19 Jun 17 | Digital Freedom, Magazine, Magazine Editions, Volume 46.02 Summer 2017
Short story writer
Jonathan Tel is the 2016 winner of The Sunday Times EFG Short Story Prize and the 2015 Commonwealth short story prize. He has written both novels and short stories and has been published in The New Yorker and Granta, amongst others.
Writer and academic
Nina Khrushcheva is professor of International Affairs at The New School in New York. She is the author of The Lost Khrushchev: A Journey into the Gulag of the Russian Mind, and is the great-grandchild of Nikita Khrushchev.
Journalist
Rafael Marques de Morais is an author and investigative journalist from Angola, who currently runs the anti-corruption website makaangola.org. He won the Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Award in 2015 for journalism.
16 Jun 17 | Magazine, Magazine Contents, Volume 46.02 Summer 2017
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”Contributors include Nina Khrushcheva, David Aaronovitch, BG Muhn, Andrei Arkhangelsky, Rafael Marques de Morais and Bernard Gwertzman”][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]
The Summer 2017 issue of Index on Censorship magazine looks at how the consequences of the 1917 Russian Revolution still affect freedoms today, in Russia and around the world. Andrei Arkhangelsky argues that the Soviet impulse to censor never left Russia, and Nina Khrushcheva, a great-granddaughter of Nikita Khrushchev, reflects on the Soviet echoes in Trump’s use of the phrase “enemies of the people”.
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Hamid Ismailov, a writer who fled Uzbekistan in 1992, also reflects on how the superficial removal of the symbols of Soviet rule did little to change the mentality of the country or its government.
BG Muhn explores the legacy of socialist realism art in North Korea, arguably the only remaining totalitarian communist country, where painters work in government-run studios to produce artwork inspired by Soviet ideals and Korean pride. Also examining propaganda in art, David Aaronovitch looks back at the famous Soviet films he grew up watching, and asks whether their distortion of true events is any more sinister than that of Hollywood.
Jan Fox also interviews Luis Lago Diaz, a Cuban filmmaker, showing the global reach of Soviet influence, and Rafael Marques de Morais dissects the Stalin-inspired cult of personality surrounding the president of Angola.
Meanwhile, with eyes on history, Kaya Genç examines the complex relationship between Russia and Turkey, Bernard Gwertzman reflects on his time as the New York Times’ Moscow correspondent during the 1960s, and Duncan Tucker investigates how Leon Trotsky’s journey from founding Soviet leader to dissident non-person saw him become a champion of free speech during his exile in Mexico.
Outside of the special report, Laura Silvia Battaglia interviews a Yemeni journalist about his ordeal reporting on his country’s war, which has included being kidnapped, tortured and shot, and Eliza Vitri Handayani explains how a small rural community in Indonesia has found innovative ways of standing up to big industry, including encasing their feet in cement.
Plus Jemimah Steinfeld asks the author Margaret Atwood about current threats to free speech, the South African cartoonist Zapiro discusses the time President Jacob Zuma sued him and in the culture section award-winning writer Jonathan Tel presents a surreal, original short story about China’s ban on time-travelling television.
