On 12 May 2026 PEN America sounded the alarm on a deepening global crackdown on free expression, reporting in its Freedom to Write Index that more than 400 writers are behind bars for the first time since the Index launched in 2019.
In 2025, a total of 401 writers were jailed across 44 countries – up from 375 writers in 40 countries the year before. Over the past seven years, the number of jailed writers worldwide has risen by 68 percent, underscoring a steady and alarming escalation in the suppression of dissent.
China remains the world’s leading jailer of writers, with 119 cases – making it the only country to exceed 100 writers held behind bars. The sharpest increase came from Iran, where authorities carried out 17 new arrests, driving numbers back toward the peak levels seen during the 2022 ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ protests. The spike signals a renewed and aggressive campaign to silence critical voices. The escalating suppression in Iran intensified in the aftermath of the June 2025 war with Israel, sweeping up both newly targeted writers and long-persecuted dissident voices. Among those arrested were online commentator Hossein Ronaghi, who was detained in June; a group of scholars and translators detained in November, including economists Parviz Sedaghat and Mohammad Maljoo, sociologist Mahsa Asadollanejad, and writer and translator Shirin Karimi; and human rights defenders and authors Narges Mohammadi and Sepideh Gholian, who were violently re-arrested while speaking at a memorial service in December.
Iran was one of three countries among the top 10 jailers of writers that were simultaneously engaged in armed conflict in 2025, along with Russia and Israel/Occupied Palestinian Territory. Authorities in these three countries repeatedly targeted writers who used anti-war language or themes in their poetry, music, scripts, commentaries, articles, or literary output, a key pattern that emerged in the 2025 data.
In Israel/Occupied Palestinian Territory, six writers have been detained by the Israeli government over anti-war statements. Palestinian writers and commentators Mohamed Al-Atrash, Nawaf El-Amer, Radwan Qatanani, Rula Hassanein,and scholar Anwar Rostom were detained on charges of incitement or with no charges at all, in addition to Jewish-Israeli journalist and commentator Israel Frey who was investigated for terrorism, because of their commentary on the war, the genocide, and the occupation.
In Russia the government held 18 writers in prison or detention in 2025, most targeted for their anti-war expression or suspected involvement in anti-war activity. In March, a Russian military court sentenced historian and columnist Alexander Skobov to 16 years in prison for his anti-war posts on social media. Other writers opposed to the war have fled into exile to avoid prosecution or jailing for their dissenting viewpoints.Overall, the top 10 top jailers of writers are China and its autonomous regions, including Xinjiang, Tibet, and Hong Kong (119); Iran (53); Saudi Arabia (27); Vietnam (24); Türkiye (22); Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory (21); Russia (18); Belarus (17); Egypt (13); and Myanmar (10). [https://iranfocus.com/human-rights/57848-record-number-of-imprisoned-writers-worldwide-iran-ranks-second-with-53-jailed-writers/]
Several countries appeared in this year’s Index for the first time including Togo, Mozambique, and the United States. The U.S. case centers on the weeks-long detention of Sami Hamdi, a British opinion writer and columnist, who was detained in what PEN America views as part of the U.S. government’s weaponization of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Hamdi, an outspoken critic of Israel, was on a speaking tour and had just attended a conference when ICE officers stopped him at San Francisco International Airport and held him in custody for two weeks.
“The fact that the United States is in our Freedom to Write Index for the first time should be a sharp wake-up call for everyone in the country who claims to value free expression,” said Liesl Gerntholtz, managing director of the Freedom To Write Center. “No government can misuse its own detention and immigration systems to silence or intimidate independent voices and call itself a democracy.”
