“There has been a decline in some aspects of governance, political participation, and media freedoms, and a clear deterioration in attitudes associated with, or conducive to, democracy in many countries, including in Europe.” 

The EIU measures how democratic countries are based on five categories: “electoral process and pluralism; civil liberties; the functioning of government; political participation; and political culture”. Norway, Sweden, Iceland, and Denmark have topped this year’s list, which ranks 165 countries and two territories. Even though half of the global population live “in a democracy of some sort”, the EIU reports that previous gains in democratisation have been eroded in the past few years.

The global financial crisis has aggravated this decline, and this can be felt in many parts of the world. According to the EIU, the economic crisis has been a double-edged sword:  in some ways it can “undermine authoritarianism”, but it can also help reinforce it. While in some cases the economic crisis has emboldened protesters — it has also left governments feeling “vulnerable and threatened”, which has meant a rise in attempts to restrict freedom of expression and control the media.

This isn’t restricted to more authoritarian countries. The report notes a “noticeable decline in media freedoms, affecting all regions to some extent, has accelerated since 2008.” A rise in unemployment and a lack of job security has helped create a “climate of fear and self-censorship among journalists in many countries.”

Perhaps challenges in Latin America and the Middle East and North Africa — particularly in younger democracies, are no surprise. But there have been some startling changes in more well-established democracies. Developed western countries have seen a decline in political participation, as well as restrictions on civil liberties in the name of security.

The report shows a troubling situation in Europe, as confidence in the region’s public institutions continues to drop. In Eastern Europe, the scores of ten countries have declined. The scores of Western European countries since 2008 have shown the impact of the economic crisis. Out of 21 countries, 15 have had a decrease in their scores between 2008 and 2010. 

The United Kingdom moved up from a score of 18 to 16 this year. The EIU pins the UK’s score on a “deep institutional crisis”, and says that trust in the government is “at an all-time low.” The United States, on the other hand, moved down from 19 to 21 this year, as the report says that the country’s democracy “has been adversely affected by a deepening of the polarisation of the political scene and political brinkmanship and paralysis.”

If the Democracy Index tells us anything, it’s that the economic crisis definitely plays a role in how healthy a democracy is.  The United Nation’s International Labour Office now predicts that youth unemployment will only continue to rise in the next five years — estimating that today’s youth will be approximately “three times more likely than adults” to face unemployment. At the start of the year, the World Bank predicted an “uncertain future” for the global economy; with limited growth in the coming years. As countries scramble to cope with economic woes, I think that this report is an important reminder that we shouldn’t lose sight of freedom of expression.

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Are you passionate about freedom of expression? Do you want to write for an award-winning, internationally renowned magazine and website, which has published the works of Aung San Suu Kyi, Salman Rushdie and Arthur Miller? Then enter Index on Censorship’s student blogging competition!

The winning entry will be published in Index on Censorship magazine, a celebrated, agenda-setting international affairs publication. It will be posted on our popular and influential website, which attracts contributors and readers from around the world. Index is one of the leading international go-to sources for hard-hitting coverage of the biggest threats and challenges to freedom of expression today. This competition is a fantastic opportunity for any aspiring writer to reach a global, diverse and informed audience.

The winner will also be awarded £100, be invited to attend the launch party of our latest magazine in London, get to network with leading figures from international media and human rights organisations, and will receive a one-year subscription to Index on Censorship magazine.

To be in with a chance of winning, send your thoughts on the vital human right that guides our work across the world, from the UK to Brazil to Azerbaijan. Write a 500-word blog post on the following topic:

“What is the biggest challenge facing freedom of expression in the world today?

This can cover old-fashioned repression, threats to digital freedom, religious clampdown or barriers to access to freedom of expression, focusing on any region or country around the world.”

The competition is open to all first year undergraduate students in the UK, and the winning entry will be determined by a panel of distinguished judges including Index Chair Jonathan Dimbleby. To enter, submit your blog post to competiton@indexoncensorship.org by 31 May 2013.

