In this issue, Index explores film censorship in the West, Eastern Europe, Asia, Latin America and Africa
Banned films
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CATEGORY: Magazine
Iran: Revolution – yes, Freedom – no
In this issue, Leila Saeed investigates the results of the 1979 revolution in Iran and what it means for freedom under the Shah.
China: The Peking spring
In this issue, Index publishes excerpts from Wei Jinsheng’s unfinished autobiographical account of the ‘Great Cultural Revolution.’
A New Order?
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] By Hugh Lunghi Over thirty years ago, in 1946, the United Nations solemnly resolved that 'freedom of information is a fundamental human right and the touchstone of all the freedoms'. The newborn UN Educational,...
UNESCO’s threat to press freedom
The concept of a free press and the press as a tool of government will be formally resumed by UNESCO. Journalists Frank Barber and Raphael Mergui discuss.
Libya: Criticise & be killed
In this issue, Index investigates repression in Libya and abroad.
Human rights in the USA
In this issue, Index investigates how human rights are respected in the United States.
Introduction to the special Soviet issue
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] By Michael Scammell Ever since Index on Censorship started publication eight years ago (and of course for many decades before that) the Soviet Union has been the world’s leading exponent of techniques of...
USSR
In this issue, Index examines the machinery of repression and control through authors who lived most or all of their lives in the Soviet Union.
Introduction to special issue on Africa
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] By Ahmed Rajab We devote a large part of this issue to dissent in literature and the arts in Africa, and the response to it by the ruling circles in a number of countries. This may seem an ambitious project in...
A quarterly journal set up in 1972, Index on Censorship magazine has published oppressed writers and refused to be silenced across hundreds of issues.
The brainchild of the poet Stephen Spender, and translator Michael Scammell, the magazine’s very first issue included a never-before-published poem, written while serving a sentence in a labour camp, by the Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who went on to win a Nobel prize later that year.
The magazine continued to be a thorn in the side of Soviet censors, but its scope was far wider. From the beginning, Index declared its mission to stand up for free expression as a fundamental human right for people everywhere – it was particularly vocal in its coverage of the oppressive military regimes of southern Europe and Latin America but was also clear that freedom of expression was not only a problem in faraway dictatorships. The winter 1979 issue, for example, reported on a controversy in the United States in which the Public Broadcasting Service had heavily edited a documentary about racism in Britain and then gone to court attempting to prevent screenings of the original version. Learn more.