In a Q&A on 16 April 2026 with Abdulhakim Idris, head of the Center for Uyghur Studies, Freedom Housediscusses his work exposing the Chinese Communist Party’s repression and how Chinese authorities have menaced him and his family in an attempt to prevent him from speaking out. Here some excerpts:
Abdulhakim Idris (Photo Credit: Center for Uyghur Studies)
The People’s Republic of China conducts the world’s most sophisticated and comprehensive campaign of transnational repression, targeting human rights defenders, journalists, students, artists, and members of religious and ethnic minorities. Uyghurs, an ethnic group from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, have fled repression in China for decades. Abroad, many members of the group face the threat of transnational repression via detention, unlawful deportation, rendition, coercion by proxy, surveillance, and digital harassment. Uyghur individuals are involved in over 20 percent of the incidents in Freedom House’s transnational repression database, which catalogues direct, physical cases around the world from 2014 to 2025.
Last month, Abdulhakim Idris, head of the Center for Uyghur Studies in Washington, DC, and a leading Uyghur scholar and advocate, was detained for nearly a day and subsequently expelled from Malaysia at the behest of Chinese authorities, preventing him from launching the Malay-language edition of his book about how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) pressures governments in the Islamic world to remain silent about its persecution of Uyghurs. As Idris explains, this act of transnational repression sets a dangerous precedent for every other American advocate, journalist, and researcher operating abroad. Below, Idris describes his work exposing CCP abuses, and how they sought to silence him—in Malaysia and elsewhere.
Freedom House: Could you describe your work as executive director of the Center for Uyghur Studies?
Abdulhakim Idris: As executive director of the Center for Uyghur Studies (CUS), I lead a mission at the intersection of human rights advocacy, academic research, and diplomatic engagement to address the crisis in East Turkistan (known formally as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region). By producing rigorous, evidence-based reports and briefing global lawmakers, I work to expose Chinese Communist Party narratives and ensure the international conversation on its persecution of Uyghurs remains rooted in scholarly data and cultural expertise. My work translates this research into action, raising awareness through media advocacy and high-level briefings to reach the audiences most capable of effectuating change. I also work to engage Muslim-majority countries where Chinese economic pressure often buys silence. By briefing religious leaders and civil society across the Middle East, Africa, and Asia, I demonstrate that the persecution of Uyghurs is an assault on our shared faith and part of China’s war on religious beliefs.
My advocacy is deeply personal: 24 of my family members have been missing since 2017, including my mother, Habibehan Idris; my brother Abdurehim; my sister Buhedichehan; and all of my nieces and nephews. In August 2023, I learned about my father’s passing in Hotan seven months earlier in January 2023.
As a bridge between the diaspora and the international community, I provide the strategic recommendations and testimony needed to transform our personal data into global action.
How long have you been involved in advocacy on behalf of the Uyghur people?
I was born in Hotan, East Turkistan, in 1968. My journey began with a foundation in faith and scholarship; I studied Islamic Sciences and Arabic in underground madrasas in Hotan before leaving in 1986 to study at Al-Azhar University in Egypt. This background gave me a profound understanding of the religious identity that the CCP is currently attempting to erase.
In 1990, I became one of the first Uyghurs to seek asylum in Germany. Settling in Munich, I balanced my studies in Industrial Management with a mission to organize our people. I am one of the founders of the East Turkistan Union in Europe (1991), the very first Uyghur organization on the continent. Over the next two decades, I focused on building the institutional architecture of our struggle. I am proud to be one of the founders of both the World Uyghur Youth Congress (1996), where I served as chairman of the executive committee, and the World Uyghur Congress (2004), where I have held different leadership roles.
Since moving to the United States in 2009, I have continued this work in Washington, DC, serving on the board of the Uyghur American Association. In 2017, my wife, Rushan Abbas, and I cofounded Campaign for Uyghurs (CFU) to bring more urgent awareness to CCP abuses against Uyghurs.
In recent years, the nature of the struggle has changed. As the Chinese government intensified its repression campaign, our response needed to become more robust. This led me to establish the Center for Uyghur Studies, where I have combined advocacy with the intellectual and scholarly dimension necessary to challenge China’s influence, particularly in the Muslim-majority countries.
