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The Summer 2023 issue of Index looks at neurodiversity, the term coined in the late 1990s to identify and promote the positives of variation in human thinking which has become more widely used in the past few years. Are old stereotypes still rife? Has the perception of neurodiversity improved? If not, was this because of censorship? Using neurodivergent voices, we wanted to know about this in a global context.
The majority of the articles are written by neurodivergent people, as we wanted to put their voices front and centre. Many said they did have more of a voice, awareness had shot up and the word “neurodiversity” empowered and welcomed a growth in onscreen representation. However, at the same time it was clear that conversations around neurodiversity were playing out along society’s current fault-lines and were far from immune.
Mind matters, by Jemimah Seinfeld: The term neurodiversity has positively challenged how we approach our minds. Has it done enough?
The Index, by Mark Frary: The latest in free expression news, from an explainer on Sudan to a cha-cha-cha starring Meghan and King Charles.
Bars can't stop a bestseller, by Kaya Genç: Fiction is finding its way out of a Turkish prison, says former presidential hopeful and bestselling writer
Selahattin Demirtaş.
Don't mention femicide, by Chris Havler-Barrett: Murdered women are an inconvenience for Mexico’s president.
This is no joke, by Qian Gong and Jian Xu: The treatment of China’s comedians is no laughing matter.
Silent Disco, by Andrew Mambondiyani: Politicians are purging playlists in Zimbabwe, and musicians are speaking out.
When the Russians came, by Alina Smutko, Taras Ibragimov and Aliona Savchuk: The view from inside occupied Crimea, through the cameras of photographers banned by the Kremlin.
The language of war and peace, by JP O’Malley: Kremlin-declared “Russophobe foreign agent and traitor” Mikhail Shishkin lays out the impossible choices for Russians.
Writer's block, by Stacey Tsui: Hong Kong’s journalists are making themselves heard, thanks to blockchain technology.
The Russians risking it all, by Katie Dancey-Downs: Forced to sing songs and labelled as extremists, anti-war Russians are finding creative ways to take a stand.
The 'truth' is in the tea, by Jemimah Steinfeld: Spilling the tea on a London venue, which found itself in hot water due to a far-right speaker.
Waiting for China's tap on the shoulder, by Chu Yang: However far they travel, there’s no safe haven for journalists and academics who criticise China.
When the old fox walks the tightrope, by Danson Kahyana: An interview with Stella Nyanzi on Uganda’s latest anti-LGBTQ+ law.
Would the media lie to you?, by Ali Latifi: Fake news is flourishing in Afghanistan, in ways people might not expect.
Britain's Holocaust island, by Martin Bright: Confronting Britain’s painful secret, and why we must acknowledge what happened on Nazi-occupied Alderney.
The thorn in Vietnam's civil society side, by Thiện Việt: Thiện Việt: Responding to mass suppression with well-organised disruption.
Not a slur, by Nick Ransom: What’s in a word? Exploring representation, and the power of the term “neurodiversity” to divide or unite.
Sit down, shut up, by Katharine P Beals: The speech of autistic non-speakers is being hijacked.
Fake it till you break it, by Morgan Barbour: Social media influencers are putting dissociative identity disorder in the spotlight, but some are accused of faking it.
Weaponising difference, by Simone Dias Marques: Ableist slurs in Brazil are equating neurodivergence with criminality.
Autism on screen is gonna be okay, by Katie Dancey-Downs: The Rain Man days are over. Everything’s Gonna Be Okay star Lillian Carrier digs into autism on screen.
Raising Malaysia's roof, by Francis Clarke: In a comedy club in Malaysia’s capital stand up is where people open up, says comedian Juliana Heng.
Living in the Shadows, by Ashley Gjøvik: When successful camouflage has a lasting impact.
Nigeria's crucible, by Ugonna-Ora Owoh: Between silence and lack of understanding, Nigeria’s neurodiverse are being mistreated.
My autism is not a lie, by Meltem Arikan: An autism diagnosis at 52 liberated a dissident playwright, but there’s no space for her truth in Turkey.
