Beyond Banned Books Week: How You Can Fight For Oppressed Writers (SLIDESHOW)

After a week of celebrating the liberty to dive into titles like "Lolita" or the "Catcher in the Rye," Banned Books Week comes to a close. Yet there are still those who are being persecuted for attempting to embrace such freedoms of expression.

Amnesty International has taken the occasion of Banned Books Week -- and beyond -- to call attention to oppressed writers worldwide.

"We wanted to add an international component to Banned Books Week. We wanted to broaden it from solely looking at censorship to what other risks writers face now in various countries around the world," Michael O'Reilly, Amnesty International campaign director, told the Huffington Post. "If you don't have the right to express your thoughts, you won't have ability to advocate the full range of human rights."

The writers highlighted below have been imprisoned, had their publication shutdown and received death threats.

"The cases this year -- they do give a good picture of countries where freedom of expression is under fire."

The mail-in petitions below call for government action to allow free expression. O'Reilly noted that taking the extra step of actually sending mail is a key part of affecting change.

"The ability to put paper on someone's desk has a different impact than filling up an email box," he said, explaining that the organization will sometimes translate online campaigns to print as well. "I don't think Amnesty will ever go fully online."

O'Reilly recalled one campaign that prompted an international ambassador from Togo to march into his Washington, D.C., office saying his desk had filled up with petitions calling for prisoners to be released. O'Reilly said he was informed that a number of individuals had in fact been set free.

"Our goal is to provoke more of that," he said.

Click to read about writers who are being oppressed worldwide. Do your part to help give them the freedoms you celebrate during this year's Banned Book Week.

Photos: Courtesy Of Amnesty International unless otherwise noted:

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Comments

[mama5844]

10:18 PM on 10/02/2011

It's ironic that the novel Fahrenheit 451 - a book about the states ban on reading and free thought - when it wasn't being outright banned, was for decades sold to schools and the public only after it had been 'scrubbed' clean by the publishers of some of the more 'non-conformist ideas' presented in the pages. Ray Bradbury didn't even know about it.

[intranautt]

02:26 PM on 10/02/2011

Let's not forget "All Quiet on the Western Front" by Erich Maria Remarque.

[dbrett480]

02:36 PM on 10/01/2011

People always think that journalists are only oppressed in the middle east. They forget that our neighbor to the south has a terrible record of silencing journalists reporting on the high level of corruption in the Mexican government.

[Skunkman]

07:43 AM on 10/01/2011

It is cruel to ask students in the United States of America to think or to read things that lead them to think. Thinking is quite dangerous to the status quo, and parents have a "god"™-given right to control their kids' educations, thinking, destinies, and beliefs (Sunday school, anyone?). Imagine the confusion if kids thought for themselves!! "Most people would rather die than think; in fact, they do so." (Bertrand Russell)

Mike

[torriee]

06:35 AM on 10/01/2011

that is simply not true - hundreds of thousands people doing that and it is a problem.

[CabCurious]

09:54 AM on 09/30/2011

I appreciate the article and coverage.

But the people supporting these causes need to be people from these nations who can apply pressure and leverage, because random Americans wagging fingers won't change anything.