Marking the 250th issue: Contributors choose favourites from Index on Censorship archives

Writers picks

Index writers pick their favourite features from 250 issues

To celebrate the 250th issue of Index on Censorship magazine, we asked some of our contributors to nominate memorable articles from the publication’s long history. Here they share their memories and recommendations.

David Aaronovitch – author, Times columnist and chair of Index on Censorship 

We are all familiar with the idea of luvvies. The word suggests the artist, actor or musician who, unread and emoting, trespasses onto the stage of public affairs and gets on everyone’s tits. It is sometimes true but usually wrong. One of my favourite Index magazine pieces (and there are so many to choose from) was written in 2006 by that epitome of the engaged intellectual, Tom Stoppard. Stoppard was involved with Index in its early days and has remained a patron and in this piece, he asks whether freedom of speech really is a human right. This is an awkward question in the middle of a magazine which would want to assist at every turn that a right is exactly what it is – none greater. But Stoppard argues that what makes a society one in which he would want to live is not the demanding of a right, but the according of it – the day-by-day renewed assumption that others will say what they want. Because that’s the way we choose to live.

Playing the Trump Card by Tom Stoppard was published in February 2006 (volume 35, no 1)

Ariel Dorfman – author and playwright 

As I am trying to finish a major piece of writing, I didn’t have the time to go to the office where most of my Index back issues await me. I remember stories and poems from countries that generally receive little or no attention and wanted to highlight one of those. Index has published so many of my own works over the decades (I especially think Trademark Territory or Je Suis José Carrasco piece are relevant today), but, hands down, I would have to choose the publication of [my 1990 play] Death and the Maiden as my most important memory. Index was the first to publish the text before it became famous. This is typical of Index’s commitment to those who are on the margins of public notoriety, its mission to bring out of the darkness the voices that are suppressed by tyrants or by neglect and indifference, the voices of the Paulinas of the world.

Death and the Maiden was published in June 1991 (volume 20, no 6)

Ismail Einashe – journalist

I would have to pick Fabrizio Gatti’s piece Undercover Immigrant, which is a stunning piece of journalism. Gatti spent fours years undercover, investigating migrant journeys from Africa to Europe. What is remarkable about his piece, an extract of his book published for the first time in English by Index, is that he so successfully managed to hide his true identity as a Italian by assuming the identity of Bilal, a Kurdish asylum seeker. By doing this, Gatti got unique access into the Lampedusa’s migrant centres, the tiny island in the Med that has become a symbol of Europe’s migrant crisis. Through telling the story of “Bilal”, he was able to get fascinating perspective on the migrant journeys and reveals the shocking stark reality of being a migrant in Italy, a situation which 10 years on from Gatti’s undercover reports has sadly barely changed. Like then, thousands of migrants still die in dinghies trying to reach Europe.

Undercover Immigrant was published in Spring 2015 (volume 44 , issue 1), within a special report on refugee voices. You can also listen to an extract of the piece via an Index podcast

Janet Suzman – actress and director 

I am without hesitation going to choose the whole of your Shakespeare-themed spring 2016 edition. I’m choosing it because from the beginning of my career I fervently believed that there was more to Shakespeare – indeed more to all drama – than simply getting one’s teeth into a juicy part. From every corner of the unfree world, the essays you have printed bear me out; theatre is a danger to ignorance and autocracy and Shakespeare still holds the sway. To quote my favourite aperçu: Shakespeare’s plays, like iron filings to a magnet, seem to attract any crisis that is in the air. I congratulate you and Index on giving such space to a writer who is still bannable after 400-plus years.

Staging Shakespeare Dissent was a special report published in spring 2016 (volume 45, issue 1), with an introduction by Index on Censorship magazine editor Rachael Jolley on how Shakespeare’s plays plays have been used to circumvent censorship and tackle difficult issues around the world

Christie Watson – novelist 

There are too many articles to choose from, but I chose Ken Wiwa’s Letter to my Father, as it perfectly demonstrates Index on Censorship’s commitment to story-telling. Ken Wiwa’s letter [to his father and environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa who was hanged during Nigeria’s military dictatorship] reminds the reader that behind significant political events are personal stories, like the relationship between a son and his father. Index recognises the power of personal stories in order to reach the widest audience.

