Activism

Lam Khi Try is a Cambodian journalist who wrote articles exposing corruption, illegal logging and political assassinations by the Cambodian government. He received a threatening letter from the Cambodian prime minister and death threats from anonymous callers. After the director at Lam’s newspaper died in suspicious circumstances, the staff became frightened and the newspaper was closed. Lam was followed constantly, and he and his family went into hiding. Later, he fled Cambodia and came to Australia for refuge, followed by his wife Nary. They left their children in the care of relatives, with the intention of bringing them safely to Australia.

Asiye Guzel Zeybek – a Turkish journalist, editor and author of Rape under Torture (1999) and Our Cakir: The Life of a Revolutionary (2001) – was arrested on 27 February 1997, together with nineteen other colleagues. Zeybek, now thirty-three years old, is an executive board member of the Istanbul Branch of the Progressive Journalists’ Association, and also editor-in-chief of Atilin. She was specifically accused under Article 168 of the Turkish Penal Code, and subsequently convicted for her association with the now banned Marxist-Leninist Communist Party. Zeybek’s legal counsel staunchly rebutted the prosecutor’s allegations of her involvement in any violence.

Since the beginning of 2003, nine writers and journalists have been murdered worldwide, adding to International PEN’s list of 400 who have been killed over the last ten years. In the same period, 769 other writers and journalists have been imprisoned, tortured, attacked, threatened, harassed and deported, or have disappeared, gone into hiding or fled in fear of their lives – simply for practising their profession.