Norwegian musician Moddi has collated an album of songs from around the world that had been banned, censored or silenced. Unsongs includes cover versions of songs from countries including China, Russia, Mexico and Vietnam, on topics such as drugs, war and religion. Index has put together a playlist of some of these songs to coincide with the release of the 250th issue of Index on Censorship magazine, which includes a feature by Moddi about the inspiration behind the album.
1. Izhar Ashdot – A Matter of Habit
Israeli singer Izhar Ashdot was preparing to sing A Matter of Habit on army radio station Galatz in 2012 when he received a message saying it wasn’t welcome. The station stating “We should avoid celebrating a song that demonises our soldiers.” The song describes the fear and confusion of Israeli soldiers, until “killing is a matter of habit”.
2. Pussy Riot – Punk Prayer
Punk Prayer became internationally known after Russian feminist punk band Pussy Riot staged a performance of the song at Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. The group said it was a protest against the Orthodox church’s support for Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. Three members of the group were sentenced to two years in prison for “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred”.
3. Kate Bush – Army Dreamers
Kate Bush’s 1980 hit Army Dreamers tells the story of a mother’s grief after her son is killed in battle, and reflects the brutality and emotional effects of military conflict. During the Gulf War the BBC were wary of playing songs with an anti-war sentiment and told to think carefully before playing them.
4. Victor Jara – Prayer for a Worker
Chilean folk singer Victor Jara was killed in the 1973 military coup that overthrew socialist president Salvador Allende. His songs followed a theme of peace and social justice. A Prayer for a Worker highlights the failed attempts of the Christian Democratic Party and the Socialist Party to reconcile before the coup.
5. Los Tucanes di Tijuana – My Three Animals
In their 1990s narco-corrido (drugs ballad) Mis Tres Animals, Mexican group Los Tucanes di Tijuana sing of drug-trafficking but disguise cocaine, marijuana and heroin with the names of animals: a parrot, a goat and a rooster. The song made it on to the radio thanks to this word play, but narco-corridos are often censored as they are blamed for encouraging drug use and trafficking.
6. Richard Burgess – Eli Geva
Eli Geva was an soldier who refused to lead his forces into Beirut during the 1982 Lebanon war. His act caused a great deal of controversy in Israel, and Geva became an icon for the peace movement. This ode to the Israeli commander was written by Richard Burgess and performed by Norwegian singer Birgitte Grimstad, but Grimstad was warned against singing the song during a tour in Israel. The above video is Moddi’s cover version.
7. Billie Holiday – Strange Fruit
Strange Fruit, originally recorded by Billie Holiday in 1939, was a protest against the brutality and racism in the United States, particularly the lynching of African Americans. Holiday approached both her record label and producer about recording the song but they turned it down, fearing a negative reaction. Instead a friend, Milt Gabler, helped her to record and distribute the song after her a cappella version of it bought him to tears.
Order your full-colour print copy of our journalism in danger magazine special here, or take out a digital subscription from anywhere in the world via Exact Editions (just £18* for the year). Each magazine sale helps Index on Censorship fight for free expression worldwide.
*Will be charged at local exchange rate outside the UK.
Magazines are also on sale in bookshops, including at the BFI and MagCulture in London, Home in Manchester, Carlton Books in Glasgow and News from Nowhere in Liverpool as well as on Amazon and iTunes. MagCulture will ship anywhere in the world.
Rachael Jolley, editor of Index on Censorship magazine, in a speech to the §2 – Libraries and Democracy conference in Umea, Sweden.
When I was nine, ten and eleven, my mother, my brother and I had a weekly ritual of driving to the local library, a flat modern building with big glass windows. We’d spend a quiet hour wandering up and down its carpeted corridors, picking out two or three plastic-covered books to take home to read.
All sorts of people found stories, history and biographies within their reach.
I have measured out my life in library books: from weekly visits to Bristol libraries, to school in Pittsburgh – a city which pays tribute to the greatest library supporter of them all Andrew Carnegie – to further study at the great Colindale newspaper archive library, and perhaps the most exciting celebrity library spot, standing next to the poet and librarian Philip Larkin in the neighbourhood butchers in Hull.
US poet laureate Rita Dove believes that libraries provide: “A window into the soul and a door into the world.” There are two types of freedom captured in that thought: The freedom to think, and the freedom to find out about others.
