>> From WXXI News.

This is Connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

Our connection this hour was made at the Cannes Film Festival, where Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi was one one of the top prizes for his film.

It was just an accident.

The film follows five former inmates in Iran who consider taking revenge against a man they blame for their incarceration.

The jury at Cannes decided this was an important piece of expression and a film that everyone should see.

The Iranian government decided that the filmmaker should go to prison.

Yesterday, Iran sentenced Panahi to a year in prison.

Although Panahi is out of the country and has not been detained.

A state spokesman said that the filmmaker had engaged in propaganda activities against the state.

Around the world.

Governments are feeling emboldened in their attack on free expression.

Pen America tracks the number of writers and artists who are in prisons, and the numbers are rising.

The concern is that autocrats inspire fellow autocrats.

But not all of these stories are happening elsewhere in the United States, ümeysÖürk was detained by masked men who pulled her into a van, all because she wrote a piece criticizing Israel's actions in Gaza.

I'm not drawing a perfect parallel from the United States to Turkey or Algeria or Venezuela or China.

It's different from place to place, but the momentum is not on the side of free expression at the moment.

And Pen America wants everyone to see these kinds of cases wherever they're happening.

They want our attention on the threats to free expression.

The Rochester chapter of the World Affairs Council is welcoming Karin Deutsch Karlekar, who is director of Writers at Risk at Pen America, and at first, first Khan is joining us here on Connections.

It's been a little while.

It's been a number of years since you've been back here, but you're also in your kind of your home digs.

We like to think as a Rochester ish native.

Is that fair?

>> Yes, definitely.

I grew up on Canisius Lake and I attended the Harley School, which was an amazing experience.

Now I serve on the board at Harley.

I'm trying to help Harley provide those same types of educational opportunities that I had more than 30 years ago for a broad, diverse array of students.

>> And how do you become the director of Writers at Risk at Pen America?

>> Well, my path was, I would say, not the typical path.

I went to college, I majored in history, minored in economics, and then I went off to do a PhD in Indian history in the UK, in Cambridge.

And when I came back, I was very I was interested to get into the field of human rights.

I had done an internship at the State Department when I was in college and had gotten very, very interested in human rights issues.

And so when I was moving back and moved and moved to New York City, I looked for opportunities to to delve into these passions and, you know, international affairs, human rights.

I started working at freedom House, which is a nonprofit that works to track democracy and trends around the world.

And I worked there for 14 years, and then I made the shift over to Pen America, where I worked specifically on Writers at risk and doing individual case advocacy and assistance.

>> Well, don't let me be the one to make the case.

Do you agree with the assessment that right now, free expression is it's not a good trend around the world?

>> I definitely agree in terms of our own, you know, findings and data at Penn, we produce every year the Freedom to Write index, which is it's basically a report that tracks the number of writers jailed around the world.

And for each of the last six years we've produced this report, the numbers have gone up.

This past year, we had 375 writers in jail.

and it's not just a small number of countries.

There's 80 countries where we're, you know, we have we have writers being detained.

aside from that, just aside from the jailing of a writer, we have many, many more cases of other types of threats against writers.

And I would say these types of threats are you know, not just in the most authoritarian or repressive countries, but increasingly are being seen in democratic countries.

So this could include, you know, censorship of their work.

It could include online harassment.

It could include spurious legal charges or cases against them.

You know, and we're seeing a number of cases like this countries like India, countries like Turkey and we're even seeing cases in the U.S.

of writers facing threats and harassment.

>> Does the Jimmy Kimmel affair rise to the level of anything on your radar?

>> Yes, it would for sure.

there's also the case, for example, of Karen Usha, who is a columnist for The Washington Post.

she's someone I know personally and have followed her work for years.

and she, she basically lost her job because she wrote an op ed and she was writing on social media, speaking out about racial issues and political violence in the U.S.

In the U.S.

So we see cases like that.

There's many, many cases of writers facing online threats and harassment.

Online trolling is a huge issue in the U.S.

and many other democratic environments.

we've seen writers and journalists like Rana Ayyub, who is a Indian columnist for the Washington Post who is facing serious death threats right now in India.

In the past, she has faced travel bans.

She's facing spurious lawsuits about taxes and a very, very high level of government directed trolling against her.

So these types of cases are worrying because they're occurring in such a broad number of countries as well.

>> Do you consider yourself fellow travelers with fire?

The organization called fire in the United States?

>> a little bit.

Some of my colleagues work quite a bit with fire because I work mostly on the international space.

I but yeah, we we do work with them.

I would I would say some of some of their policies and ideas are a little bit more black and white than ours are.

Pen tries to balance the right to free expression, for example, with a number of other rights.

and so we, we do work with fire occasionally, but we have a slightly different approach.

>> We're going to get back to the a lot of these international issues in just a moment here.

And we're going to spend some time this hour talking about what people, wherever you are around the world, might do to help improve the chances that free expression can flourish.

but you mentioned Karen Attia at The Washington Post, and I'm I'm trying to I think her situation changed after the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

And I don't have the column in front of me that sparked the backlash.