Why were you traveling to Malaysia? Can you describe what happened when you arrived?
We have been engaging in Uyghur advocacy in Malaysia since 2022, and since then, I have been there several times, including for a meeting with Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim.
The CCP considers me one of the foremost experts on its influence in Muslim-majority countries. My book is now translated into Turkish, Arabic, Malay, and Bahasa Indonesia. It has been an eye-opener about Chinese infiltration into Muslim-majority countries. Following its publication, both my wife and I were subjected to coordinated death threats and digital harassment. When I traveled to Jakarta for the Indonesian launch of the book, the Chinese embassy mobilized local proxies to stage public protests, including the burning of my picture and copies of my book.
Our Malaysian partner planned this advocacy trip and invited me to join. We were well prepared with reports and planned to launch the Malay-language edition of my book alongside several new reports from the Center for Uyghur Studies. My arrival in Kuala Lumpur was on March 29, 2026, and my departure was scheduled for April 8, 2026.
I arrived in Kuala Lumpur on March 29 at 7:00 am local time. When I came to the immigration hall, a Malaysian immigration officer pulled me aside, took my passport, and brought me to his office. An officer introduced himself as a Royal Malaysia Police officer and said that I would be denied entry and be deported. Five hours into this conversation, they put me in a temporary detention center at the airport. [Note: US citizens are not required to apply for a visa for a business or tourism stay in Malaysia of less than 90 days.]
My US passport was seized, and I was held without justification for 21 hours in detention, given only one small meal and one small bottle of water, before being escorted by four police officers onto a deportation flight.
After approximately 70 hours of continuous travel and detention, I arrived safely back in the United States. Our partner in Kuala Lumpur confirmed to me that my denied entry was the result of pressure directly from Beijing.
This is not an isolated incident but a pattern of Chinese intimidation. Last year, I was similarly denied entry to Indonesia under pressure from the Chinese embassy in Jakarta, but that time, after intervention by the US government, I was able to secure entry. This time, despite the State Department and the US embassy in Kuala Lumpur escalating the matter to Malaysian immigration, Beijing prevailed. The escalation is alarming.
Beijing’s goal is to silence my research before it reaches Malay-speaking communities. My only “crime” is being a dissident from a community persecuted by the Chinese government and exposing China’s broader threats to humanity, freedom, and democracy. China has now successfully used a third country to detain and expel a US citizen. If this stands, it sets a dangerous precedent for every American advocate, journalist, and researcher operating abroad. This is a clear case of Chinese transnational repression, specifically targeting me as a US citizen.
Has anything like this happened before?
Yes. We held an advocacy trip to Indonesia between July 11, 2024, and July 20, 2024. Our partner in Indonesia organized the events and invited me. The trip involved multiple meetings, seminars, and roundtable discussions with key Indonesian stakeholders, including politicians, NGO leaders, and religious figures. In total, we visited and held activities in five cities, including Jakarta, Pontianak, Surabaya, Yogyakarta, and remotely in Medan.
There were several challenges we faced during this trip. The CCP propaganda campaign is now widespread across Indonesia, including among NGOs and social media platforms such as TikTok, X, and Facebook. The Chinese government’s extensive propaganda campaigns, including social media advertisements and influence on local leaders, have created a significant hurdle.
When we held our event in Pontianak, Indonesian immigration officials showed up, checked my visa, and told me I was not allowed to speak at events on a tourist visa and that I would need a C10 visa for that purpose. We then changed our approach: I gave all my presentations to our Indonesian partners, who then proceeded with the seminars. We could adapt because our Indonesian colleagues were trained and experienced on the Uyghur issue after two years of working together.
On a subsequent trip between April 26, 2025, and May 6, 2025 to Indonesia, I traveled on a speaker visa and was detained at the airport for three hours before being allowed to enter the country after the intervention of the US government.
