Name a single jailed or censored writer or journalist?

UNFree Media is a new network to help banned, jailed and otherwise excluded writers, journalists and bloggers overcome censorship. More than 1,000 reporters were sentenced, attacked or killed worldwide last year, according to International PEN. Many more struggle to survive after being banned from working. UNFree Media rips aside the curtain of censorship to publish what governments fear. And as major news organizations shut down their bureaus and cut back on travel, why not empower thoughtful news professionals, incuding the censored and banned, in so many parts of the world, to be the narrators of their own news?  As Bruce Shapiro of the Dart Center points out, the foreign-correspondent model is in many ways an outmoded throwback to the 19th century: "If we want democratic societies to make wise decisions about how to engage with far-flung parts of the globe, we must start tapping into local expertise." But never from government controlled journalists

Can you name this jailed Cuban journalist?

But why do we know so little about the writers and journalists facing censorship and imprisonment like Fabio Prieto Llorente (left) ? A correspondent for the banned Havana Press agency and for the former news site cubafreepress.org, Prieto was one of thirty-five journalists, writers and librarians sentenced during the one-day trials held on 3-4 April 2003. Prieto was sentenced to twenty years imprisonment. In repressive countries like Cuba, Burma/Myanmar, Sri Lanka and others, the story is always the same as governments abuse the law to terrorize free-thinking journalists. They routinely hand out cruel jail sentences to those deemed to have offended their laws. The Universall Declaration of Human Rights asserts in Article 19: : "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." The UN is powerless to change this sort of behaviour in the face of national sovereignty. But no-one disputes these journalists' international legal right to freedom of expression. UNFree Media (unfreemedia.com) is a very practical way to bring the work of these gagged journalists to prominence. Help  censored journalists by volunteering to edit or translatetheir work.

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