The IPA has told Bangladesh’s Secretary of Culture, Aktari Mamtaz, that responsibility for the spate of violent attacks on publishers and writers lies only with the perpetrators, and not the victims, at a ground-breaking freedom to publish conference, in Dhaka.
Intentionally or not, Egyptian police marked World Press Freedom on 3 May by raiding the Syndicate of Journalists, in Cairo, and arresting two journalists.
The 31st International Publishers Congress, 9 -12 April, 2016, gathered more than 220 delegates from 41 countries in London's majestic Olympia Conference Centre. This was the second time the Congress had taken place in the UK capital, but the first time it had run parallel to The London Book Fair.
On Sunday, the IPA named jailed Saudi writer and free speech activist, Raif Badawi, the winner of the first IPA Prix Voltaire, formerly the IPA Freedom to Publish Prize. Badawi’s wife, Ensaf Haidar Mohammed, travelled from Canada – where she and their three children secured political asylum in 2013 – to collect the award on her husband’s behalf.
Saudi Arabian writer, blogger and free speech activist, Raif Badawi, is currently four years into an extremely severe penal sentence that includes a 10-year jail term, 1,000 lashes and a hefty fine. Badawi is one of this year’s IPA Freedom to Publish Prize finalists.
Burmese poet and writer Moe Way, who co-founded Myanmar's The Eras publishing house to give voice to many of his country's unheard poets and writers, is one of five finalists for the 2016 Freedom to Publish Prize.
Chinese publisher, poet and essayist, Bei Ling, who in 1993 founded Tendency, an exile literary journal published in Chinese until 2000, is one of five finalists for the 2016 IPA Freedom to Publish Prize.
Bangladeshi publisher Ahmedur Rashid Chowdhury, who was nearly killed by Islamist extremists in October 2015, is among the five finalists for the 2016 IPA Freedom to Publish Prize.