In both cases, as in Malaysia, the pressure traced back to Beijing. The difference is that in Indonesia, I was eventually able to seek clarity and secure entry. In Malaysia, I was not.
Have you ever experienced any other forms of transnational repression, such as threats, harassment, or coercion of your family?
Transnational repression is not an abstract concept for me. It is a painful, daily reality that has fundamentally reshaped my family’s life. The Chinese government frequently uses the safety and freedom of our loved ones back home as leverage to silence our advocacy in the West. Since repression of Uyghurs has intensified deeply since 2017, I have lost all contact with my relatives in Hotan. In Uyghur culture, family is everything. Being severed from one’s roots is a form of psychological warfare.
In August 2023, I received a devastating message from an anonymous source. I was informed that my father, Abdulkarim Zikrullah Idris, had passed away seven months earlier, in January 2023, in our hometown of Hotan. Because the CCP has cut all lines of communication between the diaspora and our families in East Turkistan, I was not able to be with him, speak to him, or even know he was gone when it happened. The last time I heard my father’s voice was in April 2017. Shortly after that phone call, the mass detentions began, and contact was severed entirely. For six years, I lived with the agonizing uncertainty of not knowing if he was safe, if he was in a camp, or if he was even alive.
This is a form of psychological torture that hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs in the diaspora face every day. Because of the total lack of transparency in the region, the exact circumstances of his death remain unclear. We do not know if he had access to medical care, or if the stress of the ongoing persecution contributed to his passing. What we do know is that he died in a police-state environment where his children were unable to fulfill their final duties to him.
My family was not the only one targeted. In September 2018, just six days after my wife Rushan Abbas spoke publicly about my families’ disappearance while highlighting the Chinese government’s mass detention of Uyghurs, her sister Dr. Gulshan Abbas was forcibly disappeared from her home in Urumqi. The spokesperson of China’s Foreign Ministry officially confirmed on December 31, 2020, that she had been sentenced to 20 years in prison on baseless charges in connection with terrorism. Dr. Gulshan Abbas was a retired medical doctor who had never been involved in politics. Her imprisonment remains an act of transnational repression, intended to terrorize our family, silence us, and force us to stop advocating for our people.
The CCP’s tactics of transnational repression have taken other forms as well. After I gave testimony before the Uyghur Tribunal in London in 2021, which concluded that China was committing crimes against humanity against the Uyghur people, Chinese state television broadcast my photograph and denounced me for testifying. This was meant to intimidate me publicly and to warn others of the consequences of speaking the truth. Before the 2024 General Assembly of the World Uyghur Congress in Sarajevo, my wife and I received an online video message containing direct death threats. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) contacted me and confirmed they were aware of the threat.
We have become targets of dehumanization, smear campaigns, character assassination, and threats against our lives. Even outside China, we live under constant fear and intimidation. Through these tactics, the Chinese government seeks not only to punish individuals but to spread fear across entire families and communities.
On 20 April 2026, DW has awarded its 12th Freedom of Speech Award to Jimmy Lai. A prominent advocate for press freedom & democracy in Hong Kong, the founder of the Apple Daily newspaper has been detained in solitary confinement since 2020.
Image: Anthony Wallace/AFP
On honoring Jimmy Lai, DW Director General Barbara Massing said: “Jimmy Lai has stood unwaveringly for press freedom in Hong Kong at great personal risk, even as space for independent journalism became increasingly limited. With Apple Daily, he gave journalists a platform for free reporting and a voice to the democracy movement in Hong Kong. His commitment reminds us that press freedom is never a given – it must be constantly defended. With the DW Freedom of Speech Award, we honour his indispensable dedication to democratic values.”
The DW Freedom of Speech Award will be presented on June 23, 2026, at the DW Global Media Forum, DW’s international media conference, in Bonn.
