25 Aug 15 | Academic Freedom, Magazine, mobile, Nigeria, Student Reading Lists
Nigerian activist Ken Saro-Wiwa was one of the Ogoni nine, hanged in 1995 along with eight others by the Nigerian government for his continued protest against treatment of the Ogoni people. His death caused international outrage and sparked the banning of Nigeria from the Commonwealth of Nations for over three years. Since his trial and execution, Saro-Wiwa has become a pillar of free expression and many of his letters and short stories have been published in Index on Censorship, along with pieces about his life’s work. Most recently his son, Ken Saro-Wiwa Junior, published “A letter from Ken Saro-Wiwa” on the 20th anniversary of his death. This reading list groups together a collection of these works.
Students and academics can browse the Index magazine archive in thousands of university libraries via Sage Journals.
Silence on campus: How a Turkish historian got death threats for writing an exam question by Kaya Genç
Ken Saro-Wiwa articles
Ordeal by Innocence by Adam Newey and Ken Saro-Wiwa
Adam Newey and Ken Saro-Wiwa, November 1995; vol. 24, 6: pp. 164-166
Written while Saro-Wiwa was still on trial, Adam Newey writes about how many believe that he will be found guilty and sentenced to death. This is followed by an extract from a statement that Saro-Wiwa was prevented from reading out in court.
Corpses have grown by Ken Saro-Wiwa
Ken Saro-Wiwa, September 1997; vol. 26, 5: pp. 81-82
Taken from Saro-Wiwa’s collection, Songs in a Time of War
The new beggars by Ken Saro-Wiwa
Ken Saro-Wiwa, November 1996; vol. 25, 6: pp. 79-86
A short story based on Saro-Wiwa’s experience with one of the “new” types of beggars, those who tell touching stories in order to get money
Eyewitness by William Boyd
William Boyd on Ken Saro-Wiwa, December 2010; vol. 39, 4: pp. 93-96
British novelist William Boyd writes about his friendship with Saro-Wiwa and the international attention his cause gained in the 1990s
Letter to My Father by Ken Saro-Wiwa
Ken Saro-Wiwa, November 2005; vol. 34, 4: pp. 24-29
On the tenth anniversary of his father’s murder, Ken Saro-Wiwa Junior recalls events and reflects on what has (and has not) changed
The murderers in our midst by Adewale Maja-Pearce
Adewale Maja-Pearce, January 1996; vol. 25, 1: pp. 57-61
A detailed account of Saro-Wiwa’s execution alongside responses to Nelson Mandela’s call for Nigeria’s suspension from the Commonwealth
When knowledge is not enough by “Editorial”
Editorial, January 1996; vol. 25, 1: pp. 3
A short mention of Saro-Wiwa’s execution, and how publicity and knowledge of the volatility of the conflict was not enough to save the Ogoni nine
Letters- Blaming the victim by Ike Okonta
Ike Okonta, November 1997; vol. 26, 6: pp. 8-10
A letter focusing specifically on the role of Shell in Nigeria
Portrait of a Year by Caroline Moorhead
Caroline Moorhead, March 1996; vol. 25, 2: pp. 188-192
A look at Human Right’s Watch’s “authoritative and impressive” report on violations carried out by Shell in Nigeria
The Ken Saro-Wiwa reading list can be found here
30 Jul 15 | Events
Secret Forum at Wilderness Festival
Leading cartoonists step into the ring with heavyweight commentators for a quick-thinking, rapid-fire, free speech fight club: should anything be off limits for cartoonists?
Featuring:
- Dave Brown (the Independent)
- Tayo (Nigeria)
- David Aaronovitch (The Times)
- Sameer Rahim (Prospect Magazine)
When: Sunday 9th August, 4.30pm
Where: Secret Forum, Wilderness Festival, Oxfordshire (Map/directions)
Tickets: available via Wilderness Festival
Presented in partnership with Sunday Papers Live
09 Jun 15 | Academic Freedom, Magazine, Volume 44.02 Summer 2015
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”What is the state of academic freedom in 2015? Index on Censorship magazine’s summer 2015 issue takes a global vantage point to explore all the current threats – governmental, economic and social – faced by students, teachers and academics. “][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2”][vc_column_text]
In the UK and US, offence and extremism are being used to shut down debates, prompting the adoption of “no-platforming” and “trigger-warnings”. In Turkey, an exam question relating to the Kurdish movement led to death threats for one historian. In Ireland, there are concerns over the restraints of corporate-sponsored research. In Mexico, students are being abducted and protests quashed.