There was discussion about, you know, essentially is there hagiography of Charlie Kirk happening, or should we examine what he actually did say about people like Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and many other people?

And certainly said some racist things about airline everything from airline pilots to public figures.

Yeah.

And so but I bring up this case because when you reference it, there are those who would argue that, hey, look, Jafar Panahi is where you should be focusing Karen Attia.

That was consequence culture.

That wasn't cancel culture, that wasn't that wasn't denying free expression.

She can go express whatever she wants, but her employer doesn't have to keep her employed.

If she says something that is so offensive that a majority of their readership would say, we want her out of here, what do you think?

>> I mean, definitely there's a difference between government you know, sponsored or directed censorship and something where an employer is, I guess, firing or disciplining an employee.

So those are two different things.

And the First Amendment is clearly focused on on governmental overreach and censorship, not what's happening in the private sphere.

but I but I do think there are Connections.

For example, if the owner of the Washington Post is trying to curry favor with the government he may be more likely to take a different approach and to and to censure reporters who previously were able to write whatever they wanted.

And Karen, for many years and other Washington Post reporters did just that.

She is a columnist.

She's supposed to express her opinions.

so we are seeing, I think, here in the U.S.

a nexus between you know, media owners.

and that's the case in television stations.

It's also the case you know, with The Washington Post where those media owners are making decisions and censoring critical voices that that cross certain lines because they are trying to, you know, maybe get a good business deal or have a monopoly, you know, a merger go through, you know, things like that.

So there are that's where the sort of gray areas happen, I think here more in the U.S.

I mean, we don't have cases of really there are very few cases in the U.S.

of writers or others being jailed for their expression.

So that is is highly unusual, but it is detention.

>> I mentioned those terms, but I mean at least temporary detention is happened.

>> Yes.

And that's a new thing.

Like I've, I've been in this field for 25 years.

I have never been seeing the types of cases in the U.S.

that we have been seeing now.

and so that is that is definitely of concern to me.

And these are detentions.

there was a reporter, Mario Guevara, who was was jailed and detained and in Georgia and then deported because of his photojournalism, essentially.

and so we are seeing more and more cases like this in the U.S.

>> Yeah.

And then the rhetoric from the administration is new.

Yeah.

The president sort of haphazardly throwing around terms like treason or talking routinely about who he thinks should get fired.

Yes.

And what the vice president said after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, Vice President Vance not only hosted Charlie Kirk's show, which, of course, is his right to do, but he said that people who were making comments about Kirk that he didn't like that other Americans should call those people's employers.

Yeah.

And essentially try to get them fired.

>> Yes.

And hundreds of people have actually been.

>> Have actually.

>> Done since in the last few months because because of Charlie Kirk.

>> Related content JD Vance would say, hey, I'm simply saying that when you behave uncivilly or even immorally, in his view, that there's nothing wrong with the vice president nudging Americans to maybe, maybe go call that person's employer, make sure they know.

And if they want to fire that person, that's their choice.

The vice president's not saying the government is not.

We're not detaining you.

Yeah, we're not firing you.

We're simply suggesting what might be a good idea.

What do you think?

>> I mean, I think that's a very slippery slope.

And the fact that, you know, these are very real repercussions for people for expressing opinions, you know, mostly on social media.

In some cases, it is in, in the media.

But I do think that's that's a very slippery slope to start to start going down.

we also have seen, I would say, you know, this week The White House put up on their website a list of journalists and media outlets and articles that they don't like.

So this isn't just about expressing opinions.

It's about, you know, covering a story about corruption or digging too deep into into a story.

And that that is very authoritarian behavior.

And I'm not saying the U.S.

is at that level already, but what I have seen is that the patterns are mirroring trends that I have seen in other countries over the last 20 years.

What what I am seeing, though, is that in countries like Russia or Turkey, where the it was it was a long, slow progression and you could see 5 to 10 years of, of declining, you know, declining media freedom in the U.S., this same level of decline has been happening in the last less than a year.

So the the pace of the, of the decline is, is surprising to me.

Even you know, knowing that the U.S.

has, has, has had some issues over the years.

But it is surprising to me that we are falling so quickly into this abyss.

>> Do you think it is actually possible that it would get worse in this country?

Do you actually think that there is a future possibility in which journalists or writers are detained or imprisoned indefinitely?

Here?

>> I do I do think it's a possibility.

I was asked this question when I was doing a media interview in the spring on the release of our 2024 index, and the the journalist from The Guardian asked me this very question and I said, yes, at the rate we're going and the fact that, you know, sort of the the rule of law, the traditional guardrails in terms of, you know, following a judicial order, those things are being thrown out the window right now.

So there are very few checks and balances left.

unless, unless they, you know, unless Congress, for example, starts to push back or certain elements of the judiciary, like the Supreme Court, push back, the guardrails are really off.

And so I do think it is giving the government license to do many, many things, which I mean, for those of us in the field that I'm in, we would have thought this would be incomprehensible.