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When confronted with the facts of its own brutal crackdown on popular protests and human rights defenders, Bahraini officials usually stick to a routine. They hide behind tired lines of denial and hype supposed reforms. The actual situation on the ground continues to deteriorate — and inaction from the international community has emboldened the government. Most astounding is the silence from one of Bahrain’s greatest allies: the United Kingdom.

The UK government has made countless pledges to push on Bahrain to implement supposed reforms, but has yet to push forcefully on its partner where it counts. Almost a year after the Bahraini government publicly accepted the grim picture of human rights painted in the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry report and its recommendations, the country continues to perpetuate flagrant human rights violations.

It is more important than ever for the United Kingdom’s legislators to question Britain’s relationship with Bahrain — and to place pressure on the government to demand real reform. Bahraini officials like Nasser Bin Hamad Al Khalifa, who was a VIP guest at the London Olympics despite the numerous allegations he tortured protesters, should be shunned by British mandarins. UK legislators must also push on Bahrain to follow through on promises of transparency and accountability; many of those involved in the crimes committed in the past year and half, have either remained in their positions or been promoted.

The United Kingdom’s silence places it in danger of being seen as complicit in Bahrain’s human rights abuses, particularly when the UK has a direct method of influencing Bahrain: through its economic relationship. If it doesn’t halt arms sales, the United Kingdom is ostensibly giving permission to the Bahraini government to violently silence its people. A serious commitment to human rights from the United Kingdom means that a serious conversation about economic and diplomatic sanctions is necessary and important to do.

Political prisoners jailed on trumped up charges need the United Kingdom to press on its friend on the international stage. It is shameful that the UK and the US refused to sign onto a joint-statement issued by 27 countries this year, condemning human rights violations. Despite damning evidence that continues to mount both countries have been shamefully silent on this topic — and this must change.

This isn’t about regime change, or a chaotic dialogue about political reform. It is about something very simple: human rights. Silence from such an important trade partner spells out permission, casting a shadow on the UK’s commitment to free expression and human rights. Bahrainis have started saying that the UK and USA are to Bahrain what Russia is to Syria — enablers.

Maryam al-Khawaja is acting President of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights Deputy Director of the Gulf Center for Human Rights. Twitter @MARYAMALKHAWAJA

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Fearing extremists reacting violently to the publication of books deemed to be offensive to Islam, many publishers have thought twice about what they release about the religion. Author of The Young Atheist’s Handbook Alom Shaha says it’s time to discuss faith properly

It’s not just staff at Biteback who may have been concerned about publishing my book — according to a senior editor at one of the largest international publishers, who claimed to be personally keen to give me a deal, she was unable to convince her colleagues to agree because a “number of people” in the company would be “uncomfortable” about it. She then went on to explain that by “uncomfortable” she really meant “afraid”.

So, what is it about my book that has elicited such a response from people whose work it is to trade in ideas? Have I penned an incendiary tome that “insults” Islam or otherwise risks “offending” Muslims? Well, I don’t think I’ve done any such thing — I’ve simply written an account of how and why I came to be an atheist. It’s much less an attack on religion than it is a celebration of atheism. But the fact that it is written by someone from a Muslim background seems to have been sufficient to make some people afraid of publishing it. And that is surely an unacceptable state of affairs; we seem to have gone from a time when publishers and booksellers stood shoulder to shoulder in defence of free speech to publish and sell The Satanic Verses, despite the very real threat of violence, to a time when an entirely innocuous book like mine can be rejected for publication because people fear it will lead to violent repercussions.

Perhaps publishers cannot be blamed for being cautious? After all, as recently as September 2008 the offices of Gibson Square were indeed firebombed just as it was about to publish The Jewel of Medina, a fictional account of the life of Mohammed’s youngest wife, by Sherry Jones. But, as both Kenan Malik and Nick Cohen have described elsewhere, the firebombing may not have been caused so much by the “offensive” nature of the book as much as by the fact that the book was publicly announced to be offensive by a Western and non-Muslim academic. It may have been the case that the book would largely have been ignored by Muslims had it not been for the publicity generated by this — having been pronounced offensive, it then almost required at least one fanatic to act. Jones believes that “If Random House had simply published my book, I don’t think there would have been any trouble. The real problem is not that Muslims are offended but that people think they will be.”