Jimmy Lai was born in southern China in 1947 and, as a young child, fled to Hong Kong in 1960. The British citizen founded the pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily in 1995 and later became one of the city’s most prominent advocates for democracy, financially supporting democratic parties and politicians and taking part in the mass protests of 2019 and 2020. Following the introduction of China’s national security law in Hong Kong in June 2020, Lai was later arrested and has remained in custody, and in prolonged solitary confinement, since December 2020. Regardless of his British citizenship, the Hong Kong authorities continue to deny the United Kingdom consular access to him.
In early 2026, a Hong Kong court sentenced Jimmy Lai to 20 years in prison. He had been convicted in December 2025, following a two-year trial, on charges including “conspiracy to collude with foreign forces” and conspiracy to publish “seditious material.”
“One of the reasons why they put you in solitary confinement, of which my father has been for more than five years now, is to tell you that nobody cares about you, that you’re going to die alone. And all the support and this award show that that is not the case. That people who fight for freedom, people who fight for the freedom of others, are never alone,” Jimmy Lai’s son Sebastien told DW in an exclusive interview.
A court in China sentenced the prominent human rights lawyer Xie Yang to five years in prison on March 23, 2026, on politically motivated charges of “inciting subversion of state power,” Human Rights Watch said on 24 March 2026. The Chinese government should immediately quash the conviction, which followed serious procedural violations and years of persecution, and free Xie unconditionally
The Changsha Intermediate People’s Court cited several of Xie’s WeChat posts as the basis for the verdict, Xie’s former wife, Chen Guiqiu, posted on social media. The court also ordered the confiscation of 100,000 yuan (US$14,500).
“The Chinese authorities’ prosecution of Xie Yang and the court’s harsh sentence reflects Beijing’s utter contempt for the rule of law,” said Maya Wang, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “This case not only aimed to persecute a brave human rights lawyer like Xie, but to intimidate all lawyers seeking to protect Chinese people’s rights.”
Xie’s trial violated the right to a fair trial by an independent and impartial court as provided under international human rights law, Human Rights Watch said. In addition, the proceedings violated China’s Criminal Procedural Law, which guarantees a right to a defense (articles 33-35), public trial hearings (article 188), and time limits for a criminal investigation. With time served, Xie’s sentence is expected to go to January 2027.
The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has recognized Xie’s detention as arbitrary and called for his immediate release.
Xie, 54, from Changsha, Hunan province, began practicing law in 2011. He has defended activists and victims of rights abuses in politically sensitive cases, including cases of religious persecution and land rights disputes.
Xie has faced repeated retaliation for his work. In July 2015, during the nationwide arrests of human rights lawyers known as the “709 crackdown,” Xie was tortured and subjected to enforced disappearance, convicted of “inciting subversion,” and imprisoned until 2017.
The authorities detained him again in January 2022 after he pressed for the release of a young teacher who had been forcibly committed to a psychiatric facility for criticizing censorship in education. Police raided Xie’s home, tortured him in custody, and held him on charges of “inciting subversion” and “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” said the US-based Chinese Human Rights Defenders.
“Foreign governments should continue to speak out for human rights lawyers like Xie Yang because this kind of support is most important when the circumstances are so dire,” Wang said. “Vocal international support could improve Xie’s treatment, and crucially, help give him and others in China the strength to persevere.”