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Plus we have reports on Ukraine, China and Belarus, on how education is expected to toe an official line. Also in this issue: Sir Harold Evans, AC Grayling, Tom Holland and Xinran present their free-speech heroes. Ken Saro-Wiwa Junior introduces a previously unpublished letter from his activist father, 20 years after he was executed by the Nigerian state, and Raymond Joseph reports on the dangers faced by Africa’s environmental journalists today. Comedian Samm Farai Monro, aka Comrade Fatso, looks at the rise of Zimbabwean satire; Matthew Parris interviews former UK attorney general Dominic Grieve; Italian journalist Cristina Marconi speaks to Marina Litvinienko, wife of the murdered KGB agent Alexander; and Konstanty Gebert looks at why the Polish Catholic church is upset by Winnie the Pooh and his non-specific gender.
Our culture section presents exclusive new short stories by exiled writers Hamid Ismailov (Uzbekistan) and Ak Welaspar (Turkmenistan), and poetry by Musa Okwonga and Angolan journalist Rafael Marques de Morais. Plus there’s artwork from Martin Rowson, Bangladeshi cartoonist Tanmoy and Eva Bee, and a cover by Ben Jennings.
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”SPECIAL REPORT: FIRED, THREATENED AND IMPRISONED” css=”.vc_custom_1483456198790{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]
Is academic freedom being eroded?
Silence on campus – Kaya Genç explores why a Turkish historian received death threats for writing an exam question
Universities under fire in Ukraine’s war – Tatyana Malyarenko unveils how Ukrainian scholars have to prove their patriotism in front of a special committee
Industrious academics – Michael Foley looks at how the commercial pressures on Ireland’s universities and students is narrowing research
Stifling freedom – Mark Frary’s take on 1oo years of attacks on US academic freedom
Ideas under review – Lawyer and journalist Suhrith Parthasarathy looks at how the Indian government interfering with universities’ autonomy. Also Meena Vari asks if India’s most creative artistic minds are being stifled
Girls standing up for education – Three young women from Pakistan, Uganda and Nigeria on why they are fighting for equality in classrooms
Open-door policy – Professor Thomas Docherty examines the threats to free speech in UK universities. Plus the student’s view, via the editor of Cambridge’s The Tab new site
Mexican stand-off – After the abduction of 43 students, Guadalajara-based journalist Duncan Tucker looks at the aftermath and the wider picture
Return of the red guards – Jemimah Steinfeld reports on the risks faced by students and teachers who criticise the government in China
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”IN FOCUS” css=”.vc_custom_1481731813613{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]
Pride and principles – Matthew Parris in conversation with the former UK attorney general Dominic Grieve
A letter from Ken Saro-Wiwa – A moving tribute from the son of one of the Ogoni nine and a previously unpublished letter from his father who was killed in Nigeria 20 years ago
Hunt and trap – Raymond Joseph reports on the dangers currently being faced by Africa’s environmental journalists
Litvinienko’s legacy – Italian journalist Cristina Marconi speaks to Marina Litvinienko, wife of the murdered KGB agent Alexander
God complex – Konstanty Gebert looks at why the Polish Catholic church is so worried about Winnie the Pooh’s gender
Zuma calls media ‘unpatriotic’ – Professor Anton Harber speaks to Natasha Joseph about the increasing political pressure on South African journalism
Dangers of blogging in Bangladesh – Vicky Baker on the recent murders of Bangladeshi bloggers by fundamentalists, plus a cartoon by Dhaka Tribune’s Tanmoy
Comedy of terrors – Samm Farai Monro, aka Comrade Fatso, on the power of Zimbabwe’s comedians to take on longstanding political taboos
Print under pressure – Miriam Mannak reports on the difficulties facing the media in Botswana, as the president tightens his grip on power
On forgotten free speech heroes – Sir Harold Evans, AC Grayling, Tom Holland and Xinran each pick an individual who has made a telling contribution to free speech today
Head to head – Lawyer Emily Grannis debates with Michael Halpern on whether academic’s emails should be in the public domain
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”CULTURE” css=”.vc_custom_1481731777861{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]
The pain of exile – Exclusive new fiction from Uzbek writer Hamid Ismailov, who has not only had all his books banned back in his homeland, but every mention of his name
Eye of the storm – A poem by Musa Okwonga on the importance of allowing offensive views to be heard and debated on university campuses
The butterfly effect – The lesser known poetry of Index award-winner Rafael Marques De Morais
Listening to a beating heart – A new short story from Ak Welsapar, an author forced to flee his native Turkmenistan after being declared an enemy of the people
[/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 – Index’s CEO Jodie Ginsberg on the difficulties of measuring silenced voices
Index around the world – An update on Index’s latest 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]
Battle of the bots – Vicky Baker reports on the fake social media accounts trying to silence online protest
[/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.
SUBSCRIBE NOW[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_column][/vc_row]
30 Apr 15 | mobile, News and features, United Kingdom
What if your job, your career, was winding up an entire nation?