Ken Wiwa’s Letter to my Father was published in the spring 2005 issue (volume 34, issue 4) on the 10th anniversary of Ken Saro Wiwa’s death in 2005. Ken Wiwa also wrote a letter for the 20th anniversary (summer 2015, volume 44, issue 2). See our Ken Saro Wiwa reading list


Index will celebrate 250 issues of the magazine next week at a special event at MagCulture. To explore over 40 years of archives, subscribe today via Sage Publications. Or sign up for Exact Editions’ digital version, which offers access to 38 back issues.

Padraig Reidy: War on truthiness

Numb-Final-Website-250

Who is Alan Buckby? According to Liberties Press, publishers of Numb: Diary of a War Correspondent, Buckby is the pseudonym of a 55-year old British foreign correspondent who was killed on assignment in 2014.

“A war correspondent for more than two decades, he led a double life, appearing to be a regular family man while at home in London, but immersed in sadism and depravity while on overseas assignments. He didn’t just document the violence – he became directly involved in it.”, the Liberties website blurb tells us excitedly.

Fun stuff, if you’re into that sort of thing. The ghostwriter, Louis La Roc, claimed that the materials for the book had come via a mutual friend from “Kay Buckby”, the wife of the deceased reporter.

Earlier this month, “Louis La Roc” appeared on two national radio stations in Ireland, luridly describing the contents of the book, to much criticism from Irish journalists. RTE’s Fergal Keane (not to be confused with the BBC’s Fergal Keane) dismissed the La Roc interview on the station’s John Murray show as “the biggest load of crap I have ever heard”, while the Irish Times’s Hugh Linehan called the interview (and by extension the book) “torture porn”.

Linehan invited Louis La Roc on the Irish Times’s Off Topic podcast on 18 April, where he and fellow Irish Times writer Patrick Freyne questioned him on the veracity of the details in the book. The timeline was, to put it mildly, all over the place. To give one example, in the book it is claimed that Buckby went to Northern Ireland in the early 80s because he was fascinated by British broadcasters’ ban on the broadcast of the voices of Sinn Fein and IRA spokespeople. In fact, that ban was only introduced in 1988. The author claimed that the various discrepancies in detail were introduced to protect the innocent, and that he had used a “cinematic jumpcut” technique to help the narrative along. Moreover, no one could find any evidence of a 55 year-old British foreign correspondent who died in late 2014.

The journalists questioned how long it had taken La Roc to write the book, from receiving the raw material to delivering to the publishers. Three months, apparently. When Freyne expressed surprise at this, La Roc suggested that it was about the same length of time as it took Siobhan Curham to work up Girl Online, the novel published under the name of vlogger Zoella that was one of last year’s best selling books, as if they were identical projects.

After the podcast, in which La Roc was openly accused of peddling fiction as fact, Freyne kept digging, and discovered that La Roc was more than likely the pen name of Colin Carroll, a self-promoter who had in the past, among other things, set up something called The Paddy Games and a website called Irish Empire. At one point he even had a joint BBC/RTE TV show, Colin And Graham’s Excellent Adventures (in the blurb for which, Colin and Graham are described as “sporting hoaxers”).

The coup de grace was delivered when another writer, Donal O’Keeffe, dug up a 2010 interview with Colin Carroll in a local newspaper, the Avondhu Press, in which he had said he was working on a novel with a war journalist as protagonist.

All in all, a very satisfactory bit of sleuthing for all concerned.

What happened next was interesting. Because what happened next was absolutely nothing. Numb is still out there, still listed under the non-fiction section of the Liberties Press website. The blurb still makes the same claims as it always has about the genesis of the book. The publisher is standing by the book, despite confirming that he made no attempt to verify the inflammatory information contained within. Perhaps defiantly, a quote from Oscar Wilde hovers at the top of the page: “There is no such thing as a moral or immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That is all.”

It is as if…it is as if this is the kind of story that only journalists really care about (and you, dear reader, considering you’ve made it nearly 700 words into this piece. But you’re probably a hack too, aren’t you?).

And that is something that should give journalists pause for thought. Do people see us as we see ourselves? And do people put the same value on accuracy and truthfulness as we claim to?

Think of the great journalistic scandals of the past few years: when the story broke of Johann Hari’s fabrications and sockpupetting back in the summer of 2011, journalists talked about little else among themselves. Really, seriously, nothing else for about a month. But were Hari’s Independent readers camped outside Northcliffe House, furiously demanding apologies and clarifications from the paper and Hari himself? No. Non journalists I spoke to about the issue didn’t really understand what the fuss was about.

