet calling the security ministries an incubator for ISIL; and from June 2016, when he was sentenced in July 2017 to two years for “spreading false news” in television interviews and in February 2018 to five more for tweets about torture in Jaw prison and civilian deaths in Yemen [Wikipedia]. He was released on 9 June 2020 to serve the rest at home under an alternative sentence that barred him from human rights work [Al Jazeera]. He has been under a travel ban, imposed by a prosecutor without a court, since 2015. He received the Rafto Prize in 2013.

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Narges Mohammadi

Country: Iran

Known for: Journalist, human-rights activist, and author of White Torture

Years in prison: Repeated imprisonment across thirteen arrests; six-year sentence added in Feb 2026

Current status: At home after hospital discharge in May 2026, according to the source

Imprisoned for: Human-rights advocacy and related national-security prosecutions

Narges Mohammadi is an Iranian journalist and engineer, the former deputy of Shirin Ebadi’s Defenders of Human Rights Center, and the author of White Torture, interviews with women about solitary confinement, which she conducted in prison. Between 1998 and 2023 Iran arrested her thirteen times and sentenced her to a total of 31 years and 154 lashes [Wikipedia]. She was in Evin when she was awarded the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize. She was let out on medical furlough in December 2024 after surgery on a bone lesion. On 12 December 2025 plainclothes agents beat her with batons on the head and neck at a memorial in Mashhad for a lawyer who had died in suspicious circumstances, and detained her; she called her family two days later from a second hospital [PEN case list 2026]. On 8 February 2026 she was sentenced to six more years. She had a suspected heart attack on 1 April 2026 and was discharged from a Tehran hospital to her home on 18 May.

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Osman Kavala

Country: Turkey

Known for: Publisher, philanthropist, and founder of Anadolu Kultur

Years in prison: Since Nov 2017; aggravated life sentence imposed in Apr 2022

Current status: Imprisoned despite repeated European Court of Human Rights orders for release

Imprisoned for: Alleged attempt to overthrow the government through the Gezi Park protests

Osman Kavala is a Turkish publisher and philanthropist, a founder of İletişim, one of the country’s main publishing houses, and of Anadolu Kültür, which funds arts projects in the provinces. He was detained at Istanbul airport on 18 October 2017 and has been in Silivri prison since 1 November 2017. He was acquitted of financing the 2013 Gezi Park protests in February 2020 and rearrested the same day on a coup charge, and on 25 April 2022 was sentenced to aggravated life, meaning no parole, for attempting to overthrow the government by way of Gezi [Wikipedia]. The European Court of Human Rights ordered his release in 2019, the Council of Europe opened infringement proceedings against Turkey in 2022 for not complying, and on 25 August 2026 the court’s Grand Chamber ruled 15 to 2 that his conviction is null and void and his detention in bad faith, and ordered his release again [HRW]. As of the source date, Turkey had not complied with the August 2026 order.

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Pham Doan Trang

Country: Vietnam

Known for: Journalist, publisher, and author of Politics for the Common People

Years in prison: Since Oct 2020; nine-year sentence

Current status: Imprisoned; sentence runs to 2029

Imprisoned for: Propaganda against the state

Phạm Đoan Trang is a Vietnamese journalist who founded the legal magazine Luật Khoa, its English edition The Vietnamese, and Liberal Publishing House, which prints books the state will not license, including her own Politics for the Common People. She was arrested on 6 October 2020, hours after a meeting between American and Vietnamese officials about human rights, and on 14 December 2021, after a one-day trial, sentenced to nine years for propaganda against the state [Wikipedia]. She is held in Bình Dương province, 1,600 kilometres from her family, with sinusitis, arthritis and the after-effects of COVID, and limited medical care. She received the Martin Ennals Award, the International Women of Courage Award and CPJ’s press freedom award in 2022, all in absentia. Her sentence runs to 2029.

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Prabir Purkayastha

Country: India

Known for: Engineer and founder of NewsClick

Years in prison: Seven months, Oct 2023-May 2024; also imprisoned during the 1975 Emergency

Current status: Released after the Supreme Court held the 2023 arrest invalid; case not dropped

Imprisoned for: UAPA allegations tied to NewsClick funding and alleged Chinese propaganda

Prabir Purkayastha is an engineer who founded the Indian news site NewsClick in 2009, and was first imprisoned under the Emergency in 1975. On 3 October 2023 Delhi police raided thirty locations and arrested him under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, two months after a New York Times report on funding from the American businessman Neville Roy Singham, which police turned into an allegation of Chinese propaganda [Wikipedia]. On 15 May 2024 the Supreme Court held the arrest invalid because the police had not given his lawyer the grounds for it in writing, and ordered him released. He was 74 and had spent seven months in Tihar. The case has not been dropped.