>> My guest is Karin Deutsch Karlekar, who's director of Writers at Risk at Pen America.

And Karen doesn't even spend most of her work domestically here.

You know her.

Her focus is on international cases.

And, you know, I mentioned off the top this Iranian filmmaker who is now, according to the Iranian government, he has engaged in propaganda against the state.

a year in prison would be the sentence for that.

Meanwhile, he goes to con Con film Festival.

The juries love him.

The film is a huge hit, but the Iranian government says he should go to prison for a year.

Now he is abroad.

What typically happens in a situation like this?

What is he able to still travel freely?

and is there concern that he could be detained?

What happens next?

>> Oh, there's absolutely concern he could be detained.

I was very lucky enough to meet him a few weeks ago in New York City when at the at the one of the openings of his his film.

and he is actually one of the cases that pen covers.

He's one of the writers in our database.

he has faced numerous sentences before.

He has been imprisoned for several stints of, you know, considerable periods of time.

And we advocated on his case.

The last time he was in prison.

so there was a very, very real chance that he would be detained on arrival when he when he goes back to Iran.

it's my understanding that he wants to return, and he feels that he it's his right to return.

But that is a very real risk.

other filmmaker colleagues have have made the difficult decision to leave Iran.

So there was another colleague of him, Mohammad Rasoulof.

He left Iran, he fled across the mountains and escaped Iran.

a year or two ago, after both of them had been imprisoned together.

so Panahi is making a different choice right now.

He wants to go back, but I would say it's a very high likelihood.

Possibility that he will be arrested at the airport.

>> When you met him several weeks ago, was this on the horizon?

Did everyone know this could happen?

>> I think so.

and he's been speaking out pretty.

you know, pretty easily and freely and in all the media and film appearances so far.

So he has not been pulling his punches.

He has not been self-censoring, and he knows very well what the repercussions of that could be.

But he is he is brave.

He speaks out on behalf of other prisoners behind bars.

you know, the subject of his recent film is a subject looking at what happens to people in prison.

so he is he is very much, you know, in there for the fight and in for the long haul and in for his right to be able to make movies in his country of origin.

>> So one of the questions that people in any part of society will have is, what can I do?

And obviously, if you're in the United States, it's different than if you're in Iran compared to if you're in Algeria or Venezuela.

But is there a commonality that you want people to be thinking about?

What can people around the world do to to help inspire more and protect free expression?

>> I mean, there's there's a number of things that can be done.

definitely.

I think giving attention, paying attention to these cases is the oxygen that they need.

and we have seen in many cases at Penn that the more attention is paid to a case, someone will be will get out of jail because of that international attention, because these governments do not want to be in the spotlight for these negative reasons.

so the more attention that can be paid by the media, by people talking about it on social media that that is all very, very helpful.

The other things I would say that can be done traditionally the U.S.

has been a strong supporter of free expression and has helped writers at risk and dissidents around the world.

this help.

>> Is.

>> Five years lightning strike.

Feedback from listeners who.

Hello.

I think we're back.

Okay, I think we're back.

Are we back on the air right now?

We are on the air.

So for listeners and viewers on YouTube, if you've been letting us know that you couldn't see us or hear us, we know we're working on that.

I think we're okay.

and Karin Deutsch Karlekar and I are just going to continue right along as best we can.

I'm sorry about that.

Totally fine.

Temporary interruption.

not a problem.

but Karen is the director of Writers at Risk at Pen America, and we're talking about freedom of expression around the world.

And so when we were briefly interrupted, there, we were talking about what people can do whether you live in sort of a, a safer country to speak or not, and there's not one perfect prescription, but take us through what you want people to understand about protecting free expression around the world.

>> I would say it's a global ecosystem.

And the U.S.

has traditionally been very, very strong in terms of helping to defend free expression.

And writers and journalists and activists at risk.

So the things that I would say that that would help that people could do would be to you know, talk to your congressperson, try to get their support for providing foreign aid, providing assistance, grants for writers at risk.

>> And you said publicize these cases, right?

>> Yes.

Publicize the cases.

the U.S.

traditionally also has granted visas to writers at risk who are fleeing their countries of origin and who are in grave danger and who do come to the U.S.

so that is something that is at risk now with broader sort of cutbacks in you know, immigration and granting visas from certain countries.

Interesting.

so it's, you know, it's virtually impossible to to get an Iranian writer at risk to the U.S.

right now because of the closure of the visas, that space.

>> So someone like Panahi, despite the how well known this person is as a filmmaker.

>> That is the only reason he got the visa.

>> He got.

>> The he is the only person I know from Iran who has gotten a visa in the last ten months.

>> But there are others who are at risk.

>> Yes, many others at risk who.

can't get.

the other thing I would say is that there is now a move as well to, to look at the social media profiles and dig into what people are saying when they get to this country.

So writers at risk who I know, who have fled to the U.S.

over the last decade, they are now worried about what they should could say or could not say, and if they might get deported, or if their visa might get taken away.