Or think of Jonah Lehrer, who made up quotes. Sure, like Hari, he was eventually dropped by employers, but did his readers really care that he’d put words in Bob Dylan’s mouth?

Meanwhile, online activists (not naming any names) spread all sorts of nonsense that gets more shares than many social media managers could dream of, because it contains that magical element of “truthiness”, to borrow a phrase from Stephen Colbert: it tells people what they want to hear. Just last week, lots of left wingers got terribly excited about a headline for a column in the Times which said that the Conservatives had got the economy wrong. “Wow ! The Times newspaper nails the Tory Lib Dem lie about the deficit & the financial crisis.” tweeted Michael H, with an accompanying picture of the headline “It’s a lie to say the Tories rescued the economy”. The tweet spread like wildfire, with the subcurrent being that EVEN THE MURDOCH PRESS was backing Labour now. The fact that the headline accompanied a guest column by a Labour peer seemed not to matter. The people sharing wanted it to be an attack on the Conservatives by the Murdoch press, and so it was.

It was the same desire for truthiness that fed the likes of Hari, and to an extent, feeds the publishers of Numb. It was what led Piers Morgan to publish photographs allegedly showing British soldiers torturing Iraqis, even though they were obviously false.

And I suspect it was behind Liberties Press decision to publish the “torture porn” of Numb: it felt like the kind of thing that might just be real.

It is important that journalism realises its duty to entertain and not just hector (not all journalism is, or should be, the “investigative journalism” so lionised by Royal Charter-waving groupies as the true untainted thing). But journalism should at least, be against truthiness, if only out of self interest. If anyone can make stuff up and get 1,000 shares on Twitter, why pay people for deep digging or elegant writing?

But consumers of media have a role to play in this too: everyone should be actively alert to the difference between stuff that is true and stuff that merely feels right, and not encourage the latter. As George Orwell wrote: “We shall have a serious and truthful and popular press when public opinion actively demands it.”

This column was posted on April 23 2015 at indexoncensorship.org

Drafting freedom to last

[vc_row disable_element=”yes” css=”.vc_custom_1495018452261{margin-right: 0px !important;margin-left: 0px !important;border-bottom-width: 1px !important;padding-top: 15px !important;padding-bottom: 15px !important;border-bottom-color: #455560 !important;border-bottom-style: solid !important;}”][vc_column css=”.vc_custom_1474781640064{margin: 0px !important;padding: 0px !important;}”][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1477669802842{margin-top: 0px !important;margin-right: 0px !important;margin-bottom: 0px !important;margin-left: 0px !important;padding-top: 0px !important;padding-right: 0px !important;padding-bottom: 0px !important;padding-left: 0px !important;}”]CONTRIBUTORS[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row disable_element=”yes” css=”.vc_custom_1495018460243{margin-top: 0px !important;padding-top: 0px !important;}”][vc_column width=”1/3″ css=”.vc_custom_1474781919494{padding-top: 0px !important;padding-bottom: 0px !important;}”][staff name=”Karim Miské” title=”Novelist” color=”#ee3424″ profile_image=”89017″]Karim Miské is a documentary maker and novelist who lives in Paris. His debut novel is Arab Jazz, which won Grand Prix de Littérature Policière in 2015, a prestigious award for crime fiction in French, and the Prix du Goéland Masqué. He previously directed a three-part historical series for Al-Jazeera entitled Muslims of France. He tweets @karimmiske[/staff][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″ css=”.vc_custom_1474781952845{padding-top: 0px !important;padding-bottom: 0px !important;}”][staff name=”Roger Law” title=”Caricaturist ” color=”#ee3424″ profile_image=”89217″]Roger Law is a caricaturist from the UK, who is most famous for creating the hit TV show Spitting Image, which ran from 1984 until 1996. His work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Observer, The Sunday Times and Der Spiegel. Photo credit: Steve Pyke[/staff][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″ css=”.vc_custom_1474781958364{padding-top: 0px !important;padding-bottom: 0px !important;}”][staff name=”Canan Coşkun” title=”Journalist” color=”#ee3424″ profile_image=”89018″]Canan Coşkun is a legal reporter at Cumhuriyet, one of the main national newspapers in Turkey, which has been repeatedly raided by police and attacked by opponents. She currently faces more than 23 years in prison, charged with defaming Turkishness, the Republic of Turkey and the state’s bodies and institutions in her articles.[/staff][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row equal_height=”yes” content_placement=”top” css=”.vc_custom_1474815243644{margin-top: 30px !important;margin-right: 0px !important;margin-bottom: 30px !important;margin-left: 0px !important;}”][vc_column width=”1/2″ css=”.vc_custom_1474619182234{background-color: #455560 !important;}”][vc_column_text el_class=”text_white”]Editorial

Out of the shadows

“We had tongues, but could not speak. We had feet but could not walk. Now that we have land, we have the strength to speak and walk,” said a group of women quoted in Ritu Menon’s article discussing why ownership of land has started to shift the power balance in India.

