The 2017 presentation of the IPA Prix Voltaire will return to the Göteborg Book Fair, Sweden, 11 years after the first ‘IPA Freedom Prize’ was awarded to Iranian publisher Shalah Lahiji, in September 2006.
A group of leading civil society and freedom of expression advocates – the IPA among them – held its second gathering Sunday (26 March) to discuss ways that NGOs and other civil society actors can pool ideas and efforts to bring positive change where it is needed.
The International Alliance of Independent Publishers (IAIP) has launched a first-of-its-kind study into worldwide threats to freedom to publish and the ways publishers respond to them. The IPA spoke to Laurence Hugues, Director of the Paris-based IAIP, about the objectives and scope of the yearlong study, which seeks to be as globally representative as possible.
Berlin – The German Publishers and Booksellers Association (Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels e.V.), the PEN Centre Germany (PEN-Zentrum Deutschland) and Reporters Without Borders (Reporter ohne Grenzen e.V.) emphatically called on the German Government today to express its uncompromising commitment to freedom of expression and freedom of the press in Turkey.
As much of the Western world basks in heart-warming reverie of festive cheer, good food and the company of loved ones, hundreds of writers and intellectuals will be languishing in Turkish jails on spurious charges with no sense of what fate awaits them.
Publishers driving Hong Kong’s once booming independent book business are living with the twin threats of financial ruin and arrest by Chinese Mainland police in the wake of the Causeway Bay bookseller kidnappings in 2015, the IPA learned during a visit to the city this month.
The IPA today called on Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım to immediately release jailed author Aslı Erdoğan and linguist Necmiye Alpay and to remember his country’s human rights obligations as the state’s relentless purge of dissenters continues unabated.
Monday 17 October was not only set-up day at Frankfurt Book Fair, it also marked a year to the day that Gui Minhai vanished from his holiday home in Thailand at the hands of unidentified agents. For three months his family went without news of his welfare or whereabouts, before he resurfaced in Mainland Chinese police custody.