Erin O’Brien
PEN America
New York, USA
I was initially supposed to travel to Istanbul this summer to work for Dokuz8 News and MEDAR, a news organization and media research foundation dedicated to protecting free speech and freedom of expression in Turkey. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, my plans had to change. On May 26, I began a virtual internship with PEN America, working with the Free Expression Program team on the Writers at Risk database. Fortunately, I have been able to focus on many of the same topics I was intending to work on in Istanbul.
As the PEN offices are closed through the summer, I have worked remotely from New York City. I jumped headfirst into the internship, helping the team finalize the Writers at Risk database, which was formally launched the week I started. Case descriptions for the database had not been finalized, so I kicked off the internship by summarizing and updating them, which allowed me to familiarize myself with the material and style of work.
We finished the database last week, and I am now updating case pages on PEN America’s website. These case pages are critical, as they provide a public-facing source of information for much of the organization’s advocacy for writers at risk. I have focused particularly on Iranian and Turkish cases, of which there are many in PEN’s advocacy pool. Especially in light of the COVID-19 pandemic and conditions in prisons around the world, there has been significant work to do to make sure these case summaries are up to date.
In addition to my work at PEN, I have also been in contact with several organizations and academics in Turkey working in human rights. I have discussed my academic research with them, and they have offered to share resources with me, while I have helped several of them with translation, editing, and research. For the remainder of the summer, I will continue to offer support to them as I continue to update PEN’s current case pages and scope out new advocacy cases to be included in next year’s report and databases.
One particularly fascinating aspect of the last few weeks has been working with the Free Expression program during growing protests in response to George Floyd’s death and police brutality in America. I have been reporting on these protests to the best of my ability, and I have felt my work at PEN informing the way I approach this coverage.
It is easy to relegate press freedom abuses to the realm of something that happens “out there.” However, going into the streets every night–particularly during the first few weeks of protests, as the NYPD cracked down on demonstrators and the press–has driven home to me the pertinence and local relevance of the PEN issues I am working on.