War often gives governments license to curtail freedom of expression, and writers are often among the first to pay the price, because they question official narratives, test the boundaries of permissible speech, and invite others to do the same. Recently, U.S. President Donald Trump, within inches of a journalist’s face on Air Force One, accused him of treason, after the reporter asked a simple news-gathering question about the possibility the United States might renew attacks on Iran: “What would be the use in repeating the bombing?”
Time and again, those who write about war — be they novelists, commentators, poets, or even economists — suffer the consequences. It is no coincidence that three of the world’s 10 most prolific jailers of writers — Russia, Iran, and Israel — have also been implicated in grave human rights abuses. Russia is waging a brutal war in Ukraine, Iran has a long record of violent repression and mass atrocities against civilians and dissidents, and Israel has been accused by United Nations bodies and independent experts of committing genocidal acts in Gaza. The United States made its first appearance as a jailer of writers in PEN America’s Freedom to Write Index for 2025 by holding a known critic of the Israeli government – British commentator Sami Hamdi – in ICE detention.
Crackdowns on writers, culture, and free expression during wartime emerged as a key trend in the data gathered by PEN America for this year’s Freedom to Write Index, which tracks cases of writers jailed 48 hours or more.
Writers in Wartime
The scars on free expression caused by war run deep and last years. As well as silencing critical voices, war destroys the very institutions of culture that writers seek to preserve and be part of. We see this in Gaza, where libraries, universities, and bookshops lie in ruins, and in Ukraine, which has been bearing witness to cultural destruction by Russia for more than a decade. In Russia itself, authorities held 18 writers in prison or detention in 2025, most for their anti-war expression or their suspected involvement in such expression, continuing a trend that began in 2022 following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Most of Russia’s cases are long-standing, reflecting its sustained crackdown on any anti-war speech, but as if underlining its commitment to suppressing anti-war speech, a Russian military court in March sentenced historian and columnist Alexander Skobov to 16 years in prison for his anti-war stance on social media.
The pattern of imprisoning writers during times of war is also clear in Iran, where writers face mounting danger from both deepening internal repression in 2025 and this year and the ongoing life-threatening consequences of Israeli and U.S. airstrikes. Iran’s sweeping roundup of critical voices — both established and emerging — meant that it had the biggest jump in cases of imprisoned writers, with a 23 percent spike in cases (from 43 in 2024 to 53 in 2025). Among those was one of Iran’s most prominent public intellectuals and economists, Parviz Sedaghat, whose writing included criticism of the Iranian regime’s policies as well as opposition to western sanctions and foreign intervention by the likes of Israel and the United States.
Long before the outbreak of the 12-day Israeli and U.S. bombing, including of Iran’s nuclear facilities, in June 2025, Iran had one of the world’s worst records on free expression. The June war and its aftermath further narrowed the space for dissent, with reports of arrests of dissident scholars, poets, and activists. As the conflict unfolded, some anti-government protesters hoped that U.S. pressure or even military action, encouraged by rhetoric from Trump suggesting the possibility of regime change, might weaken or dislodge the Islamic Republic. Instead, the Iranian authorities used the crisis to justify renewed repression. At the same time, military strikes by Israel and the United States heightened the risks facing those writers already wrongfully detained, including writers held in notorious prisons such as Evin in Tehran.
Israeli authorities have also cracked down on Israeli writers who spoke out against the June 2025 Iran war or who criticized Israel’s actions in Gaza. Israeli writer and journalist Israel Frey, for example, was detained and charged with terrorism after commenting on the deaths of five Israeli soldiers in Gaza. Five Palestinian writers – journalists Mohamed Al-Atrash, Nawaf El-Amer, Radwan Qatanani, and Rula Hassanein, as well as scholar Anwar Rostom — were detained either on charges of incitement or with no charges at all, clearly targeted for their commentary on the war in Gaza.
The Dark Debut of the U.S. in the Index
The inclusion of the United States in the Index for the first time reflects a troubling willingness by the U.S. government to use immigration detention and other coercive state powers against individuals whose speech challenges government policy, including foreign policy. Sami Hamdi was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in October 2025 during a speaking tour in the United States, despite not being accused of any crime. Hamdi agreed to leave the United States after he was released and the authorities allowed him to depart for the United Kingdom without a removal order.
Hamdi’s case did not occur in isolation. The Trump administration has targeted pro-Palestinian voices through visa revocations, detention, and deportation proceedings. Among the most widely reported cases was that of Turkish doctoral student and writer Rumeysa Öztürk, who was detained after co-authoring a student newspaper opinion piece calling on her university to respond more forcefully to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. The use of detention or immigration enforcement in response to peaceful expression sends a chilling message: that criticism of government policy, particularly in times of war, may carry personal consequences beyond public debate.
The appearance of the United States in the Index matters, not only for the individual writers who lose their freedom and their voices, but also because when a country that has long claimed to champion free expression begins detaining writers for their speech, it weakens the global norm that writers must be free to challenge power, especially in times of conflict.
Beyond the Index’s “top 10 jailers,” wars and conflicts are a threat to free speech in other places, too. In India, scholar and online commentator Ali Khan Mahmudabad was detained because of his criticism of his government’s “Operation Sindoor,” a May 2025 missile assault on Pakistani military bases in retaliation for attacks the previous month in India-controlled Kashmir.
So even when writers around the world are separated by country and/or language and by medium, they are connected by a willingness to question authority and the courage to disrupt the steady drumbeat of war and atrocities. An attack on even one writer should be read as a warning to everyone else that the right to dissent is in danger. Their imprisonment demands solidarity from all who value free expression: fellow writers who raise their voices, publishers and media outlets that keep their stories alive, advocates who campaign for their release, and governments that use diplomatic channels to challenge repression. The most effective response to the silencing of writers is to ensure that their words — and the principles they represent — continue to be heard.
