23 Jul 20
Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia is murdered. Index join a group of organisations to launch the campaign #JusticeForDaphne. Both the magazine and the website keep up the pressure and focus on Malta through publishing articles about the case and Maltese journalism more broadly. Index campaign regularly outside the Maltese Consulate in London.
The same year the magazine interview Mexican journalist Javier Valdez about difficulties of working in the country. “I’ve had phone calls telling me to stop investigating certain murders or drug bosses. I’ve had to suppress important information because they could have my family killed if I mention it. Sources of mine have been killed or disappeared… The government couldn’t care less. They do nothing to protect you. There have been many cases and this keeps happening.” Valdez is killed one month after publication.
23 Jul 20
Poems written by Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, an Iranian-British national who was imprisoned in 2015 before boarding a plane in Tehran, are smuggled out of jail and published in the magazine, alongside poems from fellow inmate Golrokh Ebrahimi Iraee, also a political prisoner. Index are told that Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s morale is boosted upon knowing that the poems are being read and that she is being paid for her work.
23 Jul 20
Index celebrate the 20th year of their awards with an online ceremony hosted by BBC journalist Timandra Harkness. The winners are Russian artist Yulia Tsvetkova (arts); Turkish lawyer Veysel Ok and Bahraini activist Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei (campaigning); Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media, also known as 7amleh (digital activism); and OKO Press (journalism).
23 Jul 20
In March the first ever issue of the magazine is published under the title Index (“on Censorship” is later added). From the beginning, Index declare its mission to stand up for free expression as a fundamental human right for people everywhere. It is particularly vocal in its coverage of the oppressive military regimes of southern Europe and Latin America, but is clear that censorship is not only a problem in faraway dictatorships. The first issue includes a never-before-published poem, written while serving a sentence in a labour camp, by Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who went on to win a Nobel prize later that year. Articles are published from across the globe, including Bangladesh, Brazil, Greece, Portugal, USA, the Soviet Union, with poems from Natalya Gorbanyevskaya, a poet who had been confined to a mental hospital. It also includes the first publication in any language of a story by Milovan Djilas, who was unable to publish anything in his own country since his trial in 1963.
Also included in the first issue is the Index “Index”, which is round-up of the main and most recent free speech issues around the world. Index Index runs in every issue until 2008.
In the September issue, Nadine Gordimer, a South African writer, political activist and recipient of the 1991 Nobel Prize in Literature, writes her first article for Index. Gordimer stands firmly against apartheid in South Africa. She goes on to write for Index many times.
