November 4th, 2010
Kurdish musician
Ferhat Tunç, who was facing 15 years in prison for a speech he made at a festival, was acquitted this morning from Diyarbakir Criminal Court in Turkey. The decision follows a
petition signed by more than 1,000 supporters and
campaigning from PEN. Tunç, who won the 2010 Index on Censorship/Freemuse Freedom of Expression Award for his “
brave stand against censorship“, had been charged with spreading propaganda for PKK (Kurdish Workers’ Party) after speaking at the Siirt cultural festival in April.
October 12th, 2010
Woeser, author of “Notes on Tibet”, was one of many signatories of a letter to the Chinese government calling for the release of Nobel Laureate Liu Xiaobo. Writing for Index on Censorship magazine, she celebrates Tibetan singer Tashi Dhondup
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September 13th, 2010
Zimbabwe’s government has
banned South African group
Freshlyground over a music video that portrays President Mugabe as a chicken afraid to relinquish power. The video that accompanies the song “Chicken To Change” represents the president in the style of satirical show
Spitting Image. The song is a product of the band’s collaboration with controversial cartoonist
Jonathan Zapiro. Freshlyground was due to perform a concert in Harare next month, but members of the group have now had their working visas revoked.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdf2lBIe4Ac
September 13th, 2010
Radiohead’s Colin Greenwood explains why the band released their last album direct to their fans
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September 8th, 2010
In the summer of 1977 I was 15 years old and wore an old tropical linen jacket I’d bought in a charity shop for a quid. It wasn’t so much off-white as ruinous, and it matched the colour of my shoes — winkle-pickers I’d painted myself using some kind of weird leather paint. Naturally I had to lie on my skinny rump to force my El Greco feet through the eight-inch ankles of my drainpipe jeans. Given all this sartorial mayhem it goes without saying that I absolutely concurred with the Sex Pistol’s front man, Johnny Rotten, when he sang, “God save the queen / The fascist regime”. Admittedly the causal connective ‘it’s’ was lost in all the filth and the fury of his delivery, but we knew what he meant.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtUH2YSFlVU
Actually, I can barely remember the circumstantial pomp that went into the celebration of the Queen’s Silver Jubilee, all I can recall is the Sex Pistols’ treasonable ditty, and the fact that it was banned from being played on the radio. At least I’m certain it was banned from the BBC’s Radio 1. I’m not so sure about the commercial stations, but then Britain in the late 1970s still had the anomalous character of a socialist democracy with a vertiginous class system; an anomaly of which the state broadcaster was a key component.
Actually, being banned by the BBC wasn’t that crushing a piece of censorship; other far more anodyne ditties used to be blanked from the charts, or have their lyrics bleeped out by reason of their mild smuttiness. And of course, like all censorship, ridding the Sex Pistols’ “God Save the Queen” from the airwaves only ensured its fizzing presence in the brainwaves of disaffected youth. Malcolm McLaren, the band’s Situationist-inspired manager, got reams of publicity from the banning, together with a special cruise he organised on the day of the Jubilee, during which the band were to blast Parliament with their subversive sounds.
This is an extract from Smashed Hits 2.0, the new issue of Index on Censorship, out now. To read the rest of the article go to www.indexoncensorship.org/subscribe.
Will Self’s novels, short story collections and non-fiction include The Book of Dave (Viking) and The Butt (Bloomsbury)
To listen to contributors’ playlists go to indexoncensorship.org/music
September 8th, 2010
Daniel Barenboim tells Clemency Burton-Hill why music provides a model for living and governments continue to fear the power of its influence
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August 27th, 2010
Singer Lily Allen’s half-sister has launched
legal action against Now magazine over an article about her famous relative. Gala Talbott is suing the publication’s owner IPC Media, seeking libel damages of up to £15,000.
The nineteen-year-old claims that an article entitled “
Lily’s Heartache over Secret Sister” made false allegations about the relationship between the two women. She said the story was distressing and embarrassing, and that it had damaged her reputation. In addition to her libel claim Talbott is seeking an injunction banning any repetition of the same allegations.
August 27th, 2010
Police arrested human rights campaigners and prevented them from gaining signatures for petitions at U2′s first concert in Russia, on 25 August. The tents of Amnesty International, Greenpeace Russia, and U2′s own charity the ONE campaign for Aids, were all removed by police. Campaigners were not allowed to hand out leaflets or talk to any of the 75,000 fans at the Moscow venue.
Head of Amnesty International in Russia, Sergei Nikitin, said that the organistation had carried out similar publicity events at many of the band’s concerts in Europe.
