11 Dec 14 | Magazine, Volume 43.03 Autumn 2014
Index on Censorship autumn magazine
In September, Index on Censorship magazine launched a social media campaign which invited its readers to nominate a place which was symbolic of either free speech or censorship, with the winning locations being granted free access to the magazine app for one year.
Nominations came from all over the world and the winning places are Maiden Square in Ukraine, Gezi Park in Turkey and Wigan Pier in the north of England.
You can access the app on iPhone or iPad until 1 September 2015 at any of the three locations listed, by following these steps:
1) Visit the app store or iTunes, searching “Index on Censorship”
2) Download the FREE Index on Censorship app
3) Scroll through the issue to the final page, selecting “Tell me more”
4) Turn the “ByPlace” switch to the right
5) Click OK to activate
See some of the nominations Index magazine received in our Storify below.
For more information on subscribing to Index, click here.
01 Nov 14 | Draw the Line, Events, United Kingdom
Index held a successful workshop with the north west contingent of the British Youth Council, despite the inability to access our own website because of internet filtering at the location.
Index held a third Draw the Line workshop with the British Youth Council, but this time with its groups in the north west of England at their regular regional convention. Before the workshop began we faced a problem — we couldn’t get onto our website. The convention was held in a local secondary school and the school’s server was blocking our website. This is unusual, but with highly sensitive school internet filters it was possible that there were too many words deemed unsuitable for children used on our website. This filter appeared to be more sophisticated and specified the reasoning behind blocking our content: “Politics/Opinion is not allowed”.
It was difficult to test how far this stretched, but it was alarming that politics or opinion would be blocked at a school limiting its pupils’ ability to research different points of view.
We spoke to youth workers at the convention who said they faced similar problems when trying to do projects with young people on LGBTQI issues or drugs. The filters were so sensitive that they would not even allow students access to the websites of support groups which cover these issues, it simply blocked them all.
Despite the censor’s best efforts this made a great starting point for the debate and demonstrated to the participants the levels of censorship that we all face in our daily lives. The groups were able to articulate many different current and historical instances of censorship from wartime propaganda to being forced to wear a school uniform and understood why freedom of expression is fundamental to human rights.
The discussion moved onto the latest Draw the Line question, “Are voting restrictions a violation of human rights?” The members enthusiastically debated the prospect of voting at 16 (this is one of the British Youth Council’s campaigns) with the group still split on whether this should be implemented into UK law. There was also a great opportunity to discuss these issues with the youth workers in the region and find out how social media restrictions can both harm and protect children and how we can begin to define the difference.
Wigan pier is one of the unique locations around the world where the Index on Censorship magazine is available to download for free. It was nominated as a free speech spot because of George Orwell’s novel, The Road to Wigan Pier. Find out more on how to download your copy here.
This article was posted on 12 Dec 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
