Monday marked the beginning of Banned Books Week. To celebrate the freedom to read, Index on Censorship staff explore some of their favourite, and some of the most important, banned or challenged books.
Ryan McChrystal – Borstal Boy by Brendan Behan
Brendan Behan’s autobiographical work Borstal Boy was banned in Ireland in December 1958. His London publisher, Hutchinson’s, had sent a batch of copies to Dublin to be sold at a Christmas market but they were confiscated at the port. Behan was outraged that a group of “country yobs” could prevent the distribution of his book.
Borstal Boy is the story of how a 16-year-old Behan landed himself in a series of institutions for young offenders in Kent, having been charged with membership of the IRA, and what happened to him after that.
Although Ireland’s Censorship of Publications Board never explained why the book was banned, it probably had something to do with its depictions of adolescents talking about sex and its pillorying of Irish social attitudes, republicanism and the Catholic Church. The board is, after all, known for its stringent adherence to Roman Catholic values.
When Behan later learned that the book was also banned in Australia and New Zealand, he took solace in song and humour as he went around Dublin singing:
“My name is Brendan Behan, I’m the latest of the banned
Although we’re small in numbers we’re the best banned in the land, We’re read at wakes and weddin’s and in every parish hall,
And under library counters sure you’ll have no trouble at all.”
David Heinemann – From Dictatorship to Democracy by Gene Sharp
Running the Freedom of Expression Awards’ Fellowship and helping brave people who are often fighting totalitarian regimes can sometimes feel like an uphill battle. How can one person or organisation ever hope to defeat an entire dictatorship?
They can’t, of course, but Gene Sharp’s little book reminds me that “the deliberate, non-violent disintegration of dictatorships” is possible when people work together in certain ways. Part handbook, part political pamphlet, it’s an invaluable toolbox for any serious democratic activist. Its potency was illustrated last year when a group of young Angolans were imprisoned simply for trying to get together and discuss it at a book club.
The fact that I could read it on my commute home reminded me never to take my freedoms for granted.
Vicky Baker – The Bible
The Bible is not an obvious choice for me as I’m an atheist, but loosely picking up on that misattributed Voltaire quote, I would defend anyone’s right to read it – or indeed any other religious book.
Pope Francis has called The Bible “an extremely dangerous book”. Owning it or reading it can get you still get you imprisoned or killed in certain parts of the world. This is the sort of book banning that we should all be extremely worried about, whatever your religion.
These days I don’t even have a copy in my house, but its stories formed part of my childhood. When I grew up I learnt that my hometown, Amersham in Buckinghamshire, also had an important connection to censorship of The Bible. In the 16th century a group of local Lollards were burned at the stake for wanting to translate the book from Latin to English; some of their children were forced to light the pyre.
Known as the Amersham Martyrs, they have since been honoured in a memorial stone, costumed walking tours, and through occasional community plays about their lives, staged in a local church. (Imagine if the bishop who sentenced them saw this today.)
Sadly, we live in a world where censorship of the Bible is not ancient history. In 2014, an American man was sent to labour camp in North Korea for leaving a Bible in a restaurant’s bathroom when visiting as a tourist. It was deemed a crazy act – and, indeed, the move also endangered his local tour guides – but it is outrageous that simply leaving a book behind, so readers can choose to pick it up or not, can still lead to such punishments.
David Sewell – The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
One of those cases in the USA where the pressure to ban comes not from the authorities, but from citizens wanting it pulled from libraries or schools. Complaints were made about its sweary language and its graphic depictions of violence and death. But there again it’s about a grunt’s eye view of the Vietnam war, so go figure.
Only this is really a remarkable work of fiction, which is highly literary in its narrative form. It uses stories to try and construct the extreme experience of war, but also uses war to explore the drive to create stories for ourselves. Language is used to defang terror on the battlefield, stories are invented (and embellished through the re-telling) to keep dead comrades alive, because if they are allowed to die, then it brings death one step closer to the surviving soldiers.
A fascinating book that tries to put words to the unsayable and unspeakable, and its would-be censors are attempting to make it a different kind of unspeakable and unsayable.