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/4″ css=”.vc_custom_1474720631074{margin-top: 0px !important;margin-bottom: 0px !important;padding-top: 0px !important;padding-right: 0px !important;padding-bottom: 0px !important;padding-left: 0px !important;background-color: #78858d !important;}” el_class=”image-content-grid”][vc_row_inner css=”.vc_custom_1495018553351{margin-top: 0px !important;margin-right: 0px !important;margin-bottom: 0px !important;margin-left: 0px !important;border-top-width: 0px !important;border-right-width: 0px !important;border-bottom-width: 0px !important;border-left-width: 0px !important;padding-top: 65px !important;padding-right: 0px !important;padding-bottom: 65px !important;padding-left: 0px !important;background-image: url(https://www.indexoncensorship.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/winter2014-magazine-cover-e1434042891830.jpg?id=62269) !important;background-position: center !important;background-repeat: no-repeat !important;background-size: cover !important;}”][vc_column_inner css=”.vc_custom_1474716958003{margin: 0px !important;border-width: 0px !important;padding: 0px !important;}”][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1495018522192{margin-top: 0px !important;margin-right: 0px !important;margin-bottom: 0px !important;margin-left: 0px !important;padding-top: 20px !important;padding-right: 20px !important;padding-bottom: 20px !important;padding-left: 20px !important;background-color: #78858d !important;}” el_class=”text_white”]Contents

A look at what’s inside the winter 2014 issue[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/4″ css=”.vc_custom_1474720637924{margin-top: 0px !important;margin-bottom: 0px !important;padding-top: 0px !important;padding-right: 0px !important;padding-bottom: 0px !important;padding-left: 0px !important;background-color: #78858d !important;}” el_class=”image-content-grid”][vc_row_inner css=”.vc_custom_1495018679207{margin-top: 0px !important;margin-right: 0px !important;margin-bottom: 0px !important;margin-left: 0px !important;border-top-width: 0px !important;border-right-width: 0px !important;border-bottom-width: 0px !important;border-left-width: 0px !important;padding-top: 65px !important;padding-right: 0px !important;padding-bottom: 65px !important;padding-left: 0px !important;background-image: url(https://www.indexoncensorship.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Gaiman-pic-credit-Kimberly-Butler.jpg?id=62304) !important;background-position: center !important;background-repeat: no-repeat !important;background-size: cover !important;}”][vc_column_inner css=”.vc_custom_1474716958003{margin: 0px !important;border-width: 0px !important;padding: 0px !important;}”][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1495019209534{margin-top: 0px !important;margin-right: 0px !important;margin-bottom: 0px !important;margin-left: 0px !important;padding-top: 20px !important;padding-right: 20px !important;padding-bottom: 20px !important;padding-left: 20px !important;background-color: #78858d !important;}” el_class=”text_white”]Podcast

Neil Gaiman and Martin Rowson on censorship[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row equal_height=”yes” css=”.vc_custom_1491994247427{margin-top: 0px !important;margin-right: 0px !important;margin-bottom: 0px !important;margin-left: 0px !important;}”][vc_column width=”1/3″ css=”.vc_custom_1493814833226{margin-top: 0px !important;margin-right: 0px !important;margin-bottom: 0px !important;margin-left: 0px !important;border-top-width: 0px !important;border-right-width: 0px !important;border-bottom-width: 0px !important;border-left-width: 0px !important;padding-top: 0px !important;padding-right: 0px !important;padding-bottom: 0px !important;padding-left: 0px !important;background-color: #78858d !important;}”][vc_row_inner css=”.vc_custom_1495018869817{margin-top: 0px !important;margin-right: 0px !important;margin-bottom: 0px !important;margin-left: 0px !important;border-top-width: 0px !important;border-right-width: 0px !important;border-bottom-width: 0px !important;border-left-width: 0px !important;padding-top: 65px !important;padding-right: 0px !important;padding-bottom: 65px !important;padding-left: 0px !important;background-image: url(https://www.indexoncensorship.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/15721410208_a036ffe467_o.jpg?id=62585) !important;background-position: center !important;background-repeat: no-repeat !important;background-size: cover !important;}”][vc_column_inner 0=””][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1495018840047{margin-top: 0px !important;margin-right: 0px !important;margin-bottom: 0px !important;margin-left: 0px !important;padding-top: 20px !important;padding-right: 20px !important;padding-bottom: 20px !important;padding-left: 20px !important;background-color: #78858d !important;}” el_class=”text_white”]Information war