So we have writers who fled their countries of origin from countries like Bangladesh, from countries like Egypt, from Iran, and they are now self-censoring in the United States.

They are fearful of what they could say or not say because of of the current environment in the U.S.

So I think protecting what we can at home, but also trying to restrengthen the U.S.

's traditional big, big amount of support for writers at risk and free expression around the world is important.

And that happens through grants to foreign aid.

the other thing I would say is supporting the organizations that are working to defend these writers.

So that includes Pen, but there are many others in the ecosystem.

The Committee to Protect Journalists works a lot on journalists cases.

you know, amnesty, Human Rights Watch, Reporters Without Borders, freedom House those are all organizations that are in this ecosystem and doing this work and helping to amplify voices and get people to safety.

So supporting those organizations is also very, very important.

>> You say that when there is a lot of international attention on these cases, that tends doesn't always, but it can have an effect.

Yeah.

And yet you know, I don't know that Alexei Navalny was on the list.

Alexei Navalny, who died in prison in Russia.

was obviously someone who couldn't enjoy free expression.

But he was also political figure.

Yeah, but that case was one of the most well publicized cases of a wrongful detention around the world.

And it looks pretty clear that they killed him in prison anyway.

Yeah, it doesn't always work.

>> No, totally.

And we've had cases like that as well.

I mean, one of the main cases I worked on from Iran was a filmmaker and poet named Baktash Obtain.

He was jailed along with several colleagues from the Iranian Writers Association, and he passed away in state custody because they would not get him medical attention when he contracted COVID in prison.

So he died three years ago, almost four, almost four years ago, because of denial and delays in medical care.

but we do see a pen that, as you said, the the attention and the and the focus on these cases can make a difference.

Every year we give an award to a jailed writer.

It's called the Freedom to Write Award.

We give it out in May at our annual gala.

and over the four decades since we've been giving out this award, we've had 48 of the 55 honorees have been released, in part because of the attention that the award generates.

So we do have a pretty good track record, I would say, with trying to get people out of jail.

and so that is why we do what we do.

It's to try to release the individual writers.

I worked a lot on the case of Narges Mohammadi, who is a is a female human rights defender and activist and writer from Iran.

she went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize two years ago.

and we worked extensively on her case, and we did manage to get her out of prison.

about a year ago, early December 2024.

So these things are possible.

And the attention does does really help.

But, you know, there are more cases we're working right now.

In the case of Jalal Al Bahari, he is a poet and lyricist from Egypt.

He's been jailed for the last seven years.

Despite serving his sentence, the Egyptian authorities are still holding him in prison and coming up with new charges against him.

And this is because he wrote the lyrics to a song that was sort of made popular during the Arab Spring and became sort of an anthem of young, you know, revolutionaries, you know, protesters in Egypt.

and for this, he's been in jail for the last seven years.

>> where is it worst around the world right now for free expression?

>> I mean, definitely China always sort of tops our lists of the number of writers in prison.

I would say Iran, Saudi Arabia also traditionally very bad.

we've seen Turkey, Vietnam, Myanmar as well in our top ten.

and then we definitely have seen shifts in the last few years, the impact of the war in Gaza has, has jolted Israel into the top ten in terms of countries jailing writers for the first time ever.

and it's the same with journalists.

so that that is definitely a trend.

We've seen also the impact of the war with Russia and Ukraine.

Russian journalists and writers who are expressing dissenting views in Russia are also at risk of jail.

So Russia has jumped also into the top ten.

>> You mentioned Saudi Arabia and Pen had something to say about the recent comedy festival in Riyadh.

So for listeners who don't know about this comedians from a lot of American comedians, but comedians from around the world went I think in the late summer or fall to Riyadh.

>> October.

>> Yeah.

And it was it was highly publicized.

It was highly controversial.

There were a number of comedians who chose not to accept the invitation at all.

There were some who accepted the invitation and then saw the terms of the contract in which they're going to get paid a lot of money, but they were told there were certain things they couldn't joke about, including the Saudi royal family.

and then there were some who went and said, I'm taking the money.

And but then there were others who said, I'm taking the money.

And I want to see Saudi Arabia embrace the West, embrace Western values, laugh, see that we're all human beings, and that anything I can do to break down those barriers is a good thing.

So it's complicated.

I want to acknowledge that.

What was Pen's view of that?

>> Well, Pen is against cultural boycotts, and we do agree that there should be as much sort of cross cross-cultural and national fertilization and interaction as possible.

So we definitely felt that, you know, the comedians that took part in the festival had the right to go there for sure.

And that that Saudis have the right to hear, you know, a panoply of views from from comedians from all over the world.

And many of these people are very satirical.

They poke fun at people in power.

So, you know, comedy and satire is a good thing.

And the more of it the better, I would say.

but what we were worried about is, is just the, the impression that this is sort of whitewashing the atrocious human rights record of the Saudi government.