Kieran Etoria-King – Riotous Assembly by Tom Sharpe
One of the most enduring, darkly funny things I’ve ever read was the opening chapter of Tom Sharpe’s 1971 novel Riotous Assembly, in which a South African police chief argues with an old white woman who shot her black chef in the garden of her stately home. As two deputies collect up the obliterated corpse of the man she killed with a four-barrelled elephant gun, Miss Hazelstone, who graphically describes her illicit love affair with the chef, demands to be arrested for murder, while a disgusted Kommandant van Heerden insists that the killing of a black person is not murder. Meanwhile, the entire police force of the fictional town of Piemburg, operating under mistaken intelligence, are engaged in a fierce and escalating firefight at the gate, unaware that they are actually shooting at each other from behind cover.
Sharpe had lived in South Africa from 1951 to 1961 before he was deported over a play he staged that criticised the government, so he had an intimate knowledge of the country and Riotous Assembly, a hilarious send-up of the South African police force, is driven as much by real venom and contempt for the Apartheid system as it is by vulgar humour. Of course, that system wasn’t going to tolerate such mockery and the book was banned in South Africa as well as Zimbabwe.
Helen Galliano – The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
I first came across The Master and Margarita – considered to be one of the finest novels to come out of the Soviet Union – as a performance student at Goldsmiths and a lover of magical realism. I immediately fell into Bulgakov’s wild and dangerous world of talking cats, decapitations, magic shows, Satan’s midnight ball and plenty of vodka. I was hooked, reading it multiple times throughout my third year and even created a performance reimagining Margarita’s transformation into a witch.
The forward to the 1997 translation of the novel reads: “Mikhail Bulgakov worked on this luminous book throughout one of the darkest decades of the century. His last revisions were dictated to his wife a few weeks before his death in 1940 at the age of forty-nine. For him, there was never any question of publishing the novel. The mere existence of the manuscript, had it come to the knowledge of Stalin’s police, would almost certainly have led to the permanent disappearance of its author.”
Faced with persecution, Bulgakov burned the first manuscript of The Master and Margarita, only to re-write it later from memory. It was eventually published nearly three decades after his death and since then “manuscripts don’t burn”, a famous line from the book, has come to symbolise the power and determination of human creativity against oppression.
Great literature and great ideas will always survive.
What’s it like to be an author of a banned or challenged book? How can librarians support authors who find themselves in this situation? To mark Banned Books Week, Vicky Baker, deputy editor of Index on Censorship magazine, will chair an online discussion with three authors on 29 September, followed by a Q&A. It is free to join, although attendees must register in advance.
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.
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GreatFire was set up in 2011 by three anonymous individuals to counter the “Great Firewall of China”, the systematic blocking by the Chinese government of any website deemed controversial, including any that touch on news, human rights, democracy or religion.
“We know them as a mix of folks within China and outside of China who have a mix of activism and technological expertise,” said Dan Meredith of the Open Tech Fund, one of GreatFire’s financial backers.
“Their motivations are not regime change, but purely wanting to see progress for the Chinese people, and see more reforms happen in the Chinese government. They’re passion driven, but they also have this insider knowledge about how to circumvent some of these really sophisticated things that are happening in China,” he told Index.
“GreatFire is quite a mysterious organisation,” Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia told Index. “It’s, roughly speaking, five people, maybe it’s not quite five, maybe its more,” he said. “But it really is just a small group of people who have come together to do something important.”
The team started out collecting data about which sites were blocked in China, and now monitors over thousands of sites, domains and Google searches. “They have a network of computers in and outside of China, testing for whether websites that are generally available to the public here in the UK or the US or any other country that has unrestricted access to the whole internet, are available within China,” Meredith explains. Their site also shows how much of the time it has been blocked, and offers an explanation as to how.
GreatFire are also the makers of FreeWeibo, which was a shortlisted in 2015’s Index Awards and acts as a mirror to Weibo, the popular, but heavily censored, Chinese social network. As well as this they also run FreeBooks, allowing people in China read censored books.
“GreatFire are one of the organisations that are really fighting hard against censorship in China,” said Wales.
But last year GreatFire’s work went from being an annoyance to the Chinese authorities, to being something they couldn’t ignore, Meredith explained.
Using an idea called collateral freedom, GreatFire made blocked sites accessible to millions in China and around the world. The collateral freedom idea works by pinning banned websites to those of big corporations (such as Amazon, Microsoft or GitHub) which, in order to compete in the global marketplace, China cannot block. When organisations normally blocked in China – like the BBC or Reuters – use, for example, amazon.com as a host their sites can remain visible in China.