Books, magazines and newspapers are a door into the world and that’s why over centuries governments have tried to stop them being opened.
When that door opens on to the world, who knows what people might think or do? That door is not open to everyone now, or in the past. And when it comes to the freedom to express oneself: to write, draw, paint, act or protest then restrictions have often been levied by governments and other powerful bodies to stop the wider public being allowed those too.
Over the centuries, often, books were only made available to some. Sometimes they were written in a language that only a tiny group of people knew. When paper was expensive, books were for the few, not the many. In times gone by education was also expensive (and it still is in many places); those who were allowed to learn reading and writing were once in the minority.
That’s why public libraries, open to all and funded from the public purse, are so important. Their existence helped the many get access to what the few had held close to their chests; information, literature, inspiration.
US businessman and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie was one of the world’s most enthusiastic endowers of libraries. He helped fund more than 2,000 libraries around the United States plus hundreds more in the UK and beyond, because when he was a poor teenager, a wealthy man, Colonel James Anderson, opened up his private library of 400 books to Andrew and other working boys on Saturday nights, and this, Carnegie believed, made a huge difference to his life chances, and his ability to rise from poor, struggling beginnings to be a successful and wealthy steel magnate.
Carnegie believed in libraries’ power to do good. To open people’s minds. To help build knowledge. To help the ordinary person be introduced to ideas that might never otherwise be seen.
Of course, the history of libraries is much older than Carnegie’s time, stretching back to the Romans, Greeks, Chinese and Islamic libraries, where archives of important documents were kept.
Libraries hold history; documents that tell us what was bought and sold in ancient Greece; or how a Roman senator spoke. They inform us about the reality of other times, and allow us to learn from that past.
That’s why conquering armies have looked to destroy libraries and museums. Part of imposing a new present on a population is sometimes about re-writing the past. From the Library at Alexandria, to the Mosque library at Chinguetti to the Roman library on the Palatine Hill. If documents had not been preserved, we would know far less. We can do more than guess what might have happened, we can actually KNOW details, because records are still available.
In the 21st century libraries are under threat from many directions. As governments and local councils cut public spending, libraries in many western countries, including in the United Kingdom, are being closed down. Does that point to a lack of need or desire for such things? Have libraries become redundant?
In this new age of enlightenment is our thirst for knowledge less desperate than in previous generations or is our thirst quenched by easy access to hundreds of television channels and the internet? Indeed, with electronically accessible information free to anyone with a computer, is the internet the ultimate library, rendering its brick and glass-built equivalents redundant, in the same way the printing press marginalised the illuminated manuscript?
We in Europe are more free than previous generations have ever been to learn, find and understand. With our zillions of instant access points for information and discussion, we can look at Facebook, Twitter and thousands of ideas online in the twitch of mouse click after all. But does that access bring more understanding or deeper knowledge? And what is the future role then of a library?
Librarians are much needed as valuable guides: to help students and other readers to learn techniques to sift information, question its validity and measure its importance. To understand what to trust and what to question; and that all information is not equal. Students need to be able to weigh up different sources of research. The University of California Library System saw a 54% decline in circulation between 1991 to 2001 of 8,377,000 books to 3,832,000. It is shocking that some students are failing themselves by not using a broad range of books, and journals that are free from their university libraries to widen and deepen their understanding.
Both libraries and newspapers in their analogue form gave us the opportunity to stumble over ideas that we might not have otherwise encountered. Over there, on that page opposite the one we are reading in a newspaper, is an article about Chilean architecture that we knew nothing about it, but suddenly find a spark of interest in, and over there on the library shelf next to Agatha Christie, is Henning Mankell, a new author to us, and one that suddenly sounds like one we might like to read. And then off we go on a new winding track towards knowledge; one that we didn’t even know we wanted to explore. But that analogue world of stumbled-upon exploration is closing down. We have to make sure that we still have the equipment to carry on stumbling down new avenues and finding out about new writers, and history that we never knew we would care about.