Andrei Aliaksandrau investigates the new information war as he travels across Ukraine.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″ css=”.vc_custom_1493815095611{padding-top: 0px !important;padding-right: 0px !important;padding-bottom: 0px !important;padding-left: 0px !important;background-color: #78858d !important;}” el_class=”image-content-grid”][vc_row_inner css=”.vc_custom_1495019050825{margin-top: 0px !important;margin-right: 0px !important;margin-bottom: 0px !important;margin-left: 0px !important;border-top-width: 0px !important;border-right-width: 0px !important;border-bottom-width: 0px !important;border-left-width: 0px !important;padding-top: 65px !important;padding-right: 0px !important;padding-bottom: 65px !important;padding-left: 0px !important;background-image: url(https://www.indexoncensorship.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/magna-carta.jpg?id=62653) !important;background-position: center !important;background-repeat: no-repeat !important;background-size: cover !important;}”][vc_column_inner 0=””][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1495019017760{margin-top: 0px !important;margin-right: 0px !important;margin-bottom: 0px !important;margin-left: 0px !important;padding-top: 20px !important;padding-right: 20px !important;padding-bottom: 20px !important;padding-left: 20px !important;background-color: #78858d !important;}” el_class=”text_white”]1215 and all that

John Crace on the Magna Carta: Don’t shit with the people, or the people shit with you. Or something like that.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″ css=”.vc_custom_1493815155369{padding-top: 0px !important;padding-right: 0px !important;padding-bottom: 0px !important;padding-left: 0px !important;background-color: #78858d !important;}” el_class=”image-content-grid”][vc_row_inner css=”.vc_custom_1495019157426{margin-top: 0px !important;margin-right: 0px !important;margin-bottom: 0px !important;margin-left: 0px !important;border-top-width: 0px !important;border-right-width: 0px !important;border-bottom-width: 0px !important;border-left-width: 0px !important;padding-top: 65px !important;padding-right: 0px !important;padding-bottom: 65px !important;padding-left: 0px !important;background-image: url(https://www.indexoncensorship.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/20160127-_MG_4305.jpg?id=72965) !important;background-position: center !important;background-repeat: no-repeat !important;background-size: cover !important;}”][vc_column_inner 0=””][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1495019127591{margin-top: 0px !important;margin-right: 0px !important;margin-bottom: 0px !important;margin-left: 0px !important;padding-top: 20px !important;padding-right: 20px !important;padding-bottom: 20px !important;padding-left: 20px !important;background-color: #78858d !important;}” el_class=”text_white”]Thoughts policed

Max Wind-Cowie on free speech in politics

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Full digital access to Drafting freedom to last

Subscribe to Index on Censorship magazine on your Apple, Android or desktop device for just £17.99 a year. You’ll get access to the latest thought-provoking and award-winning issues of the magazine PLUS ten years of archived issues, including Drafting freedom to last.

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Winter 2014: Drafting freedom to last

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”Packed inside this issue, are; an interview with fantasy writer Neil Gaiman; new cartoons from South America drawn especially for this magazine by Bonil and Rayma; new poetry from Australia; and the first ever English translation of Hanoch Levin’s Diary of a Censor; plus articles from Turkey, South Africa, South Korea, Russia and Ukraine.”][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]

Also in this issue, authors from around the world including The Observer’s Robert McCrum, Turkish novelist Elif Shafak, and Nobel nominee Rita El Khayat consider which clauses they would draft into a 21st century version of the Magna Carta. This collaboration kicks off a special report Drafting Freedom To Last: The Magna Carta’s Past and Present Influences.

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Also inside: from Mexico a review of its constitution and its flawed justice system and Turkish novelist Kaya Genç looks at recent intimidation of women writers in Turkey.

