MEXICO – INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY 8 MARCH 2012

Murdered and Disappeared Women Writers 

Mexico is one of the most dangerous countries in the world in which to be a writer. Since 2006, at least 45 journalists, writers and bloggers have been murdered or disappeared, most of them in the course of their work.

Since 2009 there has been an escalation in violence against writers, with women increasingly being targeted. Five of the nine Mexican writers killed in 2011 were women; their murders were particularly savage (see pdf).

On International Women’s Day, PEN International calls on PEN members to remember our fallen and missing female colleagues.

You can do this in two ways:

1. Arrange for obituaries to be placed in national or local press (please see pdf for very effective examples by Swiss German PEN and Swiss Italian and Reto-Romansh PEN).

2. Write to the Mexican authorities calling for an end to impunity and a thorough investigation into the killings and disappearances of these women and of all the murdered and disappeared Mexican writers (see pdf for addresses).

For a list of the women writers, examples of obituaries and addresses of the authorities to whom you should protest see MEXICO Women’s Day Eng

PEN will be campaigning on Mexico throughout 2012, building on the successes of both the PEN Protesta delegation in January 2012 and the Day of the Dead Campaign in November 2011.

Please let us know what you will be doing to commemorate the murdered and missing women writers of Mexico on International Women’s Day.

For further details please contact Cathal Sheerin at the Writers in Prison Committee London Office: PEN International, Brownlow House, 50-51 High Holborn, London WC1V 6ER Tel: +44 (0) 207 405 0338 Fax +44 (0) 207 405 0339 email:[email protected]