Repressive regimes throughout the world deploy the machinery of the state to silence criticism and dissent. It is therefore hardly surprising that artists—whose creative work can expose, ridicule, and condemn in emotive and powerful ways—are common targets of political persecution. Over the past few years, there have been crackdowns on artists and performers in Russia, Belarus, Cuba, Azerbaijan, Egypt, China, and Venezuela, among other countries. The following artists dared to use their creative expression to challenge powerful systems, and have been punished with political imprisonment. From: Political Prisoners Watch February 19, 2026
Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara is a Cuban artist and activist whose evocative performance art led to government harassment and numerous periods of detention. After the Cuban government enacted Decree 348 in 2018, which required artists to obtain advance approval for even private performances, he cofounded the San Isidro Movement to protest the increasing censorship of free expression. On July 11, 2021—the start of the historic J11 protests—he was arrested and has been detained ever since. In June 2022, he was sentenced to five years in prison for contempt, public disorder, and insulting symbols of the homeland, and remains in prison in Cuba. [https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2024/09/19/the-rafto-prize-2024-to-cuban-artivist-luis-manuel-otero-alcantara/]
Maykel Osorbo Castillo Pérez is a Cuban musician who cofounded the San Isidro Movement with Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara. Due to his activism and vocal opposition to the Cuban regime, he was subjected to systemic harassment, including being arrested 121 times in a five-month period. He cowrote the 2021 song Patria y Vida(Homeland and Life), which inspired thousands to demonstrate against Cuba’s repressive regime and won two Latin Grammys. He was not able to accept the awards, however—in May 2021, he was arrested, forcibly disappeared for 14 days, and eventually sentenced to nine years in prison on charges of contempt, public disorder, and defamation of institutions and organizations, heroes, and martyrs.
Gao Brothers, The Utopia of the 20 Minute Embrace (2000), modified image via Wikimedia Commons, used under CC BY-SA 3.0.
Gao Zhen is a Chinese artist and US permanent resident who was detained while visiting family in China in August 2024. Avant-garde works by Gao and his brother Gao Qiang—known together as the Gao Brothers—include huge, mirror-like sculptures and other works critiquing Mao Zedong and China’s Cultural Revolution. Authorities allege that Gao committed the offense of “insulting or defaming heroes and martyrs,” though the art in question had been created years before the Law on the Protection of Heroes and Martyrs was enacted. Gao’s wife Zhao Yaliang has been prohibited from leaving China, and she and their young son have remained there since his detention. [https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cddqpr7z74yo]
Galal El-Behairy is an Egyptian poet and singer/songwriter who has faced severe retaliation for his artistic work. He wrote the lyrics for the guitar-driven protest song Balaha, which mocked Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and the country’s corrupt establishment. Five days after its release in February 2018, he was arrested by the National Security Police and disappeared for a week. In July 2018, he was sentenced to three years in prison by a military court for allegedly spreading false news and rumors and insulting the Egyptian army in his poetry book The Finest Women on Earth. Although his sentence expired in 2021, he was not released, and he is now facing additional charges including disseminating fake news and joining and aiding a terrorist organization.
UN human rights experts on 5 February 2026 urged China to immediately grant full access to adequate medical treatment for woman human rights defender, Yang Li, from Jintan, Jiangsu Province, saying that her attempts to travel to Beijing for medical appointments have been intercepted on numerous occasions and allegedly resulted in her arbitrary detention.
“The arrest and indictment of Yang Li appear to represent an effort by the authorities to prevent her from peacefully exercising her rights to seek redress for legitimate grievances. This harassment is compounded by the fact that it was coupled with preventing her from accessing medical treatment,” the experts said.
Yang Li has been advocating against land requisition and crop clearance being carried out by the authorities in Jiangsu Province since 2009. Her efforts to seek redress for her family and members of her community through filing petitions have led to her being administratively detained multiple times since 2014.
Since 2023, Yang Li has consistently attempted to travel to Beijing to file petitions and receive medical treatment. During these attempts, she has been subjected to physical assaults, administrative detention and been prevented from accessing necessary medical treatment – reportedly by officials from the Jintan and Beijing police. In October 2024, Yang Li was placed in criminal detention for the charge of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” which was later changed to “disrupting the work order of state organs.” Yang Li was convicted in September 2025 and sentenced to 15 months imprisonment in a judicial process that indicated several fair trial inconsistencies.
