In their latest task the Index on Censorship youth advisory board look at anonymous art around the world
Street artists use anonymity to accentuate the message
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CATEGORY: Magazine
Anonymity: worth defending
Why does it matter? Why don’t we just ban it or make it illegal if it can be used for all these harmful purposes?
Contents: The unnamed
Former CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson writes on the damage done when her cover was blown, journalist John Lloyd looks at how terrorist attacks have affected surveillance needs worldwide, Bangladeshi blogger Ananya Azad explains why he was forced into exile after violent attacks on secular writers, philosopher Julian Baggini looks at the power of literary aliases through the ages, Edward Lucas shares The Economist’s perspective on keeping its writers unnamed
Coming soon: Index on Censorship magazine’s anonymity issue
The forthcoming issue of Index on Censorship magazine explores anonymity through a range of in-depth features, interviews and illustrations from around the world.
Richard Neville, co-founder of Oz magazine, dies aged 74
Richard Neville, who co-founded the 1960s counterculture magazine Oz, has died. The satirical magazine poked fun at socially-conservative Austrailia and tackled taboo subjects
Nelson Mandela International Day: Index remembers apartheid-era South Africa
Today is Nelson Mandela International Day, a day to remember Mandela’s achievements in democracy, human rights and peace. Holly Raiborn
The power of print: a celebration of 250 issues of Index on Censorship magazine
"Censorship is as much with us as it ever was," said author, lawyer and early Index supporter Louis Blom-Cooper, in a speech to mark the 250th issue of Index on Censorship magazine, during its launch at London's magCulture on Tuesday 12 July. The...
Moddi: Unsongs playlist of the banned, censored and silenced
Norwegian musician Moddi’s upcoming Unsongs compiles songs from across the world that have been banned. Index has put together a playlist of the songs included in the album
War reporter Marie Colvin’s family sues Syria
The family of murdered journalist and Sunday Times correspondent Marie Colvin has filed a lawsuit against the Syrian government
Marking the 250th issue: Contributors choose favourites from Index on Censorship archives
To mark the 250th issue of Index on Censorship magazine, we asked some of our contributors to nominate standout features from the publication’s long history
A quarterly journal set up in 1972, Index on Censorship magazine has published oppressed writers and refused to be silenced across hundreds of issues.
The brainchild of the poet Stephen Spender, and translator Michael Scammell, the magazine’s very first issue included a never-before-published poem, written while serving a sentence in a labour camp, by the Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who went on to win a Nobel prize later that year.
The magazine continued to be a thorn in the side of Soviet censors, but its scope was far wider. From the beginning, Index declared its mission to stand up for free expression as a fundamental human right for people everywhere – it was particularly vocal in its coverage of the oppressive military regimes of southern Europe and Latin America but was also clear that freedom of expression was not only a problem in faraway dictatorships. The winter 1979 issue, for example, reported on a controversy in the United States in which the Public Broadcasting Service had heavily edited a documentary about racism in Britain and then gone to court attempting to prevent screenings of the original version. Learn more.