Technology tends to remove the “stumbling upon”, by taking us down straight lines. Instead it prompts us to read or consume more of the same. Technology learns what we like, but it doesn’t know and cannot anticipate what might fascinate us in a chance, a random, encounter. In a world where we remove the unexpected then we miss out on expanding our knowledge. Something that libraries have always offered. The present is all too easily an echo chamber of social media where we follow only the people we agree with, and where we fail to engage with the arguments of those with whom we disagree. Is the echo chamber being enhanced by the linear nature of the digital library, the digital bookstore and the digital newspaper? AND if we follow only those that we like and agree with, do we lull ourselves into believing that those are the only opinions and beliefs out there. And we are so unused to disagreement that we want to close it down. We are somehow afraid to have it in the same room as us. Somehow we seem to be stumbling on towards a world where disagreement is frowned upon, and not embraced as a way of finding what is out there.
This is just one challenge to freedom of expression and thought. There are others.
Recently at Index on Censorship, we heard from Chilean-American writer Ariel Dorfman, a long-time supporter and writer for us…. that his play, Death and the Maiden, was being banned by a school in New Jersey because some parents didn’t like the language contained in it. In other words it offended or upset somebody. Meanwhile Judy Blume’s books about the realities of teenage life, including swearing and teenage pregnancy, gets her banned from US libraries and schools.
But isn’t fiction, theatre and art about connecting with the real, isn’t it about challenging people to think, and to be provoked?
When a film has been banned from our cinemas or a book banned from distribution has it meant no one is keen to read it? In fact the opposite is usually true, people flock to find out what it is or to watch the film wherever they can. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, A Clockwork Orange and DH Lawrence’s novel Sons and Lovers found new audiences because they were banned. Monty Python’s controversial film Life of Brian was once marketed here in Sweden as the film so funny, it was banned in Norway!! (As you can imagine it did very well here in Sweden.)
Increasingly there are loud voices saying that we shouldn’t think about the unpleasant bits in the world, that we should ignore the difficult or traumatic because it is too complicated, or too ugly to have in the room. In a special editorial published at the time of the Charlie Hebdo killings, the South African Mail and Guardian said; “The goals of terrorism, if we are to dignify utter insanity with aims, are fear and polarisation.” If we live in a society where we think we are not allowed to speak about subjects; where they are considered too controversial, where appearing on a platform with someone is somehow seen as a tacit nod to agreeing with them, are giving into those goals?
So what can those living in Europe do to enhance or defend freedom of expression and what are the role of libraries? Firstly, we should never stop learning about our history. Remember periods where freedoms of expression, of thought, of living in a non traditional way, or practising a religion that was not state sanctioned, were not laid out as European rights as they are today. From witch trials, to the Edict of Nantes, to social stigma of unmarried women, to children abused by adults. There are moments in every family’s history, when someone had a desperate need for some secret, some taboo, some injustice to be talked about. To be put under the public spotlight.
Given that historical, but personal, reflection, perhaps each of us can have a clearer understanding of why freedom of expression as a right is something worth defending today.
Freedom of expression has always had a role in challenging injustice and persecution. Some argue that without freedom of expression we would not have other freedoms. Freedom of expression also includes offering groups that have historically been ostracised or sidelined or ignored — a chance to put their views, to be part of the wider debate, to be chosen to join a television chat show. Europe is a diverse society, all those voices should be heard.
Another point about enhancing freedom of expression in Europe, and outside, is that a lively and vigorous and diverse media is extremely important. So we should fight against control of the media by a single corporation, or by increased government influence. We need newspapers, and broadcasters, that cover what is happening, and don’t ignore stories because someone would rather those stories were not covered.
And another role for libraries of the future is as debate houses – a living room – at the centre of communities where people of different backgrounds come together to hear and discuss issues at the heart of our societies. And to meet others in their community. These neutral spaces are increasingly needed.
The value of passionate argument is often valued less than it should be. Where debates or arguments are driven underground, those who are not allowed to speak somehow obtain a glamour, a modern martydom. We must allow dissent and argument. We must let people whose ideas we abhor speak. Freedom of speech for those we like and agree with is no freedom at all.
There are those that dismiss freedom of speech as an indulgence defended by the indulged or the middle class or the left wing or the right wing or some other group that they would like not to hear from. However throughout history, freedom of speech and thought and debate has been used by the less powerful to challenge the powerful. Governments, state institutions, religious institutions. And to argue for change. That is not an indulgence.
And if you believe someone else’s arguments are ill founded, incorrect or malicious, then arguing a different point of view in a public place, a library, or a university hall, is much more powerful, than saying you are not allowed to say those things because we don’t like or disagree with them. To make those arguments, to understand what is happening we need to be able to access knowledge, libraries must continue to be community spaces where people can delve for that research and find out about the world, and themselves.