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The Magna Carta’s past and present influences

Making a 21st-century Magna Carta – Robert McCrum, Hans-Joachim Neubauer, Danny Sriskandarajah, Rita El Khayat, Elif Shafak, Renata Avila, Ferial Haffajee and Stuart White suggest a modern version

1215 and all thatJohn Crace writes a digested Magna Carta

Stripsearch cartoon – Martin Rowson imagines a shock twist for King John

Battle royal – Mark Fenn on Thailand’s harsh crackdown on critics of the monarchy

Land and freedom? – Ritu Menon writes about Indian women gaining power through property

Give me liberty – Peter Kellner on democracy’s debt to the Magna Carta

Constitutionally challenged – Duncan Tucker reports on Mexico’s struggle with state power

Courting disapproval – Shahira Amin on Egypt’s declining justice as the anniversary of the military takeover approaches

Digging into the power system – Sue Branford reports on the growth of indigenous movements in Ecuador and Bolivia

Critical role – Natasha Joseph on how South African justice deals with witchcraft claims

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Brave new war – Andrei Aliaksandrau reports on the information war between Russia and Ukraine

Propaganda war obscures Russian soldiers’ deaths – Helen Womack writes about reports of secret burials

Azeri attack – Rebecca Vincent reports on how writers and artists face prison in Azerbaijan

The political is personal  – Arzu Geybullayeva, Azerbaijani journalist, speaks out on the pressures

Really good omens – Martin Rowson interviews fantasy writer Neil Gaiman, listen to our podcast

Police (in)action – Simon Callow argues that authorities should protect staging of controversial plays

Drawing fire – Rayma and Bonil, South American cartoonists’ battle with censorship

Thoughts policed – Max Wind-Cowie writes about a climate where politicians fear to speak their mind

Media under siege or a freer press? – Vicky Baker interviews Argentina’s media defender

Turkey’s “treacherous” women journalists – Kaya Genç writes about dangerous times for female reporters, watch a short video interview

Dark arts – Nargis Tashpulatova talks to three Uzbek artists who speak out on state constraints

Talk is cheap – Steven Borowiec on state control of South Korea’s instant messaging app

Fear of faith – Jemimah Steinfeld looks at a year of persecution for China’s Christians

Time travel to web of the past and future – Mike Godwin’s internet predictions revisited, two decades on

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Language lessons – Chen Xiwo writes about how Chinese authors worldwide must not ignore readers at home

Spirit unleashed – Diane Fahey, poetry inspired by an asylum seeker’s tragedy

Diary unlocked – Hanoch Levin’s short story is translated into English for the first time

Oz on trial – John Kinsella, poems on Australia’s “new era of censorship”

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”COLUMNS” css=”.vc_custom_1481732124093{margin-right: 0px !important;margin-left: 0px !important;border-bottom-width: 1px !important;padding-top: 15px !important;padding-bottom: 15px !important;border-bottom-color: #455560 !important;border-bottom-style: solid !important;}”][vc_column_text]

Global view – Jodie Ginsberg writes about the power of noise in the fight against censorship

Index around the world – Aimée Hamilton gives an update on Index on Censorship’s work

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”END NOTE” css=”.vc_custom_1481880278935{margin-right: 0px !important;margin-left: 0px !important;border-bottom-width: 1px !important;padding-top: 15px !important;padding-bottom: 15px !important;border-bottom-color: #455560 !important;border-bottom-style: solid !important;}”][vc_column_text]

Humour on record – Vicky Baker  on why parody videos need to be protected

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”SUBSCRIBE” css=”.vc_custom_1481736449684{margin-right: 0px !important;margin-left: 0px !important;border-bottom-width: 1px !important;padding-bottom: 15px !important;border-bottom-color: #455560 !important;border-bottom-style: solid !important;}”][vc_column_text]Index on Censorship magazine was started in 1972 and remains the only global magazine dedicated to free expression. Past contributors include Samuel Beckett, Gabriel García Marquéz, Nadine Gordimer, Arthur Miller, Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood, and many more.[/vc_column_text][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_single_image image=”76572″ img_size=”full”][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]In print or online. Order a print edition here or take out a digital subscription via Exact Editions.

Copies are also available at the BFI, the Serpentine Gallery, MagCulture, (London), News from Nowhere (Liverpool), Home (Manchester), Calton Books (Glasgow) and on Amazon. Each magazine sale helps Index on Censorship continue its fight for free expression worldwide.

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