“Yang Li is in urgent need of adequate medical treatment, capable of responding to the late-stage kidney disease she is suffering from,” the experts said. “Her condition appears to have worsened significantly as a result of the repeated denial of medical care, her treatment whilst in prison and the stress she has been subjected to through numerous detentions that appear to have been carried out without legal basis or justification.”
“We urge the authorities to cease the harassment and intimidation of Yang Li and her family and allow her full, immediate access to medical treatment of her choosing, to ensure her health does not further deteriorate and to prevent long-lasting impacts,” the experts said.
The experts have been in contact with the Government of China on these issues.
Today, 24 January 2026, marks the International Day of the Endangered Lawyer. In recognition of endangered lawyers around the world, the undersigned NGOs, express deep alarm at the growing repression of lawyers worldwide for the legitimate exercise of their professional duties. Attacks on lawyers strike at the very heart of the rule of law, deny victims meaningful access to justice, and enable wider assaults on human rights and democratic institutions.
In Russia, the regime of Vladimir Putin has moved to punish not only opponents but also those who defend them. One year ago this month, to cite just one example, lawyers Vadim Kobzev, Alexei Liptser, and Igor Sergunin, members of the defense team of the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny, were sentenced to an average of four and a half years in prison on fabricated extremism charges simply for carrying out their ordinary professional duties. Since then, Russia has intensified its harassment of lawyers, most recently arresting human rights attorney Maria Bontsler in May 2025.
In Afghanistan, the Taliban’s seizure of the Afghanistan Independent Bar Association and the transfer of licensing to the Ministry of Justice effectively stripped thousands of lawyers of their right to practise, with women lawyers almost entirely excluded from the profession.
In Iran, recent reports show a pattern of state capture of bar associations, politically motivated prosecutions, and gender specific persecution of women lawyers, which together erode fair trial guarantees for all.
In Tanzania, legal advocates have faced systemic oppression from the government, including oppression under the Advocates Act, which gives the executive branch power to manage the legal profession and control over disciplinary measures against lawyers.
In China, the regime systematically cracks down on human rights lawyers, using vague national security laws and administrative controls to dismantle the independent legal profession.
These examples are a part of a wider and well-documented trend. Lawyers are disbarred, disciplined, arbitrarily detained, prosecuted, forced into exile, subjected to surveillance and harassment, and in some cases killed, precisely because they seek to uphold the rights of their clients, including human rights defenders, opposition leaders, journalists, women, minorities, and other marginalized communities.
Despite this, lawyers continue to perform a crucial function. Even in countries without an independent and impartial judiciary, where judicial outcomes are largely predetermined, lawyers document abuses, create records of testimonies and verdicts, and preserve evidence that can one day support accountability. Their efforts also enable recourse to international and regional mechanisms once domestic remedies have been exhausted or shown to be ineffective. As the UN Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers recognized in her 2024 report, “justice systems play an essential role in safeguarding democracy, and the work of those justice systems is carried out by people. To protect the rule of law and democracy, we must protect those people.”
Justice is never won easily. But it cannot be won at all if those who defend it are left defenseless.
On May 13, 2025, the Council of Europe (CoE) Convention on the Protection of the Profession of Lawyer opened for signature. This is the first international treaty specifically designed to safeguard lawyers from threats, harassment, and undue interference in their work. This is a historic breakthrough, but it will mean little if governments fail to give it real force. We call on all CoE member states to sign and ratify the Convention without delay and to implement it fully. We encourage states in other regions to develop complementary binding standards so that protection of the legal profession becomes a universal norm…
No lawyer should be punished for defending a client. We honour the courage of all endangered lawyers working under threat, and we reaffirm our collective commitment to protect them and to uphold the right of every person to an independent defense and a fair trial.