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”SPECIAL REPORT: 100 years on” css=”.vc_custom_1497355747157{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]
What difference Russia’s revolution makes to our freedom today
Mexico’s unlikely visitor, by Duncan Tucker: Leon Trotsky might have arrived in Mexico with blood on his hands, but he quickly became a free speech fighter
Land of milk and honey, by Lahav Harkov: Israel’s kibbutz movement walks a fine line between being harmonious and restrictive
Friends reunited, by Kaya Genç: For most of the 20th century, Turkey and Russia were hostile neighbours. Now as both clamp down on free speech, they’re finding common ground
The enemies of those people, by Nina Khrushcheva: Nikita Khrushchev’s great-grandchild considers life in Trump’s USA compared to her Soviet upbringing
Airbrushing history, by Jeffery Wasserstrom & Yidi Wu: With China’s Communist Party still in power, the way 1917 is remembered must follow the party line. One man learnt the hard way
Being the big man, by Rafael Marques de Morais: Angola’s long-ruling president has constructed an image of himself straight out of Stalin’s playbook
The big chill, by Bernard Gwertzman: Staged press conferences and tapped phones were two obstacles to reporting from Moscow during the Cold War for The New York Times’ correspondent
Help! I’m a Taiwanese communist, by Michael Gold: Taiwan went through a mass killing of its communists. Today the country is opening up about this dark past and communists face a freer environment
Shot in Havana, by Jan Fox: The state still controls Cuba’s film industry, but a Cuban producer is hopeful about changes ahead
[/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]
Provoking the president, by Raymond Joseph: South African cartoonist Zapiro talks censorship and drawing in an exclusive interview
Novel lines, by Jemimah Steinfeld: An interview with Margaret Atwood on current threats to free speech and why scientists need defending
No country for free speech? by Daniel Leisegang: An old libel law and a new one aimed at social media are two threats to free expression in Germany
Read all about it, by Julia Farrington: Somaliland’s hugely successful festival is marking 10 years of extending access to books
See no evil: A Chechen journalist on the current climate of fear and intimidation that is stopping real news getting out
No laughing matter, by Silvia Nortes: Making jokes about Franco and ETA is off the table in Spain if you want to avoid trouble with the law
Cementing dissatisfaction, by Eliza Vitri Handayani: Indonesians experimenting with creative forms of protest are grabbing attention and sparking new movements
[/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]
Frenemies, by Kaya Genç: A mysterious man arrives at the White House. What does he want? A short story written exclusively for Index
Stitched in time, by Jonathan Tel: The award-winning writer on why the Chinese government controls historical narratives and an original story based on their ban of time travel shows
A tale of two Peters, by Alexei Tolstoy: First-time English translation of a story about Peter the Great by Russia’s Comrade Count, Alexei Tolstoy
[/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, by Jodie Ginsberg: Freedoms are being curtailed across the globe in the name of “national security”
[/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]
[/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) and on Amazon. Each magazine sale helps Index on Censorship continue its fight for free expression worldwide.
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14 Feb 17 | Magazine
[vc_row full_width=”stretch_row_content” full_height=”yes” columns_placement=”stretch” equal_height=”yes” css=”.vc_custom_1594032073955{background-image: url(https://www.indexoncensorship.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/magazine-art-1460×490.png?id=80524) !important;}”][vc_column][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”Shakespearean actress Janet Suzman said about our special Shakespeare 400 issue: “From every corner of the unfree world the essays you have printed bear me out; theatre is a danger to ignorance and autocracy and Shakespeare still holds the sway. I congratulate you and Index on giving such space to a writer who is still bannable after 400 plus years.”” google_fonts=”font_family:Libre%20Baskerville%3Aregular%2Citalic%2C700|font_style:400%20italic%3A400%3Aitalic”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
A quarterly magazine set up in 1972, Index has published oppressed writers and refused to be silenced across 252 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 Nobel Prize-winning Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
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.
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_icon icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left” color=”custom” align=”right” custom_color=”#dd3333″][/vc_column][vc_column width=”3/4″][vc_custom_heading text=”An archive of past battles won, and a beacon of present and future struggles. It’s unique brand of practical, practising advocacy is as necessary as ever.” font_container=”tag:h2|text_align:left|color:%23dd3333″ google_fonts=”font_family:Libre%20Baskerville%3Aregular%2Citalic%2C700|font_style:400%20italic%3A400%3Aitalic”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
Index stood firmly against the apartheid regime. South African Nadine Gordimer, yet another Nobel prize-winning author, wrote regularly for the magazine. Big names from around the literary world flocked to contribute to the magazine, often before their struggles had brought internal accolade – a single issue in 1983 included the exiled Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka, later a Nobel prize winner, and Czechoslovakian dissident Vaclav Havel, who went on to be his country’s last president before it split into Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Kurt Vonnegut and Arthur Miller were also among the more famous bylines. Salman Rushdie, the author at the centre of the Satanic Verses controversy, was frequently featured on Index’s pages while there was a bounty offered for his murder by the Iranian government.
After the fall of communism, there was a widespread misconception that censorship was “over”, but journalists, authors and dissidents have continually reached out to Index when squeezed. The Russian reporter Anna Politkovskaya wrote in 2002 of the threats made against her life when she began investigating Russia’s war in Chechnya, four years before she was assassinated in Moscow.