The film festival, the comedy festival took place right around the seventh anniversary of the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, who is an exiled Saudi journalist in the Turkish consulate at the hands of Saudi murderers and directed at the highest levels of the Saudi government.

we, we see even in the past year, another journalist, Turkey Al-jasser, was executed in Saudi Arabia.

We see that numerous other people, writers, journalists, people who are just writing something on social media about human rights or women's rights, for example, they are getting prison sentences of 30 or 45 years simply for peaceful, free expression.

So Saudi government is still very, very bad on human rights issues.

and, and and so we we were concerned, you know, that that the message that it sends to go and to partake in a, in a, in a comedy festival in a country that has such a bad record so, yeah, as you said, it's a complicated issue.

but we, we do not want the, the fact that that the Saudi government is still is still executing and jailing writers and others to, to be forgotten.

>> So if I were a comedian who had the invitation and I had had lunch with pen and I said, should I take this, should I take this invitation, what would you have said to me?

>> my personal view is that you should go, but you should try to speak out and learn as much as you can and then speak out upon your return.

>> Interesting.

>> And really and use the platform you have upon your return to keep drawing attention to these cases.

So keep mentioning Turkey Al-jasser keep mentioning Jamal Khashoggi, keep, keep those names in in the in the light, you know, keep keep their names alive.

>> Yeah.

the hip, the hypocritical part to me was when people said, well, look, we're just trying to bring our values to Saudi Arabia, but I'll sign the contract that says, here's where I'm not what I'm not allowed to joke about.

I would like them to say, I will come on your stage.

If you tell me I can joke about whatever I want.

Yeah, that's the Western values.

>> That's the Western value.

And I would say the argument would be more compelling if there was evidence that Saudi Arabia was changing and taking on some of those Western values.

But the fact that we now have another journalist dead after seven years suggest to me that the impunity that we saw in the case of Jamal Khashoggi is just emboldening the Saudi government.

>> Where they seem to be embracing Western values, is I was going to say capitalism.

It's not pure capitalism at all, but it is business empire.

It is.

So it's their dealings with Liv golf and an international golf tour.

It is the meeting that their crown prince had, Mohammed bin Salman with President Trump recently.

In fact, when American journalists attempted to ask Trump and MBS about Khashoggi.

Yeah.

Trump was offended and intervened on behalf of the Saudi leadership and said that that was a rude question.

How dare you ask that?

Yeah, that, you know.

>> And that these things happen.

>> These, he said about Khashoggi's murder?

Yes.

That there are a lot of people who didn't really like him.

Yeah.

And you know, these things happen.

What is amazing to me, Karen, is that that was as chilling as that was that that didn't get even bigger headlines.

Yeah, I imagine at Pen America that was a.

>> Big it did.

We put out a press statement probably within half an hour of what we were.

We were outraged.

I think a lot of people were outraged.

The whole community of journalists press freedom activists, groups that believe in free expression, were outraged.

But but the fact that, again, in this was this was Mbs's first visit to the U.S.

since Khashoggi's murder and the fact that he was even in the Oval Office and being feted and treated like a hero.

>> Yeah.

They had like a state dinner with him.

>> As to me, nauseating.

there should be accountability for Khashoggi's murder.

It was.

It was one of the most horrendous cases I've ever seen and had to work on in my last 25 years in this field.

And the fact that MBS is laughing and joking about it, and that there has been no accountability in his murder, is shocking to me.

>> The president has an opportunity with him sitting there to turn to him and say, hey, the world's watching right now, and I want you to modernize and I want your values to I want respect for all people.

I want freedom for all people.

I want women to be treated differently.

I want the LGBTQ community be different differently.

I want writers to be treated differently.

But I want you to know that even though I can't come and control what what happens going forward, we know what you did to Jamal Khashoggi, and you're never going to do that again.

And it could have put down a marker right there.

>> Yeah, there are no lines in the sand anymore.

There are no guardrails about what someone can and can't do.

And I think the U.S.

traditionally to me, the U.S.

traditionally has tried to be that moral voice and has tried to push other countries to improve their human rights records.

And now is is throwing that all away.

And if the U.S.

isn't doing it, any other country in the world will feel emboldened to do whatever they want.

They will.

They will murder writers.

They will imprison journalists.

They will clamp down on other human rights.

And there's no one, you know, there's really very few, many fewer people to stop them right now.

>> So where is it getting better?

You know, let's add somewhere.

It's got to be getting better.

Let's take the only break of the hour, and we're going to come right back, and we're going to address where free expression may be getting better if it is anywhere to Karin Deutsch Karlekar, who's director of Writers at Risk at Pen America.

And Karen has got some roots right here in the Rochester region, but of course, is doing this kind of work around the world.

And Karen will be a guest at the World Affairs Council, is a guest this week at the World Affairs Council of Rochester.

they're glad to have her and the Rochester chapter of the World Affairs Council, I should say.

So let's take this break, come right back and continue the conversation on Connections.

I'm Evan Dawson Wednesday on the next Connections, we welcome the team from City Magazine.