In February 2015, GreatFire used this technology to release an Android app, allowing anyone in China, or in other countries where the web is censored, to access these otherwise censored sites. Everything they do is open source, so their work can be replicated by others.
However, it was GreatFire’s work with Reporters Without Borders, Meredith says, that finally caused the Chinese government to retaliate.
“We know is that they are incredibly frustrated by this collateral freedom idea,” he said. “But what happened last year when Reporters Without Borders started employing this is…there became a very big press strategy, so what ended up being a thing that was quietly annoying the Chinese became a very public thing that was annoying the Chinese.”
The project was launched on World Press Freedom Day in March 2015, and used collateral freedom to unblock websites around the world, making previously censored sites available in Russia, Iran, Vietnam, Cuba and Saudi Arabia. The unblocked websites included Reuters Chinese, BBC on China and German broadcaster Deutsche Welle.
The response from the Chinese government, which became known as the “Great Cannon”, was a critical test for the idea of collateral freedom, says Meredith.
“They took all the Chinese traffic that was trying to come in, and put a mirror on it – so this is one billion people, a third of the internet – and instead of directing that to an internal website, they redirected all that traffic to GitHub, to Amazon, to Microsoft,” said Meredith. By directing this traffic to all the sites used by collateral freedom, the Chinese government were testing those service providers.
“It was just enough to raise all the flags and create a very public storm which created a further media event that said ‘China is blocking Amazon or blocking GitHub’ – at which point they stopped.”
The point of this, Meredith explains, is that the economic cost of blocking the big providers, this time, outweighed the Chinese government’s desire to censor the web. So if in the future, during a major election for example, the government might be tempted to block these sites. GreatFire showed the Chinese government, and the world, what it would cost.
“What it shows is possible is something GreatFire can really lay claim to. They showed that China could do this, would try to do it, that those companies could weather that storm, and that the balance is still there where millions of people are able to get online because of collateral freedom.”
Singapore’s founding father and long-serving Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, who died in March. (Photo: “Lee Kuan Yew” by Robert D. Ward – Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons)
Salil Tripathi has joined Index as an online columnist and will be contributing monthly
The golfing phrase “OB markers” has a special meaning in Singapore. Short-hand for what is “out-of-bound,” it lays out, informally, the limits of what can be said, and if you’ve lived long enough in Singapore, you are supposed to know what those markers are, and where they are.
Singapore has laws regulating speech, some of which are inherited from the British era, while others were refined to suit Singapore’s governance model, which many have described as soft authoritarianism, associated with Lee, who died in March at 91, led his People’s Action Party to successive electoral victories since independence in 1965, and the party has remained in power since. Goh Chok Tong succeeded Lee as prime minister in 1990, and Lee’s son, Lee Hsien Loong, has been prime minister since 2004.
The genius of the principle of OB markers lies in its ambiguity – the markers are not clearly defined; it is incumbent on the journalist to figure out what can and cannot be said; it keeps everyone guessing. The model has suited Singapore well for the past five decades. The local media, much of it owned by companies close to the government, has little problem with it. Many international publications have also complied with the system. (Most foreign correspondents based in Singapore have regional responsibilities, and South-East Asia does offer a range of interesting stories. Unlike those countries, Singapore’s post-independence history has been far less dramatic.)
Besides, when foreign publications published stories or commentaries critical of Singapore, they faced lawsuits. Far Eastern Economic Review, where I worked for some of my eight years there, was combative; it not only lost lawsuits and its circulation was restricted, as was the case with some other publications.
This year marks a watershed – the republic celebrates its 50th anniversary, but the joy is clouded by Lee’s passing. Many have credited him with building modern Singapore; those who lament Singapore’s stunted politics say it is the result of his style of governance.
Is Singapore on the cusp of becoming different?
In four recent cases Singaporeans have tested the limits of freedoms they can take for granted. A video, a film, a blog and a graphic novel have pushed at the boundaries of what can be said, and the government realises that it cannot simply ban these, because banning is no longer that simple, and Singaporeans today are better-educated and more demanding than in the past. Singaporeans no longer watch films only in theatres or on television, nor buy books only in shops, and nor do they consume news and opinions only through newspapers and magazines. Furthermore, better-educated, articulate Singaporeans want to be treated as thinking adults who can make up their own minds. How Singapore deals with this change will determine what kind of society Singapore will become.