After more than 40 years, Index continues to stand with the silenced all over the world. In October 2016, the Times Literary Supplement described it as “an archive of past battles won, and a beacon of present and future struggles. It’s unique brand of practical, practising advocacy is as necessary as ever.”
[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]Words: Kieran Etoria-King[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row content_placement=”top”][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_custom_heading text=”Support Index” font_container=”tag:p|font_size:24|text_align:left” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.indexoncensorship.org%2F2016%2F12%2Ffashion-rules%2F|||”][vc_column_text]
In times of extraordinary crisis, governments often take the opportunity to roll back on personal freedoms and media freedom.
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25 Jan 17 | Magazine, News and features, Volume 45.04 Winter 2016
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”Dealing with mutilated bodies, an attempted acid attack and speakers arresting each other. All part of his job organising Hay literature festivals around the world, explains Peter Florence in the winter 2016 issue of Index on Censorship magazine” google_fonts=”font_family:Libre%20Baskerville%3Aregular%2Citalic%2C700|font_style:400%20italic%3A400%3Aitalic”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”85033″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][vc_column_text]
Running a literature festival in a context where freedom of speech is not a given is like playing chess on a plain grey board. Sometimes you are just not able to imagine where to move, and sometimes you just keep playing on grey. But as US President Barack Obama said so eloquently after November’s election: “You say, OK, where are the places where I can push to keep it moving forward?”
Bringing people together around a table or a picnic rug or a campfire is a specific challenge. There is no mediated distance of print or broadcast. The whole point is that you’re face to face, that you’re making it personal. And the offence and the risk are as personal as the joy and the discovery. This makes it a fascinating challenge when the practicalities of running a big public event run into conflict with the authorities who license you to put up your stages.
Sometimes it comes like this: a week after a successful festival, a man you’ve been working with for a couple of years suggests a meeting in a café to review the year’s work. He’s a good man, an enabler; a man who has the careworn look of a bureaucrat who’s survived in an undemocratic regime by knowing which battles to fight.
You like him, because he’s helped navigate the public licences and public funding avenues. He orders cake. He enthuses about the opportunity to meet Hanif Kureishi at the screening of My Beautiful Launderette, and the honour of hearing Carl Bernstein speak about the First Amendment. His funder is thrilled. They love the Hay Festival in the city. We’re in a coffee shop, not his office. They are so thrilled they’d like to double the grant they give us. Alarm bells. Could we help them? Here it comes: could we programme the next festival just the same way, but without the homosexuals or the Jews?
Sometimes it’s harder. Our first festival in volatile, thrilling Mexico comes to a world heritage site in Zacatecas, because the state’s visionary governor has visited our festival in Cartagena, Colombia, and she wants to bring a similar experience to her home. The festival is a huge success. Her term ends and she is succeeded by a new governor who cancels all his predecessor’s funded projects.
But across the country a dynamic new governor in Veracruz, Javier Duarte, picks up the baton and invites us to Xalapa. A fortnight before we start, a drug cartel dumps 35 mutilated bodies onto a busy road nearby. “It’s a gang thing, an inter-narco incident,” we’re told.
We hold the festival. Tens of thousands of students come and listen and talk and wonder.
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_icon icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left” color=”custom” align=”right” custom_color=”#dd3333″][/vc_column][vc_column width=”3/4″][vc_custom_heading text=”Could we programme the next festival just the same way, but without the homosexuals or the Jews?” google_fonts=”font_family:Libre%20Baskerville%3Aregular%2Citalic%2C700|font_style:400%20italic%3A400%3Aitalic”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
During the third year the talk about the Governor Duarte’s probity starts. Journalists investigating the cartels are disappeared. We bring in Salman Rushdie, Jody Williams and Carl Bernstein again to speak up alongside Mexican writers. The students embrace the festival as a beacon of freedom of speech.
Year four, we receive a petition demanding that we cancel the festival and denounce the governor for failing to stem the constant steam of killings of journalists in Veracruz. The petition is signed by more than 300 journalists and some writers from across Latin America who have attended the festival. We listen. A rival, and much bigger petition is started by the students and teachers in Xalapa begging us not to leave, saying the festival is their bulwark against silence. But we cannot operate against the wishes of writers and journalists. We broadcast the festival digitally on BBC Mundo, and move to Mexico City and then to Querétaro. Many of the students from Xalapa come too. Duarte is currently on the run from the police and the cartels.
