On the one hand, it makes life very difficult for them. On the other hand - and this isn't a recommendation for being a suppressed writer - in their situation now, as with Havel and his friends in the '70s and '80s, the consolation is that your work matters.
Quotes about havel (2 Quotes)
When the Burmese government tries to blame the victims for the crime, and say that (democracy activist) Aung San Suu Kyi and her party are responsible for their own repression, I can only reply that much the same was once said about Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela and Vaclav Havel, ... The world is not fooled. And we must not be silent.