Amos Yee is a teenager with an attitude. In a controversial video he posted online within days of Lee’s passing, he made highly critical and disparaging remarks about Lee. Yee is precocious and strident, and doesn’t fit the image of the shy, polite, obedient Singaporean with a neat hair-cut that the republic has tried so hard to groom. With an accent that sounds North American and a vocabulary that would make his grandparents cringe, he attacked Lee’s political legacy and economic record, pointing out economic disparities and the silencing of the opposition.
But he also criticised Christianity, and for that, Yee was arrested and charged with showing “intention of wounding” religious feelings. To be sure, many ruling party supporters were incensed over his political criticisms. One man made crude physical threats online. (Making violent online threats is a crime in Singapore). Another man slapped Yee when he was on his way to court (the man was subsequently arrested, tried, and jailed). Yee’s attitude did not help; his lawyer was exasperated by Yee’s recalcitrant behaviour (including flouting bail conditions), and it was hard to figure out if he should be tried as an adult – and punished accordingly – or sent for psychiatric evaluation. In the end, he was sentenced, but as he had spent more time in remand than his sentence, he was released. The Wall Street Journal wrote the case showed Singapore’s struggle to adapt its tradition of censorship to the realities of the digital era.
Yee presented a unique dilemma for Singapore. The government is used to respond robustly to critics who are political rivals, academics, or foreign journalists. It has sued opposition politicians, some have become unemployable, and some have had to leave the country, as their visas are not renewed. But here was a boy, not yet an adult; he was not old enough to be part of the mandatory military service; and he was being deliberately provocative. But how could a state go after a teenager who has acted like a brat?
Roy Ngerng
Roy Ngerng is a blogger who has criticized the government’s handling of the mandatory Central Provident Fund in his blogs. As an activist, he has campaigned for greater equality through higher public spending. Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong sued Ngerng for defamation, and during his recent trial to assess damages, Lee’s lawyer Davinder Singh sought aggravated damages. Ngerng described himself as a man of limited means and argued his own case, and said he had apologized; Lee’s lawyers said the apology was not sincere enough. At one point, Ngerng broke down in the court. In another case, Tan Shou Chen, who acts in an ongoing show, LKY: The Musical wrote a blog where he claimed that the government had interfered with the script. The government denied it, and Tan took down his post. The show is running till 16 August.
Tan Pin Pin has made a film called To Singapore With Love, which showcases the lives of left-leaning dissidents who had challenged Lee in the 1960s. In the years leading up to Singapore’s independence, Lee had initially allied with the left, but later parted company. It was a period of regional turmoil, with the war raging in Vietnam and spreading to Indo-China, and there were real fears of Communism spreading across South-East Asia. These dissidents left Singapore and went into exile; a few have since died, and others are not allowed to return to Singapore. Tan’s film gives voice to those individuals, portraying them sympathetically as nationalists who saw Singapore’s future differently.
Singapore has banned the film from public screening because it “undermined national security”, but private screenings are allowed in Singapore. A week after its ban last September, more than a hundred Singaporeans took buses to Johor Baru, the Malaysian city across the causeway that links Singapore and Malaysia, and saw it there. Tan challenged the ban but she lost. The film has been shown at international festivals and while it can be bought online overseas, it cannot be shipped to a Singaporean address.
Finally in June, Singapore’s National Arts Council withdrew its grant made to artist-illustrator Sonny Liew, who had published a graphic novel called The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye. The council said the way the graphic novel retold Singapore’s history undermined public authority. Interestingly, it did not ban the book; the council wanted its money back. (The publisher complied; the graphic novel sold out instantly and reprints were ordered).
These cases show the constant tussle over where those OB markers lie in Singapore isn’t over. In the past, it was clear: there were bans, prosecutions, bankruptcies, fines and jail terms. In the post-LKY Singapore, rules are changing and those markers are shifting.
Singapore’s leaders lay great store in business school principles and terms, such as feedback loops. They will have to ensure that those loops are not shut, and listen to what Singaporeans are saying. That is possible in an environment where people are free to draw, write, and speak. There is an east Asian saying that “the bamboo shoot that grows tall gets chopped first.” Chopping that bamboo shoot is no longer an option. If the government listens more, Singapore will benefit. True, some teenagers will throw tantrums, but that’s part of growing up.
