PEN Ukraine’s Executive Board released a statement in support of journalist Cecilia Sala

PEN Ukraine calls upon international human rights organizations and media to struggle for release of Cecilia Sala, a journalist detained while reporting in Iran

On December 19, 2024, Italian journalist Cecilia Sala was detained by Iranian police while reporting from Tehran. Today, she is being held in Tehran's Evin Prison, notorious for holding dissidents and contrarians to the Iranian regime. The Italian ambassador was only able to visit the journalist and verify her health condition in a week’s time after her detention. The Iranian police have never formalized the reasons for Sala’s arrest.

On December 12, Cecilia Sala entered Tehran on a regular journalist visa to report about the new hijab law imposing severe fines on women who violate dress codes. She was scheduled to return to Rome on December 20 but went quiet on the morning of December 19 and then never boarded her flight. Only in a few days was she allowed to make a phone call to Italy to inform of her whereabouts.

PEN Ukraine’s Executive Board released a statement in support of Cecilia Sala. "Journalism in compliance with all the professional rules is not a crime. Italian authorities, human rights defenders, and journalists must make every effort to widely publicize the information of an Italian correapondent’s illegal arrest, facilitate her release and being returned home to her family," it says.  The statement was signed by Volodymyr Yermolenko, Myroslava Barchuk, Ostap Slyvynskyi, Alim Aliev, Anatolii Dnistrovyi, Larysa Denysenko, Iryna Slavinska, Kateryna Kalytko, Marko Robert Stekh, Ola Hnatiuk, and Tetyana Teren.

PEN Ukraine calls upon international human rights organizations and media to struggle for release of Cecilia Sala.
 

Cecilia Sala is a professional international journalist who specializes in working in hotspots, a contributor to the newspaper Il Foglio and the voice behind the podcast Stories, dedicated to telling stories from across the globe. She had reported from Afghanistan, Venezuela, Iran, Sakartvelo, and South Sudan.

In her journalistic work, Cecilia paid great attention to Ukraine and Ukrainians’ fight against Russian aggression. In 2022, she visited besieged Chernihiv, in 2023, she came to Kherson after it was flooded by Russians’ destruction of the Kakhovka Dam. She was also a many-time visitor of the frontline zone in the Ukrainian East. Cecilia was the one to have told the Italian audience about Roman Ratushnyi and Ievheniia Zakrevska, about young generation of Ukrainians who hold back the Russian invasion. The stories from Ukraine became part of Cecilia’s book Incendio published in 2023 by the most popular Italian publishing house Mondadori. Cecilia Sala is a powerful voice to spread the truth about Russian aggression against Ukraine in Italian media environment.