During the dark days of the military dictatorship in Argentina in the 1970s, there was only one newspaper that dared to publish the names of the “disappeared” – let alone to put them every day on the front page, as Andrew Graham-Yooll did as news editor of the Buenos Aires Herald. Read the full article.
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”107971″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][vc_column_text]Just before he was about to return to Argentina for the first time since his escape from the military junta in 1976, Andrew gave me a bulky package, asking that I take care of it in his absence. It was 1983/84 and he did well to be cautious; he was badly beaten up as he prepared to testify to the ‘disappearances’ under the military.
On his return he opened the parcel – which I’d kept under my bed untouched – and showed me the documents inside. Long lists of names, dates, details he’d recorded between 1973 and his departure three years later. These were the ‘disappeared’, the only record at the time, meticulously recorded by Andrew and the reason for the junta’s attempt on his life shortly before his departure.
I met Andrew around 1978, not long after he arrived in the UK with his family. He had his head down at the subs desk at the Guardian, but when we all went for a drink after a night shift work, I decided there were better ways for him to spend his time.
We had just initiated a new monthly section of the Guardian, ‘Third World Review’, and he seemed the right man to tell the story of Argentina and Latin America in a supplement that boasted ‘This is the story of the Third World – as it was then known – by its own journalists and writers in their own words’. In 1980, South magazine took the project further and Andrew eventually became my editor there.
In 1989, as South entered its last days, I received an invitation to lunch from the then head of Index, Philip Spender. He’d had an application from someone for the newly-vacant editorship of the magazine. What could I tell him of this man Andrew Graham-Yooll? From only the second issue of Index, Andrew had got in touch and written for the magazine. He was instrumental in widening the range of the magazine well beyond its founding brief of the censorship-ridden Communist world; freedom of expression he said with passion, was as much a human right as one’s daily bread. Index seemed like the perfect job for this happy but somehow melancholy Argentine journalist: I had no hesitation in recommending him.
Before long, he had fished me out from under the post-South dole net and I was doing a day a week editing Index and drinking with Andrew. I introduced him to the wilds of Wiltshire, introduced him to a world and people very different from the media mafia and was, in turn, educated in a world I did not know.
I was devastated when he decided to return to Argentina as editor-in-chief of the Buenos Aries Herald in 1994. Last ace in the hole? I was his successor as editor of Index.
Andrew’s combination of courage – of which he never spoke – humour and inner sorrow were the basis of a deep and lasting friendship that survived his return. He was due to visit me the week he died…
Judith Vidal-Hall was editor of Index on Censorship magazine from 1993 to 2007.
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Andrew Graham-Yooll, the respected, influential and talented writer and journalist whose experiences with Argentina’s brutal 1976-1983 military dictatorship he shared with the world, has died aged 75. Read the full article.
Judged: How governments use power to undermine justice and freedom. The summer 2019 edition of Index on Censorship magazine
In a world when journalists are operating in increasingly harsh and difficult conditions, and are hit by lawsuits to stop them doing that, they need lawyers independent enough to stand up with them in court. This is an issue that the latest edition of Index on Censorship magazine looks at in detail.
“While at a conference, I spoke to journalists under extreme pressure. They told me: ‘When the independence of the justice system is gone then that is it. It’s all over.” We need to make a wider public argument about the importance of the judiciary. It’s something we should all be talking about in the local cafe. The average citizen needs to be vigilant to make sure the line between those making the laws and those sitting in judgement is not blurred. Our fundamental rights depend on it,” Rachael Jolley, editor of Index on Censorship, said.
In the latest magazine we look at a global phenomena where powerful governments are trying to unpick the independence of legal systems, to bring them under more direct influence, and the implications for global freedom of expression and freedom of the media.
With contributions from Kaya Genc in Turkey; Stephen Woodman on the Mexican government’s promises to rebuild the pillars of democracy and what hasn’t happen; Jan Fox on Donald Trump’s trampling of democratic norms; Karoline Kan on China’s retaliation against lawyers who argue for human rights, Caroline Muscat on independent news in Malta, Melanio Escobar and Stefano Pozzeban on Venezuela’s abuse of judicial power, Viktoria Serdult on how the Hungarian prime minister is pressurising independence in all its forms, Silvia Nortes on the power of the Catholic church in increasingly secular Spain.
In China, hundreds of human rights lawyers are in prison; in England and Wales, it has become more of a financial risk for ordinary people to go to court; in Brazil, the new president has appointed a judge who was very much part of the election campaign to a super-ministerial role. In Turkey, the Erdogan government is challenging the opposition candidate’s win in Istanbul’s mayoral elections. Hungary’s Orban has been set out plans to introduce new types of courts under the nose of the EU (although there appears to have been a U-turn).
We have an exclusive interview with imprisoned author and journalist Ahmet Altan, who was accused of inserting subliminal messages in support of the attempted July 2016 coup into a television broadcast and was sentenced to life in prison, told us: “I came out against the unlawful practices of both the era of military tutelage and that of the AKP [the ruling Justice and Development Party]: I believe I am a target of their anger.” The issue also includes the first English translation of an extract from his 2005 novel The Longest Night.
“Ahmet’s case is a perfect illustration of what can happen when the rule of law and courts are aligned with the political will of an increasingly authoritarian government,” Jolley commented.
About Index on Censorship Magazine
Since its establishment in 1972, Index on Censorship magazine has published some of the greatest names in literature including Samuel Beckett, Nadine Gordimer, Mario Vargas Llosa, Hilary Mantel and Kurt Vonnegut. It also has published some of the greatest campaigning writers of our age from Vaclav Havel to Amartya Sen and Ariel Dorfman plus journalism from Mexico, Argentina, South Africa, China, India, Turkey and more. Editor Rachael Jolley was named British Society of Editors’ editor of the year in the specialist publication category (2016) and the magazine has received numerous awards including the APEX Award for Excellence and the Hermann Kesten prize.
With each new issue of the magazine, an archival issue will become available for students, researchers and supporters of free expression. The four latest issues of the magazine are available for purchase in print or digital formats via SAGE Publishing, bookshops and Exact Editions.
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