I’ve encountered the idea that Muslims will be offended by my book from numerous people — from the publishers who looked at my proposal to the people who have interviewed me since publication and even from some friends. The only people who have not suggested that the book might be offensive to Muslims are Muslims themselves. Not a single Muslim has come forward to say that he or she has been offended by my book. The most strongly worded email I’ve received is one that expressed pity that I had “lost the one truth path” and the hope that “Allah would guide [me] back to it”.

Many of my childhood friends are Muslims and none of them has taken offence at the book. And this should come as no surprise. The idea that Muslims are particularly sensitive to criticism is one that has been blown out of all proportion. It is patronising to ordinary Muslims like my friends and it is one that has created an insidious climate of self-censorship amongst people who really should know better.

We need to talk about Islam, not because of some misguided notion that it threatens our western way of life but because we cannot ignore a set of ideas which holds such importance to so many people. Islam must be critiqued just as other ideas are, but perhaps even more importantly, Muslims and non-Muslims alike must have access to diverse points of views if public discourse about these matters is to be meaningful and well-informed. The publication of my book by Biteback was not brave, nor was it an attempt to court controversy for the sake of book sales. Rather, it was a decision made by people who love books and ideas, who felt that my story was one worth telling and that it would find an audience — and this, surely, is the only consideration publishers should have when deciding whether or not to publish a book.

Alom Shaha is a writer, science teacher, filmmaker and author of The Young Atheist’s Handbook. He tweets from @alomshaha

MORE ON THIS THEME:

Kenan Malik wrote about the impact of the Satanic Verses controversy on free expression and Islam for Index on Censorship magazine in 2008. Read his article here 

Jewel of Medina author Sherry Jones wrote for Index on Censorship about fears over distributing her 2008 novel about prophet Muhammad’s youngest wife, Aisha. Read her article here 

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In February 1663, the London printer John Twyn waited in Newgate prison for his execution, the unique horror of being hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn, the place known today as Marble Arch. This medieval agony was the recently restored monarch King Charles II’s terrifying lesson to his subjects: do not write, or print, treason against the state.

Even more cruel, Twyn’s offence was merely to have printed an anonymous pamphlet justifying the people’s right to rebellion, “mettlesome stuff” according to the state censor (the King’s Surveyor of the Press). No one suggested that Twyn had written this treason, only that he had transformed it from manuscript to print. Perhaps he hadn’t even read it. Never mind: he was sentenced to death.

Pressed both to admit his offence and reveal the name of the pamphlet’s anonymous author (and thereby save his own life), Twyn refused. In words of breathtaking courage that echo down the centuries, he told the prison chaplain that “it was not his principle to betray the Author”. Shortly afterwards, Twyn went to his doom. His head was placed on a spike over Ludgate, and his dismembered body distributed round other city gates.

Words can be weapons, and the pen challenges the sword. Writers, and printers, “the troublers of the poor world’s peace”, in Shakespeare’s phrase, have always seemed a danger to the state. Across Europe, for the first three centuries of the printing press, questions of religion and politics were usually settled by the authorities of the day with rare and explicit savagery. As John Mullan has shown in his excellent monograph Anonymity, the safest course for the dissident writer was a pseudonymous or anonymous cloak of identity.

Eventually, the Romantic assertion of the heroic individual’s place in the world at the beginning of the 19th century ended this prudent convention, but slowly. The scandalous first two Cantos of Don Juan were printed without naming either Lord Byron or his publisher, John Murray. Despite the risks, the poet soon found fame irresistible. “Own that I am the author,” he instructed Murray, “I will never shrink.” By the reign of the fourth George, Britain’s liberal democracy was never likely to eviscerate, hang or decapitate a transgressive writer, though some terrible penalties did remain on the statute book for decades to come.