That’s it. Sure, you have a column in a national newspaper. But what can you really do with it? You can’t really share your thoughts on the common toad, or tell delightful stories about your children misunderstanding foreign words, much less offer some insight into the workings of the modern world. Sure, you can chuck the odd piece of light relief in the sidebar or the basement, but that’s not what people are here for. We’ve come to your column to be thrilled by your outrageous views, and thrilled we will be.
Last time round it was people giving food to, and receiving food from, charity.
“SAY the words food bank” La Dolce ‘Opkina began, “and I am supposed to put on my concerned face and proffer up a can of beans.”
Where’s this going Katie? Where could this possibly be going?
“But all I’ve found in the back of my cupboard is two fingers. And they don’t belong to a Kit Kat.”
BOOM! Gotcha. I mean, it makes no sense. If it’s the fingers at the end of her arm she’s using, why are they in the back of the cupboard? Unless, maybe, she is SO outrageous that she keeps a special V-flipping apparatus in her cupboard, as her doctor has advised her that the constant extension and retraction of her index and middle finger was putting her in serious risk of chronic RSI. But then, if you were using it that much, you wouldn’t keep it in the back of the cupboard. You’d have it on the hall table, perhaps. Or in a little belt-mounted pouch, like a techie’s mobile phone, ready to unleash, cosh-style, upon passing do-gooders, bed-wetters, namby-pambies, oiks, poshos, hippies, liberal elitists, ignorant yokels, EUROCRATS, trendy vicars, Trots, gypsies, useless husbands, trashy wives, “gay rights” activists, lesbo-feminists and everyone else you might bump into at a reasonably-sized community festival in a reasonably-sized town.
It must be exhausting keeping track of this roll call of resentment. It must be wearing to have to be angry every week. How draining to have a public persona dedicated to hating everything and everyone.
And then there is the fact that outrage is a substance which can be addictive, but to which people can also develop a considerable tolerance. In order to keep us interested — and quite possibly to keep herself interested also — Hopkins has to keep upping the dose, until eventually we get to the point where she’s describing poor African people drowning in the sea as cockroaches and everyone suddenly stops and thinks “oh”.
The problem the serial controversialist who has nothing else to trade on faces is that the only way to go is down. The very nature of the job and the stuff you are peddling means you must, inevitably, end up overstepping the mark. In the case of Jeremy Clarkson, a carnival of boorishness ended in violence, where it had to. Hopkins seems to have survived, but she’s Zugzwanged herself: tone down the schtick and she becomes pointless; the only other move available is directly into the abyss. This is the fate of the wind-up merchant.
The exception to this rule is the satirist. The essential difference between the satirist and the controversialist is that the controversialist puts herself forward, from the beginning, as the stoic truthteller, striving alone in a world gone mad. Controversialists tend to be declinists: the world is steadily getting worse. The converse of this is the belief that at some point, usually in the period of the controversialist’s late adolescence, the world was right.
Satirists hold out no such (perverse) hope. The world is awful, the world has always been awful, and the only way to get through it is to laugh and hope we can make some tweaks around the edges. It is curious then, that from Private Eye to Charlie Hebdo, satire is often linked to campaigning journalism in the same publication.
Charlie has once again been in the news after several US-based authors refused to take part in a gala in honour of the magazine hosted by PEN American Center.
The writers’ heckles were raised by what they saw as racist cartoons run by Charlie in the past. Among these were one of a black politician portrayed as a monkey, and Nigeria girl victims of Boko Haram portrayed as “welfare queens”. Of course, at face value, these seem racist (though it is worth noting that it was not racist cartoons that saw Charlie’s staff slain: it was cartoons that refused to obey religious taboo).
What the US critics failed to acknowledge was that all satire is reactive: the cartoons did not simply spring unprompted from the cartoonists’ pens. The case of the ape cartoon was a reaction to far right portrayals of the minister, and the accompanying text very clearly mocked the Front National’s leader Marine Le Pen. As Irish novelist and Charlie columnist Robert McLiam Wilson pointed out:
“Without the snipped-off text underneath, and the knowledge of the lamentable tosh it was lampooning, of course Charlie would seem racist. It would seem racist to me too. But to strip the image of its fundamental components like this is akin to saying the incomparable Jonathan Swift was a baby-eating Nazi and that A Modest Proposal was actually a cookbook.”
Satire must toy with what it sets out to mock: otherwise it is meaningless and unintelligible. Sometimes the controversy of the likes of Hopkins and the irony of Charlie can look, at first glance, identical.
And sometimes not: While Hopkins was describing “cockroaches” drowning in the Mediterranean, Charlie was echoing the refrain of many: “A Titanic every week,” with a cartoon depicting a white woman singing My Heart Will Go On while a despairing migrant begs her to “shut up” (Ta Guelle).
Bracing? Sure. But humanising, too. As satire should be and controversialism never is.
This column was posted on 30 April 2015 at indexoncensorship.org
