Let me loose, may justice win.
Aung Cheimt
Spotlight: Asia
Young Voices Across Asia
Editorial Team
| Regional Editors | Aung and Ege Dündar |
| Project Manager | Ege Dündar, Board Member at PEN International |
| Advisors | Ross Holder, Head of Asia Region at PEN International / Salil Tripathi, Board Member at PEN International |
| Visual Communications | Gökçen Kavuk |
| Afghanistan | Neelufer Suhrabi |
| Australia | Preeshita Shah |
| Bangladesh | Redwan Ahmed / Jannatun Nayeem Prity and Arefin Rijvi |
| Cambodia | Yeng Chheangly |
| China | Kasim Khashgar (East Turkistan, Uyghur) |
| Iran | Benjamin Abbasi and Fatima Eksharati |
| India | Aanchal Malhotra / Zara Chowdhary / Prosecuted Peers: Umar Khalid and Gulfisha Fatima |
| Malaysia | Sharmini Aphrodite and Chloe Hor |
| Mongolia | Dulamkhorloo (Duuya) Baatar |
| Nepal | Dristi Shrestha |
| Myanmar | Sai Lyenn Sett / Merry and Maung Day |
| Rohingya | Mayyu Ali / Ro Hefzu and Sirajul Islam |
| Philippines | Arizza Nocum / Empty Chair: Amanda Echanis / Karina Thyra / Keisha Corine O. Mallete and Benitez |
| Pakistan | Imaan Zainab Mazari-Hazir / Prosecuted Peer: Dr. Mahrang Baloch and Rosh Khattan |
| Russia | Gulnaz Ratu (Republic of Bashkortostan) and Dinara Rasuleva (Tatarstan) |
| Sri Lanka | Pathum Wickramarathne / Savin Edirisinghe and Ciara Mandule |
| Singapore | Daryl Qilin Yam |
| Thailand | Theodore Pham |
| Vietnam | Cung Thi Lan and Duong Vu |
*Some contributors on the list will be published later in our Spotlight, running until late December. Check back soon to discover more young voices from the region.
Table of Contents
By Regional Editor: Aung
Regional Overview
Layers Beneath the Surface
"Let me lose, may justice win."
Aung Cheimt
I was born and raised in Myanmar. I love traveling, and over the years I’ve visited almost every state and region of my country. No matter where I go, I always notice one thing: layers. There are so many layers in our society—of culture, belief, opportunity, and experience. Even though we share one nation, we are not the same.
That realization grows stronger whenever I travel to neighbouring countries. Again, I find different layers—of history, of struggle, of identity. It makes me wonder: why are we so different?
I want to understand these people. I want to know how they think, how they read, how they resist. Traveling gives me glimpses, but it’s never enough. Books help me go deeper. That’s why I always seek out stories and voices from across Asia. Through books, I can step into another person’s world and begin to see through their eyes.
Yet, books too have their limits. In many parts of Asia, censorship shapes what we can say and what we can read. It is frighteningly easy to silence a voice, to shut someone’s mouth.
That’s why I am always eager to listen—to hear directly from real people. I am hungry for their stories. Through this focus on regional voices, I’ve had the chance to listen to my neighbours, to discover their different perspectives and the realities of their societies.
Once again, I see layers—many, complex, overlapping layers. But when I dig deeper beneath them, I find something universal: dignity. Human dignity.
Despite our differences, we never bow. We never surrender. Across Asia, people share a profound love for independence and equality. Whenever we sense injustice or imbalance, we rise and fight back.
So when you read this spotlight, amplifying over 30 young voices from 20 countries, you may first notice the layers—of diversity, of conflict, of difference. But I encourage you to look closer, to dig deeper. Because beneath all those layers lies the truth of who we are.
Aung, Regional Editor from Myanmar. Steering Representative for Asia at PEN International's Young Writers Committee.
Young Voices
"A realistic look at life as an activist in Vietnam's civil society space: "Surely though, there needed to be some middle ground between the ‘white picket fence, nuclear family’ facade and being stranded and unemployed on one’s first day in a foreign country. This move to Bangkok was not my first foray into Vietnam’s civil society sphere. My first NGO supervisor and I argued about the sudden decision to discontinue my work with them.""
When Home Fell Silent, the World Became Our Voice
20 October 2025
The Inch You’ll Never Own
20 October 2025
"Prose poetry from the Philippines"
I do, I will
18 October 2025
"What she saw before leaving has made her feel worse. She washed the food bowl, put some food in it, and placed it near the dog. Then she refilled the water bowl. When she tried to touch the dog’s head, he suddenly raised his head and snapped at her hand which she had to withdraw fast. The dog was growling at her, his eyes red with anger. After a few minutes, he closed his eyes and fell asleep again. Trying to be as noiseless as possible, she got up and went out leaving the main door ajar, so the dog could wander in the yard when he woke up. But she made sure she locked the gate. She doesn’t know what is happening to her dog."
"It is hard to be happy unless we can break the confinement that imprisoned us, especially at old age when habits formed solid. A great failure confines us for a long time, but every day we confine ourselves to smaller, shorter-term cuckoo nests with our anger, jealousy, illness,... A broken glass could take away happiness for a few minutes, an argument could take a few days of our lives. Those long- or short-term prisons are built by our thoughts around an event that happened which we are not satisfied with. Those prisons forbid us to go out and seek happiness for ourselves and for our loved ones. They can only be broken when we can forgive the cause of it, or forgive ourselves, or if we are able to stop thinking about it."
"She did not attend a French schools but she was a good student at Van Hoa High School in Nha Trang. She did not know how to play a musical instrument, but she knew how to enjoy great music. She confided to him that she loved the piano music from the villa of Khoi Nguyen and liked to see the purple flowers near by the fence that her friends often called Purple Flowers. Khoi Nguyen said Purple Flowers were wild flowers that covered La San hill, therefore nobody wanted to plant them in their garden. His mother planted them in the garden because they were officially named Angelonia (Ngoc Han), her own name."
Empty Chairs and Prosecuted Peers
Since the 1980s PEN International has used the Empty Chair to document prosecuted writers and track their cases in our annual Case List. We feature them at events to symbolise a writer who could not be present because they were imprisoned, detained, disappeared, threatened or killed. We invite our community to learn about these young voices being silenced and to show solidarity with them.
Get in touch with us to explore actions you can take.
Empty Chair: Amanda Echanis – Philippines
20 October 2025
Prosecuted Peer: Dr. Mahrang Baloch - Balochistan, Pakistan
18 October 2025
Prosecuted Peer: Umar Khalid - India
18 October 2025
Prosecuted Peer: Gulfisha Fatima - India
18 October 2025
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