Abroad in Europe, as repressive states, notably Tsarist Russia, grew harsher, the fate of writers worsened, but hardly varied. The essential predicament was unchanged from John Twyn’s day. Putting black on white, words on the page, as accurately and truthfully as one could, would never fail to make trouble with vested interests, arterio-sclerotic authorities and evil despotisms. Dostoevsky was marched before a firing squad, but reprieved. The distinguished list of writers, before the Cold War, who died for their art includes Osip Mandelstam and Isaac Babel, possibly the greatest loss of all.

Writers and despotic regimes

By the middle of the 20th century there was, in the words of Graham Greene, a fairly general recognition that “it had always been in the interests of the State to poison the psychological wells, to encourage cat-calls, to restrict human sympathy. It makes government easier when people shout Gallilean, Papist, Fascist, Communist.” In the same essay, on “the virtues of disloyalty”, Greene expressed the writer’s credo in an age of growing state control. “The writer is driven by his own vocation,” he said, “to be a Protestant in a Catholic society, a Catholic in a Protestant one, to see the virtues of the Capitalist in a Communist society, of the Communist in a Capitalist state.” Greene concludes this celebration of opposition by quoting Tom Paine: “We must guard even our enemies against injustice.”

Confronted by the intractable collision of the creative individual of fiery conscience with the frozen monolith of the powers that be, there is one essential question: What Is to Be Done? In 1968, the poet Stephen Spender, sickened and dismayed by reports of literary repression in Russia, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Spain, Portugal, Brazil and South Africa (as well as several recently decolonised African states), responded to the spirit of a revolutionary year. He decided to organise a fight-back, setting the pen against the sword, based in London.

George Orwell had already pointed out, in his 1946 essay “The Prevention of Literature”, that “literature has sometimes flourished under despotic regimes, but the despotisms of the past were not totalitarian”. In fact, it was the totalitarian regime of the USSR, and its trial of Yuli Daniel and Andrei Sinyavsky, that proved the tipping-point for Spender. He was joined by Pavel Litvinov, the Soviet scientist, dissident and human rights activist, who wrote an open letter asking if it might not be possible to form in England an organisation of intellectuals who would make it their business to publish information about what was happening to their censored, suppressed and imprisoned colleagues abroad. Litvinov was inspired by the fates of fellow Russians, but he insisted that such an organisation should operate internationally and not just concern itself with victims of Soviet oppression, though their plight was possibly the worst in those dark days of the Cold War.

Spender, who was exceedingly well-connected, organised a telegram of support in response to Litvinov’s appeal, signed by an awesome roll-call of the great: Cecil Day-Lewis, Yehudi Menuhin, WH Auden, Henry Moore, AJ Ayer, Bertrand Russell, Julian Huxley, Mary McCarthy, JB Priestley and his wife Jacquetta Hawkes, Paul Scofield, Igor Stravinsky, Stuart Hampshire, Maurice Bowra and George Orwell’s widow, Sonia. These, and subsequently many others, declared they would “help in any way possible”.

This initiative led, in turn, to the formation of the Council of WSI (Writers and Scholars International), whose founding members included David Astor, editor of the Observer, Elizabeth Longford, Roland Penrose, Louis Blom-Cooper and Spender himself. Index on Censorship was born when Michael Scammell, an expert on Russia, came up with the idea of founding a magazine. Thus was the ongoing battle for ‘intellectual freedom’ moved onto new terrain best suited to writers and scholars — the printed word published in a little magazine. Soon, the advantages and benefits of fighting oppression from a dedicated bastion of free expression became obvious to both sides, free and unfree alike.