It is their winter guide and we are casting our eyes all across our region, as city does, looking for activities, things going on, ways to pass, some of the what could be the toughest months of the year weather wise.

We'll also dig into some of the news that they're focusing on, including some businesses changing hands.

Talk to you Wednesday.

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Learn more at Excelsior Ebsco.com.

>> This is Connections.

I'm Evan Dawson, so Karin Deutsch Karlekar from Pan America was making the point that when the president of the United States not only refuses to to condemn the murder of a journalist, a murder that Trump's own first administration investigated and determined that the Saudi leadership was responsible for when he refuses to condemn that and then sort of tacitly endorses it, where he says, you know, Khashoggi, a lot of people didn't really like him, and things happen that that emboldens people around the world.

So when there is authoritarianism or when there is a clampdown on free expression that is contagious and it's not helpful, but somewhere in the world it's getting better, is where in the world is it getting better?

Some somewhere?

>> No, there are there are a few places.

>> Canada.

How are they doing?

>> Canada is doing pretty well.

All right.

It always does.

>> Good job Canada.

Where where else would you point to?

>> I mean, Scandinavia is also pretty good, but they always have been.

I would say one of the the bright spots that we've seen in recent months actually has been in Belarus, which is a very, very repressive country.

It is one of the sort of it's called the last dictatorship in Europe.

and has become even more so after President Alexander Lukashenko basically stole an election four and a half years ago.

So there there have been dozens of political prisoners since, since that stolen election and the pushback and the, you know, attempted pushback against him trying to take the election.

and so we have been working on a number of those cases and in recent months, we have seen the release of dozens of political prisoners in Belarus, among them a number of the writers whose cases that that Pen has been working on.

So that has been, I would say, a bright spot.

they are being released into exile.

>> Why are they releasing them?

>> The so the U.S.

administration actually I think has been playing a key role and has been pushing for the release.

>> Of this administration, the Trump administration.

Credit to them.

>> Yes.

So it's very much credit to them.

they are taking this on at the highest levels.

There's a special envoy who's responsible for pushing some of these cases and issues.

it is, it is it is an issue that has had bipartisan support in Congress.

There's a number of congresspeople on both sides of the aisle who have supported the issue.

But but definitely, we're seeing that there is a push and an interest from from the current administration, which is great.

It's positive and it's getting people out of jail.

It looks like there may be more cases coming up.

So we and others are trying to prepare for that.

It is challenging because many of these, many of these people are not.

So they're not being released into their home country to be able to go back to their families.

They're being released into exile.

So they are having to now try to figure out life outside Belarus, and many of them in Poland or in Lithuania or other European countries.

but, you know, so that is a huge challenge.

But but they are out of a penal colony in Belarus, which is a good thing.

So that is that is definitely positive.

I would also point to another case close to Penn is the Ukrainian journalist Vladimir Yatsenko.

He was given our award.

I guess three and a half years ago he was being imprisoned by Russia in Crimea, along with a number of other Ukrainian journalists.

thanks.

I think to, you know, there was a lot of pressure from media groups, press freedom groups, his employer, which is Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, which is a U.S.

funded outlet which does amazing work covering the entire region.

but it was also, I think assistance from the State Department and from the current U.S.

government that helped lead to his release a little bit early after he had served his sentence from Crimea so that, you know, I got to meet him a few weeks ago in our office in New York, and he was in the U.S.

He was speaking he was telling his story.

He was speaking at the UN.

He was speaking to members of Congress you know, and he he's released.

So and that is that is also an amazing good, good news story, one which we hope will be repeated.

>> Well okay.

And so what is it that starts to turn the tide then?

I mean, we talked a little bit about what individuals could do, but if we have the same conversation ten years from now and you say, boy, it's 2035 and so much has gotten better, what do you think will be the reason that things are improving with free expression around the world?

>> I mean, definitely, I think governments need to see that the costs of repressing free expression are outweigh the, you know, the costs outweigh the benefits.

So if we see a very strong and united approach from the world's more democratic countries you know, the U.S., Europe, other countries around the world, if we see that strong, united approach, I think that can help put the pressure on, on governments.

the U.S., for example, used to have a program where they would tie foreign aid to the fact that governments would respect human rights and free expression and other rights.

So those types of programs can really push countries in the right direction on a on a macro level.

and we were seeing that over the last 20 years.

I would say though, that sort of speaking with United Voice speaking out against these violations and setting a good example which is why it's so important that the U.S.

and European countries remain very, very strong on these issues.

but that's why we do what we do.

And we advocate you know, at the UN and the in the European Union and also with the U.S.

government, because it is this kind of pressure that will yield results.

>> but right now, with the tying some foreign aid to free expression, that kind of thing this the current administration.

>> It's not happening.

Not happening.

I would say quite the opposite, as we've seen with with some of the, you know, the Saudi visit a few weeks ago.

So, so that is, I think a, a a negative trend.

I am an optimist by nature.

I wouldn't be in this business if I wasn't.