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Rahile Dawut

Country: China

Known for: Uyghur ethnographer and scholar of sacred sites and folklore

Years in prison: Disappeared / detained since Dec 2017; life sentence revealed in 2023

Current status: Imprisoned at an undisclosed location

Imprisoned for: Endangering state security

Rahile Dawut is a Uyghur ethnographer at Xinjiang University, the founder of its minority folklore research centre, and the author of Uyghur Shrines, a survey of the region’s sacred sites, some of which the state has since demolished. In December 2017 she told her family she was travelling to Beijing for a conference and was not heard from again. China did not confirm she was detained until the end of 2018, and in September 2023 it emerged that she had been tried in secret in December 2018 for endangering state security, sentenced to life, and had lost her appeal [Wikipedia]. Her family has not been told where she is. Her daughter, Akida Pulat, campaigns for her from the United States. A year before her arrest the Chinese state gave her a major research grant.

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Seymur Hazi

Country: Azerbaijan

Known for: Journalist and opposition politician

Years in prison: Five years, Aug 2014-Aug 2019

Current status: Released after serving sentence; remains active in the party

Imprisoned for: Hooliganism arising from a scuffle; ECHR later found rights violations

Seymur Hazi is an Azerbaijani journalist and a deputy chairman of the opposition Popular Front Party. He was detained on 29 August 2014 and charged with hooliganism, meaning a scuffle with a man who had attacked him at a bus stop, and in January 2015 was sentenced to five years, which he served in full, to August 2019 [Wikipedia]. Amnesty called him a prisoner of conscience and he received the Gerd Bucerius prize in 2016. On 24 October 2024 the European Court of Human Rights found that the prosecution violated his rights to a fair trial and to free expression. He is still in the party.

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Svetlana Petriychuk

Country: Russia

Known for: Playwright; author of Finist the Brave Falcon

Years in prison: Since May 2023; sentence reduced to five years ten months

Current status: Imprisoned in a penal colony in Mozhaysk

Imprisoned for: Justifying terrorism based on the content of her play

Svetlana Petriychuk is a Russian playwright. Her play Finist the Brave Falcon, about Russian women who were recruited online to marry ISIS fighters in Syria, won two Golden Masks in 2022, the national theatre award; the Ministry of Culture had helped fund it. On 4 May 2023 she and its director, Zhenya Berkovich, were arrested for justifying terrorism, on the strength of an expert report that treated the play’s depiction of ISIS recruitment as pro-terrorism propaganda [Wikipedia]. A military court sentenced both to six years on 8 July 2024, reduced on appeal to five years and ten months for Petriychuk. She was moved from a Moscow remand centre to a penal colony in Mozhaysk in February 2025.

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Tashi Wangchuk

Country: China

Known for: Tibetan language-rights advocate

Years in prison: Jan 2016-Jan 2021; five-year sentence served in full

Current status: Released, but later detained/interrogated and placed under surveillance

Imprisoned for: Inciting separatism after appearing in a film about Tibetan-language schooling

Tashi Wangchuk is a Tibetan shopkeeper from Yushu in Qinghai. In 2015 he appeared in a New York Times film about his attempt to sue the local government for not providing Tibetan-language schooling, which the Chinese constitution promises. He was detained in January 2016 for inciting separatism; the film was cited as evidence, and he was sentenced on 22 May 2018 to five years, which he served in full [Wikipedia]. He was released on 28 January 2021. After his release, he resumed his campaign for Tibetan-language education: in January 2022 he went to local government offices to ask for Tibetan in schools and government jobs, and was summoned by police for interrogation [RFA]. A lawyer who visited him in 2023 had the meeting cut short. In 2024 he was detained again and released under surveillance.

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Varavara Rao

Country: India

Known for: Telugu poet and co-founder of the Revolutionary Writers’ Association

Years in prison: Detained in multiple conspiracy cases; most recently Aug 2018-Aug 2022 before permanent medical bail

Current status: On permanent medical bail; required to remain in Mumbai in the source

Imprisoned for: Bhima Koregaon conspiracy case and earlier conspiracy prosecutions

Varavara Rao is a Telugu poet who co-founded the Revolutionary Writers’ Association in 1970. He has faced conspiracy prosecutions in India since 1974. He was held in the Secunderabad conspiracy case from 1974 and acquitted after fifteen years, and acquitted in the Ramnagar case in 2003 [Wikipedia]. He was arrested at home in Hyderabad on 28 August 2018 in the Bhima Koregaon case, at 77, and held in Taloja jail, where he caught COVID in July 2020 and was found by his family lying in urine and unable to recognise them. The Supreme Court gave him permanent medical bail on 10 August 2022, on condition that he stay in Mumbai. In March 2026, at 85, he asked to be allowed to move home to Hyderabad because he cannot afford Mumbai, and the special court refused.