A clarion voice in the fight for free speech

Index, whose first issue appeared in 1972, declared that its aim was to “record and analyse all forms of inroads into freedom of expression”. Further, it would “examine the censorship
situation in individual countries” and would publish “censored material in the journal”. In the long and bloody history of the fight for intellectual freedom there had been many impassioned statements of principle about the writer’s role as a piece of grit in the engine of the state. No one, however, had ever thought to jam a whole toolbox into the machinery of power, and place a fully-funded institution (such as WSI) in direct opposition to the repressive intentions of despotic regimes. This was the unique and historic importance of Index. But its success was not a foregone conclusion. Spender, its founder, was fully alert to the potential for windbaggery and failure inherent in such a venture. There was, he wrote, “the risk that the magazine will become simply a bulletin of frustration”.

Actually, the opposite came to pass. Index became a clarion voice in the cause of free expression. The abuses of freedom worldwide in the 1970s were so appalling and so widespread that the magazine rapidly found itself in the frontline of campaigns against repression and censorship in Russia, Czechoslovakia, Latin America and South Africa. Alongside Amnesty International and the PEN Club, Index gave vivid expression to the truth that “censorship” today takes many cruel forms: writers who are sent to labour camps, or blackmailed by threats to their families, or harassed into silence and isolation.

Perhaps the most important thing Index did, from the beginning, was to universalise an issue that was in peril of becoming a special interest: freedom was not “a luxury enjoyed by bourgeois individualists”. Along with self-expression, it was a human right, and an instrument of human consciousness that should be fought for worldwide.

Historically, the classic polemical statement against censorship, John Milton’s Areopagitica, a pamphlet against the Licensing Order of 1643, had focused on the English Parliament’s threat to a free press. Milton, writing in the midst of Civil War, was less worried about blood than ink: “Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God’s image,” he writes, “but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself.” Three centuries later, Index would concern itself with both the breath of the oppressed writer but also the lifeblood of liberty, namely, free expression.

In an astonishingly short time, barely a generation, from 1972 to 1989, the magazine established itself as a force to be reckoned with. At first, it took up the issue that had inspired its beginnings: Soviet oppression. In defence of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Index published part of a long, autobiographical poem, “God Keep Me from Going Mad”, composed in 1950-53 while Solzhenitsyn was serving a sentence in a labour camp in North Kazakhstan, the setting for One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. This was followed by a scoop in 1973, the unexpurgated text of an interview Solzhenitsyn had given to AP and Le Monde in which the writer revealed that “preparations are being made to have me killed in a motor accident”.

Václav Havel, Solzhenitsyn and the Iron Curtain

The importance of this document, one of the writer’s very rare accounts of his predicament, is that it described in horrifying and particular detail the true nature of the Soviet regime’s campaign against him, especially the constant surveillance and the unrelenting menace of the state’s agents. Solzhenitsyn was also able to draw attention to the persecution of Andrei Sakharov. In the bleakest depths of the Cold War, taking up the cause of Russia’s dissident community made the difference between international recognition and utter oblivion.

As the magazine grew in confidence, it began to focus on other, related injustices behind the Iron Curtain, notably in Czechoslovakia (as it was). It was among the first to publish the banned playwright Václav Havel in English. In 1976, a retrospective on Czechoslovakia eight years after the Soviet invasion of Prague described how Havel was being “constantly harassed and persecuted by the authorities”, the beginning (as it turned out) of a long assault on Havel’s liberty.

When Charter 77 was formed the following year, Index became a vital link in the chain of communication between the samizdat literary community in Prague and the wider world. The exiled Czech journalist George Theiner, who succeeded Michael Scammell as editor, strengthened this link. Context and continuity, the steady accumulation of a body of work and opinion, are vital ingredients in any effective campaign on behalf of oppressed writers. Index now provided both a sober and authoritative framework for its protest and also, through the office in London, a team of journalists dedicated to monitoring the devious and sinister machinations of oppressive regimes worldwide.

In the 1980s, the magazine spread its wings. There were exposés of repression in Latin America and persecution in Africa (Kenya, Nigeria). Roa Bastos, who had suffered so badly in Paraguay, found a new champion. Nadine Gordimer, who had supported Index from the beginning, published a story about the romantic dilemmas of a secret policeman in South Africa. In Europe, Samuel Beckett became so engaged with the plight of Václav Havel that he dedicated a short play, “Catastrophe”, to his fellow playwright and allowed Index to publish it in its pages, another notable scoop. By the end of the 1980s, the idea of standing up for the abstract idea of ‘intellectual freedom’ by reporting censorship and publishing banned writing had become a recognised part of the common discourse within the libertarian community.