So I, you know, I'm optimistic that hopefully the tide will turn at some point.

But right now we are sort of heading heading for sure, in the wrong direction.

>> Okay.

And what dissonance do you feel knowing that this administration is doing what you just mentioned, while also advocating in places like Belarus for what you think are the right causes?

>> Yeah, I think I think what we need is sort of consistency in these principles across the board and really not not picking and choosing between allies and enemies.

so not rewarding Saudi Arabia while, you know, assisting Israel and going to war with Iran and bombing Iran.

so sort of, I would say, you know, application across the board of the same principles in defense of free expression and defense of human rights is the most important thing.

>> We had a conversation on this program recently with Vladimir Kara-Murza, who in in some versions of the multiverse, will be the next president of Russia.

I mean, it's not impossible.

>> He's amazing.

He and I spoke at a congressional panel, I think, 20 years ago, talking about 20 years.

Yeah, I think it was 2005.

>> Amazing.

>> Talking about, you know, the what we were then seeing was the backsliding in Russia.

And it was that was just the beginning.

>> Right.

And so that was one of the more remarkable conversations on this program.

>> He's totally amazing.

>> Because here's the man who, you know, was imprisoned in Siberia.

And when they came to free him, he thought they were coming to kill him, but he was part of the prisoner exchange that the Biden administration executed late in their term.

And but it took a big price to get him out of prison.

Autocrats don't want to give up dissidents.

Writers, thinkers who are jailed unless they get something returned.

And Russia got a big price of people who have engaged in murder.

And,, so.

Is that price worth it to you?

I mean, does how does pen feel about the idea you're trading to to free people from prisons?

But you've got to you've got to free murderers.

You've got to free people who've done extrajudicial killings on behalf of autocratic states.

>> I mean, it's a horrible price to have to pay.

We were very, very thrilled that prisoner swap, I think, again, released maybe 4 or 5 of our key cases.

So it was wonderful.

just from the point of view of those individuals.

But it's a it's a horrific price to pay.

And we are seeing cases of countries.

I'll bring up Iran again that purposely purposely detain dual nationals and people that they can use as bargaining chips as hostages.

>> They do it as a strategy.

>> Yes, as a strategy.

So they they are keeping dual nationals from a number of European countries because they know that that will tie the hands of the various European governments, and they will not be pushing back as much.

So certain countries right now are using this as a strategy.

Russia as well, with the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich who was also freed, but that that is a that is definitely a strategy we are seeing.

And that's that's why it is dangerous, I think, to give in to it and why I do think it's right for countries to hold off as long as they can with some of these swaps.

>> And I want to credit Pen America for just putting together information on a number of other writers, artists, thinkers who have been detained around the world.

People like Mohammad Tjahjadi, who is known for his pro-democracy poetry and was first arrested in August of 2020 and was detained a number of times.

Can you talk a little bit about that story?

I think that's in Algeria.

>> That's Algeria.

He is so his you know, he's a young poet.

He writes poetry, which is I would say he's called the poet of the Hirak.

So he his poetry is inspiring, you know, young protesters who are protesting against the government.

and for that, he has been jailed.

and so that is one case among many that we are we are advocating on, on behalf of and and we are we are hoping that the attention and the pressure will, will help to get him out of jail.

But there are so many like that.

I mean, we have hundreds.

I'm.

>> Yeah, I'm looking at Rory Brinker, who is in Venezuela.

>> Yep.

>> this is an early 40s writer, a journalist.

>> He's a journalist.

>> Who's been held in arbitrary detention.

after having been forcibly disappeared more than 200 days of detention.

And with what's going on in Venezuela and possible war.

Yeah.

What are your thoughts?

What are your thoughts on the prospects of a journalist like that who's being held?

>> I mean, I would say right now, not good.

But I do think it's important to be there for the long haul and to keep advocating and drawing attention to his case.

again, it's another it's another case that I think probably most people have never heard of.

And what what does help these cases is getting these names out, getting them in the public domain, having people speak out against, you know, against their being detained or threatened in any way the attention and the oxygen always helps.

I have never seen a case where it doesn't help.

So that is really the main, the main message.

but providing other types of support and assistance is also very, very important in terms of helping this, helping people remain free.

>> Rick sends a note of thanks for this program, and wants to know if most of the people who are being detained around the world are journalists.

>> journalists, I would say are a very high number.

The Committee to Protect Journalists is seeing record numbers of journalists being detained.

They should be releasing, I think, their latest report at the end of this year.

but the numbers for journalists are very high.

The numbers for human rights activists and defenders are very high.

Pen is seeing very high numbers of writers.

So all of these groups, I mean, anyone who is a dissident or is pushing back against the system or is uncovering official corruption or is inspiring protesters to, you know, push for their rights women who are focusing on promoting or advocating for more women's rights you know, and, and even, you know, poets who are, who are writing poetry, I would say the creative side of writers where writers are you know, either either looking back into the past, interrogating history, but also looking to the future and trying to imagine different ways of being different worlds, different possibilities for the future.