Sometimes it’s just farcical. In 2008, at our festival in Wales we invite George W Bush’s confidant and former US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton to discuss Abu Ghraib and the “war on terror”. Many supporters of Hay are appalled. Our good friend and neighbour George Monbiot, also a speaker, is so appalled he decides that he will attempt a citizen’s arrest at the festival. I assume he’s joking. Monbiot announces this is what he’s going to do in The Guardian. The Dyfed-Powys Police inform me of the legal procedure for citizen’s arrest and step away.
My mother reads me Voltaire. I brief our security team. The day comes. Bolton turns up. His interviewer is called to the BBC at lunchtime, so I have to go onstage with him. I ask him under what circumstances it would be OK for me, if I didn’t believe his answers, to tip him backwards, bag him, and pour water over his face. He doesn’t answer. He cannot say “under no circumstances”, though I’m not sure he understands that’s the issue. It’s on YouTube; it’s compelling.
Bolton knows that Monbiot is going to try to make a citizen’s arrest, and George knows I cannot allow him to do that and still hold Hay as a platform for free speech. So that’s what happens. We restrain a liberal hero from silencing an illiberal neo-con. A guy who throws a bottle of acid hits me, not Bolton. George writes a brilliant and widely shared account of why Bolton should be charged.
Hay Festival is 30 in 2017. We’ll be celebrating by arguing for freedoms of speaking and reading. The festival continues to run around the world in Mexico, Colombia, Ireland and Spain.
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Peter Florence is the director and co-founder of the Hay Festival
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”From the Archives”][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”89102″ img_size=”213×289″ alignment=”center” onclick=”custom_link” link=”http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0306422012448150″][vc_custom_heading text=”Taking a stand: lit fair challenges” font_container=”tag:p|font_size:24|text_align:left” link=”url:http%3A%2F%2Fjournals.sagepub.com%2Fdoi%2Fpdf%2F10.1177%2F0306422012448150|||”][vc_column_text]June 2012
As literary festivals and fairs become forums of censorship and protest, Salil Tripathi considers the challenges facing writers and their readers.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”91337″ img_size=”213×289″ alignment=”center” onclick=”custom_link” link=”http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/03064229008534852″][vc_custom_heading text=”Soviet lit in Glasgow” font_container=”tag:p|font_size:24|text_align:left” link=”url:http%3A%2F%2Fjournals.sagepub.com%2Fdoi%2Fpdf%2F10.1080%2F03064229008534852|||”][vc_column_text]June 1990
Soviet writers attend literary forum, ‘New Beginnings’ Soviet Arts Festival in Glasgow, where selections from their work were read and discussed.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”94377″ img_size=”213×289″ alignment=”center” onclick=”custom_link” link=”http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/03064228008533066″][vc_custom_heading text=”The prisoner: an excerpt” font_container=”tag:p|font_size:24|text_align:left” link=”url:http%3A%2F%2Fjournals.sagepub.com%2Fdoi%2Fpdf%2F10.1080%2F03064228008533066|||”][vc_column_text]June 1980
Imprisoned for a paper on education to be delivered at a festival, Yves-Emmanuel Dogbé was imprisoned without trial for five months.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_custom_heading text=”Fashion Rules” font_container=”tag:p|font_size:24|text_align:left” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.indexoncensorship.org%2F2016%2F12%2Ffashion-rules%2F|||”][vc_column_text]The winter 2016 issue of Index on Censorship magazine looks at fashion and how people both express freedom through what they wear.
In the issue: interviews with Lily Cole, Paulo Scott and Daphne Selfe, articles by novelists Linda Grant and Maggie Alderson plus Eliza Vitri Handayani on why punks are persecuted in Indonesia.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”82377″ img_size=”medium” alignment=”center” onclick=”custom_link” link=”https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2016/12/fashion-rules/”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_custom_heading text=”Subscribe” font_container=”tag:p|font_size:24|text_align:left” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.indexoncensorship.org%2Fsubscribe%2F|||”][vc_column_text]In print, online. In your mailbox, on your iPad.
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