The influence of Index on the literary world has been at once subtle and impossible to overstate. In my mind, there is no doubt that its example became an inspiration to those British publishers, like Faber, Penguin and Picador, who (especially in the 1970s and 1980s) published banned or oppressed writers such as Milan Kundera, Václav Havel and Josef Skvorecky. The literature that came from behind the Iron Curtain added a new dimension to the reading of the West. Translations of novels like The Book of Laughter and Forgetting were so exceptional that the book would briefly become, ex officio, as it were, almost a part of the Anglo-American literary tradition.

The institutional importance of Index is hard to overstate because, in the words of André Gide, good sentiments do not usually generate good literature. Just because a writer is committed to fighting injustice in his or her society, there’s no guarantee that his or her work will have artistic value. But once the role of literature as “witness” is established in the minds of the public, it makes it more difficult to dissociate literary merit and the social or political value of the text. Index provided a forum for banned writers to demonstrate the role of literature, both good and less good, as unsubmissive, contrarian, transcendent and instinctively transgressive.

Perhaps it was as well that the Index model was so firmly set by Spender and its founders. After 1989, the strength and security of WSI (notwithstanding a constant search for sponsors) was crucial. The fall of the Wall and the disintegration of the Soviet Union gave every indication that the raison d’être of Index — opposing Soviet oppression — had been trumped by History.

New frontiers for free expression — and censorship

In fact, the reverse was the case. Writers and free expression continued to be persecuted worldwide. Russia did not cease to be despotic with the disbanding of the KGB. In some ways, the condition of everyday life for Russian writers grew significantly worse, and certainly far more dangerous. The war in Chechnya gave the authorities a new pretext to crush free journalism. Anna Politovskaya became just one of many who turned to Index to make her plight better understood in the West.

With the millennium, meanwhile, the rise of the internet and the IT revolution inherent in the development of digital communications offered a new challenge. The old barriers to state control were coming down. Frontiers that had once been impenetrable were suddenly porous. Secret policemen could continue to terrorise writers, printers and publishers, but it was much harder to stop the free flow of information on the worldwide web. What place would Index have in the new world order of “free” content shaped by Google, Wikipedia and Amazon? The answer, of course, is as a research institution, a memory bank and a continuing moral example, along with publishing online as well as in print.

Index in the new century has made the fight for “intellectual freedom” normative as well as liberating. WSI remains the tool of one very simple, good idea. Its historical board members are unchanged: Milton, Paine, Wilkes, Zola and, possibly, Orwell. Index knows that such an achievement is not lightly won. The history of state repression shows that the individual writer and artist and scholar is vulnerable on his own. He, or she, needs the committed support of independent organisations that cannot be crushed by state terror. Furthermore, the plight of writers especially should not be at the mercy of intellectual fashion or the caprice of a Twitter feed. Free expression needs its gatekeepers: publishers, editors, booksellers, and independent columnists. And this community needs a place to meet, a forum for ideas and debate. This is what Index provides. More serious than Twitter; better organised than Facebook, it’s a forum that can exploit the social media, but not become its prisoner.

In the 21st century, this can be virtual, articulated through Google or Wikipedia. But it also needs to be orchestrated by people, standing apart from fashionable trends, who understand the nuances of the fight for intellectual freedom and who know what they are talking about. This, in a sentence, is the unique Index proposition: ideas honestly and freely expressed and writers worldwide uninhibited by the censorship of the mind or tyrannical restrictions on the printed word.

This article appears in 40 years of Index on Censorship which marks the organisation’s 40th anniversary with a star line-up of the most outstanding activists, journalists and authors. Click here for subscription options and more

Robert McCrum is an associate editor of the Observer. He has been a member of the advisory board of Index on Censorship since 1983

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