The Palestinian Authority has prohibited local journalists from covering a report documenting human rights abuses committed by the authority and Hamas against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The Palestinian Authority claimed the report by the Ramallah-based Independent Commission for Human Rights would harm the recent reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas.
Government officials in Azerbaijan have admitted that the President Ilham Aliyev had a hand in censoring the country’s entries to the Venice Biennale festival. The artwork of Aidan Salakhova included a replica of the Black Stone, a sacred Muslim relic, surrounded by a vagina-shaped marble frame. Aliyev, reportedly asked for several of Salakhov’s pieces to be covered by a black veil because he felt they might be considered “offensive to Islam”. Curators had previously claimed that Salakhov’s pieces were not on display because they had been damaged in transit.
So is the British Board of Film Censors quite within the law when it comes to banning — or rather, not passing — Human Centipede 2 for release to dvd?
In the old days (pre-1984) this would have been a simple question of whether that film, or bits of it were “obscene” according to the Obscene Publications Act 1959. There are problems with that, though. Items are obscene (and therefore not to be published or distributed) if they “tend to deprave or corrupt”. (more…)
UK authorities have announced an outright ban on The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence). But how do censors make these decisions? Murray Perkins is a film examiner who classifies hardcore porn. He spoke to Index on Censorship about what it takes to make the grade
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