Libraries and those who support them have often been defenders of the right to knowledge. Because at the heart of any library is the idea of a freedom to think and discover.
We should remember that reading something never killed anyone. Watching a play didn’t either. If you find something that you disagree with, even disagree strongly, it is not the same as a dagger through your heart, as someone told me it was last summer in Italy.
As Turkish writer Elif Shafak said recently the response to a cartoon is another cartoon, the response to a play is another play. We are and can be prepared to listen, read or watch things that we disagree with. Listen to the argument; argue back with your own. Consider the evidence. The point of speech is to arrive at truth, and no one should be offended by that.
Music has long been used as a form of resistance, from civil rights movements to the fall of the Berlin Wall. The latest issue of Index on Censorship magazine, focusing on taboos and the breaking down of social barriers, features an exclusive new short story by Ariel Dorfman about a military trumpeter who plays a defiant, rebellious song on his instrument.
In honour of the story, we have compiled a playlist of music that has been used as protest and resistance from all over the world. The influence of these songs show just how powerful music can be as a form of rebellion.
Many artists on the list have been forced into exile or censored. Index on Censorship has teamed up with the award-winning makers of the documentary They Will Have To Kill Us First to launch the Music in Exile Fund, which will help support musicians in similar situations.
Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony – Ode to Joy
Ode to Joy has been adopted by many protest movements around the world. Most notably the song was played on the streets of Chile in resistance to the Pinochet dictatorship. Demonstrators gathered outside prisons singing Ode to Joy, giving strength to the prisoners who suffered torture there at the hands of the regime.
Joan Baez – We Shall Overcome
We Shall Overcome is a key protest song of the civil rights movement. The song, which has been covered by various artists, was first used in 1945 by tobacco workers fighting for better pay in Charleston, South Carolina. The song, with its message of solidarity and hope, has been used in many protests around the world, not least in the 1950s and 1960s by activists in the American civil rights movement.
Vuyisile Mini – Ndodemnyama we Verwoerd
Ndodemnyama we Verwoerd (Watch Out, Verwoerd) is one of the most well-known songs in South Africa due to its association with the campaign against apartheid. Hendrik Verwoerd, who served as prime minister of South Africa until his assassination in 1966, became known as the “architect of apartheid” for his role in implementing the system of racial segregation. Unsurprisingly, he became the subject of many protest songs, including Ndodemnyama we Verwoerd by Vuyisile Mini. Mini became one of the most powerful organisers of the resistance, earning himself the moniker the “organiser of unorganised”. He was sentenced to death in 1964 on charges of sabotage and political crimes and is said to have sung the song while being led to the gallows.
November 2015 marked the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall. Many songs have been associated with the demise of the wall, which divided Berlin for nearly three decades, particularly Wind of Change by German heavy metal band The Scorpions. The song, one of peace and hope, was released a few months after the wall was torn down and became one of the top-selling singles of 1991. The music video to Wind of Change shows footage of the wall being removed.
Songhoy Blues – Al Hassidi Terei
The four members of Songhoy Blues met as refugees after being forced into exile by Muslim extremists who banned all music in Mali in 2012. In defiance of the extremists, they formed the desert blues band, refusing to have music taken away from them. They have since gone on to work with Damon Albarn of Blur and Nick Zimmer of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, been on an international tour and were nominees for the arts category of the Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Awards 2014.
Ramy Essam – Irhal
Irhal became known as the anthem of Egypt’s uprising against President Mubarak’s after singer Ramy Essam performed the song during the 2011 protests in Tahrir Square. Irhal, which urges the president to resign, became internationally known after Essam’s performance was posted on YouTube during the protests. After the revolution, Essam returned to Tahrir Square where he was arrested and tortured by the military council. He was offered safe city residence in Sweden following his arrest and has been living there since 2014.
Tropicália/Gilberto Gil – Miserere Nóbis
The Tropicália movement is a brief artistic movement that took place in Brazil in the 1960s. During the movement, which was co-founded by Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso, musicians expressed their resistance to the country’s military dictatorship through their music and their socially and politically charged lyrics. The movement only lasted around a year before being suppressed by the military regime. Gil and Veloso were arrested in 1969 and forced to live in exile in London for the political content of their work but returned to Brazil in 1972.