Respectfully,
Human Rights Foundation
The Anti-Corruption Foundation
The Arrested Lawyers Initiative
Free Russia Foundation
Freedom House
Freedom Now
George W. Bush Institute
Global Magnitsky Justice Campaign
Human Rights First
Lantos Foundation for Human Rights and Justice
Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights
Elisa Massimino, Human Rights Institute, Georgetown Law
On 14 November 2025, Scilla Alecci of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, Inc. (ICIJ) wrote about a parliamentary report which identified China and other authoritarian regimes as harassing and attacking dissidents abroad, echoing findings from ICIJ’s China Targets.
European Parliament in Brussels, Belgium.
The European Parliament has adopted a resolution urging member states to confront efforts by authoritarian regimes to coerce, control or silence political opponents and dissidents living in Europe. “Human rights defenders are a key pillar of democracy and the rule of law, and they are insufficiently protected,” a statement from the parliament said.
The resolution, adopted with a majority of 512 votes (to 76 against and 52 abstentions), called for targeted sanctions against perpetrators, market surveillance of spyware and better coordination among European authorities to counter what lawmakers labeled “transnational repression.”
The resolution is not legally binding but signals that European lawmakers want to take a clear position on the issue and draw attention to it, Elodie Laborie, a spokesperson for the Parliament’s Subcommittee on Human Rights, told the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists in an email.
It confirms findings by ICIJ’s China Targets investigation, which revealed how Beijing continues to use surveillance, hacking and threats against Chinese and Hong Kong dissidents, Uyghur and Tibetan advocates and their families to quash any criticism of the regime abroad.
Chinese authorities harassed several dozen Chinese film directors and producers, as well as their families in China, causing them to pull films from the inaugural IndieChina Film Festival in New York City. On November 6, 2025, the festival’s organizer, Zhu Riku, announced that the film festival, scheduled for November 8-15, had been “suspended.”
“The Chinese government reached around the globe to shut down a film festival in New York City,” said Yalkun Uluyol, China researcher at Human Rights Watch. “This latest act of transnational repression demonstrates the Chinese government’s aim to control what the world sees and learns about China.”
Chiang Seeta, a Chinese artist and activist, reported that nearly all participating directors in China faced intimidation. Even directors abroad, including those who are not Chinese nationals, reported that their relatives and friends in China were receiving threatening calls from police, said Chiang.
On November 1, the organizers issued an announcement on social media saying they had received messages from some film directors and producers and their families about Chinese government harassment: “We are deeply concerned about the situation. … [I]f you are under pressure not to attend the festival … we fully understand and respect it.” By November 4, more than two-thirds of participating films had cancelled their screenings.
After the festival was suspended, Zhu issued a statement that the decision was not out of fear, but rather to “stop harassment of … directors, guests, former staff, and volunteers associated with the festival, including my friends and family.”
Independent film festivals in China have faced intensifying crackdowns over the past decade, Human Rights Watch said. The Chinese authorities have shut down all three major independent film festivals in China: Yunfest, founded in 2003; the China Independent Film Festival, founded in 2003; and Beijing Independent Film Festival, founded in 2006.
When the authorities shut down the last screening of the Beijing Independent Film Festival in 2014, they cut off electricity from the venue, confiscated documents from the organizer’s office, and forced the organizers to sign a paper promising not to hold the festival. Many festival organizers have tried without success to adapt, for instance by changing their format to screenings at multiple venues.
The 14th China Independent Film Festival was shuttered in 2018, the last time such a festival took place in China.
A court in January 2025 sentenced Chen Pinlin, known as Plato, to three-and-a-half years in prison for allegedly “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” after he made a documentary about the “white paper protests” during Covid-19 lockdowns. Transnational repression can be defined as government efforts to silence or deter dissent by committing human rights abuses against their own nationals living abroad, their families at home, or members of the country’s diaspora. [see also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2025/10/17/un-report-highlights-chinas-targeting-of-human-rights-defenders-abroad/]
The Chinese government’s transnational repression of the arts has not been limited to film. Chinese officials interfered with an exhibition in Bangkok and censored artwork by Uyghur, Tibetan, and Hongkonger artists in August.
Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards 