All of these things are dangerous to authoritarian governments because they are all trying to loosen the stricture that authoritarian governments try to have over news and information and history and truth, and the preferred narrative.

So writers push back against all of those things.

And it is for that reason that writers are very often in the crosshairs.

and are sort of one of the first groups to be targeted, but alongside journalists and human rights activists, for sure.

>> Rick.

Thank you for that.

Dallas says.

He says, well, the right was put off social media for years and cancel culture was like witch hunting against conservatives.

Did you see it that way at Pen America?

>> No.

I mean, I've seen conservatives be canceled.

I've also seen people with very liberal views be canceled.

And we, we we are not in favor of of cancel culture.

We think that all views should be heard as long as they are not sort of inciting violence or dangerous, you know, sort of dangerous speech or rhetoric.

But so we are in favor in general of more speech and for the right of speakers to be able to to speak.

>> But let me just probe that a little bit here because I do think for a number of years, probably the better part of the second half of the last decade, perhaps one of the ideas I heard with some routine was that, well, capitalism is violent.

Therefore, any speech that supports capitalism is violent.

Speech.

that violence was defined much more broadly, and the attempt to limit the speech.

And this often came from the political left, was much more broad.

And I thought that was a mistake as well.

>> Yeah.

>> No.

Me too.

Do you agree.

>> With that?

Yeah.

No, I do, I do.

I think extremists on both sides and attempts to sort of police speech and censor speech are wrong.

I mean, at Penn, we believe that the antidote to to speech that you may not like is is having more speech of different.

>> So what is dangerous speech or what is hate speech?

Where is the line?

>> I mean, I think the First Amendment is is more clear in a way, and sort of because it looks at sort of direct incitement to violence.

So that would be sort of a very direct call, you know, for to harm someone or to murder someone.

And, and it usually is very immediate.

What I think is much more in the gray areas is what, what international, you know, freedom of speech experts would call dangerous speech or hate speech.

So that is speech that could lead to potentially violence in the future.

It could it could involve, for example you know, slurs or denigrating an entire group of people, like an ethnic group or a racial group or a religious group.

So it's the type of speech that, for example, was broadcast over the radio waves in Rwanda that that helped to lead to the Rwandan genocide.

So that type of speech would be looked at as dangerous speech or hate speech, even though it's not direct incitement.

so that type of speech you know, is there are international laws against that type of speech.

and that is where you have a lot of the gray areas.

>> I think one of the big challenges in the modern era, especially with social media, is standing up for speech that you don't like.

>> Yeah.

No, but I think it's very important.

I mean, everyone has a different opinion.

It's important to be able to hear opinions to to recognize that people have many different viewpoints and that some of some of those viewpoints are very strongly held and that you may you may not agree with everything, but it is important to for that person to be allowed to speak and and for you to also be able to listen.

So I think, you know, people should be allowed to speak, but I think my personal view is that we also need a lot more listening and empathetic listening and listening as well as speaking.

>> Okay.

And as we get ready to wrap up here, as we've been talking to Karen about her work with Pen America around the world, again, her expertise and her focus is not always on domestic issues, but with the alarm bells that happened when Ms.

was in The White House.

Are you dismayed not just at what the president said, but at the lack of rebuke in his own party?

Yes.

For something definitely.

Doesn't it feel like 20 years ago you couldn't you could not have done that no matter who you were.

And I say you could you could have done it.

Yeah, but there would have been a big political penalty.

There would have been a big yes.

>> Absolutely.

And I to me, this is one of the biggest changes I've seen in the last, you know, a couple of years.

But I'm thinking back to 20, you know, 20 years ago when I was around at the launch of the Congressional Press Freedom Caucus, and that was a bipartisan caucus, there were two senators, one Democrat, one Republican, two members of the House, one Democrat, one Republican.

It was completely bipartisan.

Mike pence was one of the founders of the Congressional Press Freedom Caucus.

And there have been many congresspeople on both sides of the aisle who have been very, very strong on these issues.

we worked with all of them at Penn.

We've worked with all of them at freedom House.

We always worked with all of them, too.

And we we found it very important to try to find the allies and the people who would speak out for these issues where we could and to me, that is one of the biggest changes.

and the fact that there is not this pushback and not the focus on the principles is what I'm worried about right now.

>> But it's not too late.

>> It's never too late.

We have to be optimistic.

>> And where can listeners learn more about what they can do and what you're doing?

>> definitely.

Apponaug.

there's a lot of information there.

and I'm happy if people want to reach out to me directly as well.

>> Supporting free expression around the world.

Thank you for the work that you're doing.

>> Thank you so much for having me.

It's a pleasure to be on your show again.

>> Thanks for coming back in here.

That's Karin Deutsch Karlekar, who's director of Writers at Risk at Pen America, and from all of us at Connections.

Thanks for listening.

Thanks for watching.

Thanks for finding us on their various platforms.

we really do believe in free expression, and we're glad to have you with us.

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