Billie Holiday – Strange Fruit
Strange Fruit, most famously performed by Billie Holiday, protests American racism and the lynching of African Americans. The song began as a poem written by teacher Abel Meeropol published in 1937; Who then set it to music and performed it as a protest song at various venues in New York in the late 1930s along with his wife and the singer Laura Duncan.
Chieftains and Sinead O’Connor – Foggy Dew
Foggy Dew is the name of several old Irish ballad. This version of the song chronicles the Easter Rising of 1916 in Dublin when Irishmen fought for the cause of Irish independence. During World War I, thousands of Irishmen served in the British forces. Many Irish nationalists felt they should have stayed in Ireland and fought for Irish independence, which is reflected in the song.
Killing in the Name – Rage Against The Machine
American rap-metal band Rage Against the Machine released Killing in the Name in 1992, six months after the Los Angeles riots, which were triggered after four white police officers were acquitted of beating black motorist Rodney King. The song is institutional racism and police brutality. Known for its excessive use of expletives, Killing in the Name originally received little air time.
Joe Strummer (The Clash) mural, London. Credit: Flickr / Matt Brown
The Clash – White Riot
When The Clash released White Riot, many people thought it was a song advocating some kind of race war. This couldn’t be further from the truth. With the lyrics, Joe Strummer was appealing to white youths to find a worthy cause to fight (or riot) for, just as many black youths had in the UK at the time. At its heart, it is a song about class and race.
Bob Marley – Get Up, Stand Up
Bob Marley is renowned for his songs about peace, love and resistance. With Get Up, Stand Up being one of his most well-known protest songs. Marley wrote the song with fellow Jamaican musician Peter Tosh as a challenge to oppression. The song is famed for the lyrics: “You can fool some people sometimes but you can’t fool all the people all the time.”
Pete Seeger – Joe Hill
Joe Hill was a miner, songwriter and union organiser for the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Hill was executed in America in 1915 following a controversial trial in which he was found guilty of the murders of John G Morrison and his son Arling. Hill refused to testify at his trial believing he would be worth more to the labour movement as a dead martyr than alive. After his death, Hill was the subject of songs by various artists, including Paul Robeson, Joan Baez and Pete Seeger.
Sam Cooke – A Change Is Gonna Come
A Change Is Gonna Come has been covered by various artist but was originally written by Sam Cooke. The song is another civil rights anthem concerning the struggles of African Americans during the 1960s. Cooke was said to have been inspired to write to song by various events in his life, predominantly being turned away from a “whites only” hotel. The singer was shot and killed just before the song was due to be released as a single in 1964.
Tinariwen – Lulla
Tinariwen are made up of musicians from the Tuareg community, whose music reflects the issues faced by the Tuareg people. The musicians received military training when they were living in exile in Libya in the 1980s, and many of the members of Tinariwen were rebel fighters in the 1990 revolt against the Malian government. In 1991, the collective, who’s name translates to “the people of the desert”, left the military to focus on music on a full-time basis.
Eagles of Death Metal – People Have the Power
On 8 December, Eagles of Death Metal joined U2 on stage in Paris, just three weeks after Muslim extremists launched an attack at their concert at the Bataclan Theatre, killing 89 people, plus 41 in two other attacks. Together the bands performed a cover of Patti Smith’s People Have the Power, showing bravery and resistance against the terrorists who left the city in fear.
You can read the Ariel Dorfman’s new short story, All I Ever Have, about music as a form of resistance in the latest Index on Censorship magazine. Each magazine sale helps Index on Censorship fight for free expression worldwide. Order your copy here, or take out a digital subscription via Exact Editions (just £18 for the year).
Femen activists demonstrate in front of the Saudi Arabian embassy in Berlin. Photo: Florian Schuh/dpa/Alamy Live News
Societies often endanger lives by creating taboos, rather than letting citizens openly discuss stigmas and beliefs. Index on Censorship magazine editor Rachael Jolley introduces our taboo-themed issue, which looks at no-go subjects worldwide, from abortion and mental health to the Holocaust and homosexuality
Teenager Rahenaz Sayed was told by her family not to sit on a bed, not to touch her hair oil and not to pray during her period.
Sayed, now 20, has started to go into schools in Mumbra, near Mumbai, along with two other young women, to discuss the taboos around menstruation, according to India’s Hindustan Times.
