China and Iran have been ranked as the worst jailers of writers globally, according to PEN America, a freedom expression group in its Index. 

The group, in the Freedom to Write Index, said Beijing’s repression of Uyghurs in the northwestern region of Xinjiang — where genocide and crimes against humanity were being committed, is the major driver of China’s top jailer status. 

Since the index was launched in 2019, PEN America has ranked China each year.  

“All people in China faced systematic suppression of their free expression rights, but ethnic minorities face a particular, acute suppression,” said Angeli Datt, who researches China at PEN America.

If Xinjiang were ranked on its own in the index, the region would rank third globally, with at least 33 Uyghur writers and scholars imprisoned in 2022. 

Among them is Gulnisa Imin, an Uyghur poet serving over 17 years in prison on charges of “separatism” for her poetry that preserved and promoted the Uyghur language and culture.

“The targeting of minority languages and writers who write in Uyghur, Tibetan, Mongolian, or advocate for them, is part of this wider effort by the Chinese government to destroy the cultures of ethnic minorities and try to forcibly assimilate them into Han Chinese culture,” Ms Datt said.

She said it was a deliberate effort to destroy the cultures and unique identity of the people. 

The annual index documents the number of writers, academics and public intellectuals who were held in prison or detention for their work.

Also, Iran is the country registered with the largest increase globally in jailed writers between 2021 and 2022, with 39 new cases of detention or imprisonment in 2022. 

The country is now the second worst jailer of writers in the world, with 57 writers jailed in 2022. 

Iran ranks second only to China, which with 90 writers detained, tops the PEN American index. 

Tehran’s suppression of widespread protests for women’s rights has resulted in more than 14,000 people being detained by the end of last year. 

Dozens of writers were among them.

“As soon as the protests started in September, we did see what I would describe as a preemptive crackdown on the creative and literary and artistic communities,” said Karin Deutsch Karlekar, an Iran expert at PEN America. “We did see a number of writers who were basically preemptively arrested because of their profiles, as the protests swelled in September and October.”

According to Mr Karlekar, Iran was one of the most important freedom of expression cases in 2022. 

He added that the number of jailed writers there are more than doubled from 22 in 2021 to 57 in 2022.

“It was really an attempt to silence certain voices and also create a climate of fear and self-censorship,” Mr Karlekar told Voice of America. 

The case of Iran is also distinct because of the crackdown’s disproportionate impact on women, such as jailed journalist and activist Narges Mohammadi. 

Iran is now the largest jailer of female writers globally, with 16 of 42 women in custody in Iran, the index further posited. 

In total, 311 writers were detained around the world, according to the report, which was released Thursday. Of those, 84 were new cases.

“Free expression across the world deteriorated in 2022,” said Liesl Gerntholtz, who leads PEN’s Freedom to Write Center, which produces the index. 

“I would say that 2022 was probably a worse year for free expression than 2021, including if you look at it through the lens of writers.”