PEN America Releases New International Freedom To Write Index The second edition of PEN’s Freedom to Write Index sees an alarming jump in writer detentions from 238 detainees in 2019 to at least 273 in 2020, in 35 countries. Image: PEN America Top Three Offenders: China, Saudi Arabia, Turkey Writers, it’s asserted in the opening essay of PEN America’s new Freedom To Write 2020 assessment, released today (April 20), “have played an essential role during the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic, analyzing and critiquing government responses, documenting personal experiences, and shocking us into recognition that we must not return blindly to patterns of the past.” And the trend toward autocratic government, racism, xenophobia, nationalism and, in some cases, outright fascism, has found writers frequently vulnerable as governments and leaders “have used the pandemic and [racial and other] protest movements as an excuse to further constrain rights rather than expand them; they have wielded laws about disinformation as a means of silencing the truth; and they have specifically targeted those with the power to imagine and inspire.”