Traditionally, girls here didn’t talk to their mothers about getting their periods, or pain that they might be experiencing. This was something you were not expected to discuss, better, in fact, to pretend that it just wasn’t happening.
These restrictions were not open to challenge, until now. “We thought, ‘Why not talk of an issue which women don’t speak about and suffer silently?’ We suffered due to silences surrounding menstruation and didn’t want others to go through the same,” Mubhashirin Naik, one of the women starting to go into schools to talk about these long-held practices, told the newspaper.
They had been told that these “rules” came from the scriptures, but when they read those same passages themselves they found that while they spoke about women resting during menstruation nothing was written about banning them from prayer.
Taboos, subjects that are off limits to argument, are different in every country around the world. But this story shows why the act of not allowing a group of people to discuss a tradition or convention can injure society. Why should girls be treated like outcasts once a month and banned from doing the most normal things in life? The answer is because somehow this has become accepted and challenges frowned upon.
Once these three young women began to see that the structures they were being told to follow were nonsensical (they were not able to ask for painkillers, for instance), they had the strength to stand up against them. And by doing so, they will have begun to change the dynamic. No doubt, other women will also be encouraged to question the “rules”. And that’s how societies adapt over time, by questioning power.
In El Salvador, where abortion is illegal under any circumstance, even where the pregnant woman could die, the way that the law is enforced means that women who suffer a miscarriage can wake up with a police officer standing next to them.
The abortion law is so draconian that women who lose their baby through illness can find themselves charged with man- slaughter. Under the ferocity of this law, many women are too frightened to talk to anyone about any concerns they might have about pregnancy, let alone discuss abortion (more on this in the latest issue). In 2008 a 25-year-old woman, Guadalope Vásquez, was sentenced under the abortion law to a 30-year sentence after suffering a miscarriage. Under these conditions, women are often too frightened to discuss anything about health complications during their pregnancy with a doctor, or anyone else. Lives will be put at risk.
Throughout history, taboos have been established to limit and control society, and help to retain a status quo. “Best not mention it” is the nodded instruction to put something off limits in the family living room. In the 20th century, in the UK, societal disapproval would be rained down on those who ate something other than fish on Fridays, or children who played outside on a Sunday, or an adult who didn’t wear a hat to church. And in the US today the Westboro Baptist Church tells its female followers that it is forbidden for them to cut their hair. But why? Who decided these were the rules, and how do they change?
Sometimes it takes a generational shift, such as we have seen in Ireland, with the 62% vote to change the law to allow same-sex marriage. There’s a tipping point when a body of resistance builds up to such a point that the dam breaks and the public suddenly demands another way is found, and an older way is discarded.
But societal disapproval can be fierce and individuals who deviate from “the normal” can also find themselves isolated and alone, as Palestinian academic Mohammed Dajani Daoudi discovered when he took a group of his students to Auschwitz to learn about the Holocaust (read his story in the magazine). Dajani felt it was important for his university students to learn about this period of history. He saw his duty as one of teaching about,
not ignoring, a particular piece of history. Others saw it as the action of a traitor, accusing him of ignoring the suffering of Palestinians. He knew he was tackling a taboo subject, but hadn’t expected the reaction to the visit to be so violent. Afterwards he received death threats, and has now moved his family to Washington DC, partly for safety reasons.
Societies often endanger lives by creating taboos, rather than letting citizens openly discuss stigmas and beliefs. Remember the days when people would fear being judged for admitting they had cancer and would not mention it in public? Alastair Campbell does, and draws parallels to attitudes to mental illness today. Such beliefs can lead to people failing to talk to doctors about symptoms because of embarrassment, and potentially leaving diagnosis too late. These societal barriers are often out-of-date, sometimes stemming from archaic religious beliefs, or from traditions that have been left unchallenged. But still today an action that conflicts with expected behaviour can result in damage to an individual. The Encyclopedia Britannica states: “Generally, the prohibition that is inherent in a taboo includes the idea that its breach or defiance will be followed by some kind of trouble to the offender, such as lack of success in hunting or fishing, sickness, miscarriage, or death.” Living in fear of breaching such a “rule” can leave people afraid to dispute or argue for a sensible alternative.
To challenge a famous phrase from a WWI poster, talk doesn’t cost lives, but not talking certainly can.
Each magazine sale helps Index on Censorship fight for free expression worldwide. Order your copy here, or take out a digital subscription via Exact Editions (just £18 for the year).