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Wai Moe Naing

Country: Myanmar

Known for: Writer, PEN Myanmar member, and protest leader in Monywa

Years in prison: Since Apr 2021; combined sentence 74 years

Current status: Imprisoned; reported beaten, shackled, and held in solitary confinement

Imprisoned for: Incitement, rioting, robbery, high treason, and murder convictions by junta courts

Wai Moe Naing is a Burmese writer and a member of PEN Myanmar who led the protests in Monywa after the February 2021 coup. He was arrested on 15 April 2021 when a vehicle rammed his motorcycle. The junta’s courts have since convicted him of incitement, rioting, robbery, high treason and murder, twenty years at a time, and his combined sentence is 74 years [Myanmar Now]. After being moved to Obo prison in Mandalay on 12 June 2025 he was beaten by guards, leaving him with a fractured wrist and a head wound that needed stitches, and was then put in solitary confinement with his legs shackled and no medical care. He was 25 when he was arrested.

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Yuri Dmitriev

Country: Russia

Known for: Historian who documented Stalin-era mass graves, including Sandarmokh

Years in prison: Since Dec 2016 apart from the period around his 2018 acquittal; fifteen-year sentence

Current status: Imprisoned in a maximum-security colony in Mordovia

Imprisoned for: Sexual-abuse-related charges arising from medical photographs; acquittal overturned and sentence repeatedly increased

Yuri Dmitriev is a historian who ran the Karelian branch of Memorial and spent thirty years finding the graves of people shot under Stalin, including the mass grave at Sandarmokh, where more than six thousand were killed in 1937 and 1938. He was arrested on 13 December 2016 and charged with making pornographic images of his adopted daughter, then eleven; the images were the medical photographs he had been told to keep by social services to document her health. He was acquitted in April 2018. The acquittal was overturned, he was rearrested and given a new charge, sentenced to three and a half years in July 2020, then thirteen years on a closed appeal without him or his lawyer present, then fifteen [Wikipedia]. He turned 70 on 28 January 2026 in a maximum-security colony in Mordovia, with suspected cancer for which he has been refused tests for three years, and he is put in solitary for sitting on his bed during the day [Moscow Times].

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Zviad Ratiani

Country: Georgia

Known for: Poet and translator of Rilke, Eliot, Pound, and Celan

Years in prison: Eight days in 2024; two-year sentence imposed Oct 2025

Current status: Imprisoned

Imprisoned for: Petty hooliganism after a protest, then resistance/assault charges after slapping a police officer

Zviad Ratiani is a Georgian poet and the translator of Rilke, Eliot, Pound and Celan into Georgian. On 29 November 2024, at the protests against the Georgian Dream government, police dragged him through the street and beat him, breaking his nose and a bone in his back, and a court then gave him eight days’ detention for petty hooliganism; after he was released, unidentified men beat him again outside his home [PEN case list 2026]. On 23 June 2025 he was arrested at a protest outside parliament for slapping a police officer; PEN reviewed the footage and describes the slap as light and the officer as uninjured. He was charged with assault, which carries up to seven years, then with resistance, and on 9 October 2025 sentenced to two years [PEN]. He told the court that the prison would not give him writing materials.

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The people without a photograph are missing one because no photograph of them exists under a licence that allows it to be reproduced, and for some of them because no photograph of them has been taken in years.

Photographs, all from Wikimedia Commons: Alaa Abd El-Fattah by Alaa Abd El-Fattah, CC BY-SA 2.5. Ales Bialiatski by Mariusz Kubik, CC BY 4.0. Andrzej Poczobut by Mariusz Kubik, CC BY 4.0. Arnon Nampa by Prachatai, CC BY 3.0. Boualem Sansal by ActuaLitté, CC BY-SA 2.0. Chow Hang-tung by Iris Tong, Voice of America, public domain. Demonstration for Dawit Isaak by Frankie Fouganthin, CC BY-SA 4.0. Eskinder Nega by Sarah Mwangi, CC0. Gautam Navlakha by Sidheeq, CC BY-SA 4.0. Ilham Tohti, Voice of America, public domain. Jimmy Lai, Office of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, public domain. Katsiaryna Andreyeva by Viasna, CC BY. Khadija Ismayilova by Aziz Karimov, CC BY-SA 4.0. Maksim Znak by the Coordination Council, CC BY 4.0. Maryia Kalesnikava by Сильные Новости, CC BY 3.0. Maykel Osorbo by Maykel Osorbo, CC0. Nabeel Rajab by Conor McCabe, CC BY-SA 2.0. Narges Mohammadi, Voice of America, public domain. Osman Kavala by Janbazian, CC BY-SA 4.0. Pham Doan Trang, United States government, public domain. Prabir Purkayastha by Adv.tksujith, CC BY-SA 3.0. Rahile Dawut by Lisa Ross, CC BY-SA 4.0. Seymur Hazi by Parvana Bayramova, Voice of America, public domain. Svetlana Petriychuk by Nemever, CC BY-SA 4.0. Varavara Rao by Batthini Vinay Kumar Goud, CC BY-SA 4.0. Yuri Dmitriev by Mediafond, CC BY-SA 4.0.