Lived experience, to a point, by Julian Baggini: When it comes to cultural debates, whose expertise carries the most weight?
France: On the road to illiberalism? by Jean-Paul Marthoz: Waving au revoir to the right to criticise.
Monitoring terrorists, gangs - and historians, by Andrew Lownie: The researcher topping the watchlist on his majesty’s secret service.
We are all dissidents, by Ruth Anderson: Calls to disassociate from certain dissidents due to their country of birth are toxic and must be challenged.
Manuscripts don't burn, by Rebecca Ruth Gould: Honouring the writers silenced by execution in Georgia, and unmuzzling their voices.
Obscenely familiar, by Marc Nash: A book arguing for legalised homosexuality is the spark for a fiction rooted in true events.
A truly graphic tale, by Taha Siddiqui and Zofeen T Ebrahim: A new graphic novel lays bare life on Pakistan’s kill list, finding atheism and a blasphemous tattoo.
A censored day? by Kaya Genç: Unravelling the questions that plague the censor, in a new short story from the Turkish author.
Poetry's peacebuilding tentacles, by Natasha Tripney: Literature has proven its powers of peace over the last decade in Kosovo.
Palestine: I still have hope, by Bassem Eid: Turning to Israel and Palestine, where an activist believes the international community is complicit in the conflict.
It seems I am reminded daily that I am very lucky to live in a democracy. I may not agree with my Government - but I have the right to tell them I don’t. I may not agree with what’s written in a newspaper - but I have the right to tell the world I don’t. I may not support the status quo in terms of what is happening in my community - but I have the right to speak to my neighbours and demand better and demand change.
Those basic rights to challenge the orthodoxy, to challenge my political leaders, to challenge authority is a blessing and one that I value every day, especially when I am exposed to what happens to people who by dint of birth just aren’t afforded the same rights as me.
This week, yet again, we’ve read reports of events in China. Not only has the CCP continued their persecution of political dissidents by taking in Nathan Law’s family for questioning but they’ve also rolled out a new tool for ‘training’ journalists. The new smartphone training programme from the All China Journalists Association seeks to train aspirant and current journalists in the ‘Marxist vision of journalism’. I honestly have no idea as to what that could possibly entail as I’m not sure that the Communist Manifesto issued ideological guidance for the execution of occupational journalism.
However, what we do know is that no good will come from a CCP-sanctioned training programme designed to brainwash aspiring journalists, who live under a despotic regime, into writing acceptable forms of ‘journalism’. To compound the propaganda element of the training programme - journalists will be forced to undertake the programme before they take an exam to test their loyalty to Xi Jingping and if you don’t pass you don’t get to be a journalist.
This isn’t journalism in any way that those of us who live in a freer society would recognise. It’s an effort to ensure the ongoing practice of national propaganda under the pretence of ‘journalism’. It’s the ultimate effort to ensure that no one can speak truth to power and that only one dominant narrative - that of the CCP - is heard. There will be no challenge to the status quo. There will be no free media. There will be no dissent.
The question for global media outlets then becomes how on earth do you cover events in China if journalists on the ground are actually propaganda agents and it’s increasingly difficult for foreign news journalists to operate freely. We covered this earlier this year. But as some dictators become even more fearful of their own people - this is a question which is increasingly going to dominate newsrooms around the world.
One day last October, journalist and former China correspondent with the Dutch daily newspaper de Volkskrant Marije Vlaskamp received an odd email. It contained confirmation of a hotel reservation at the Holiday Inn Express in The Hague made on Booking.com in her name.
Two things struck her as extremely strange. One is that the reservation had been made on the Chinese language version of the website; the second is that she had never made the booking.
After calling the hotel to cancel the reservation, things became even more unsettling.
She received a message from the Chinese dissident Wang Jingyu, whom she had interviewed before. Wang had recently found refuge in the Netherlands and she had been in touch with him for a story about the ‘long arm of China’. He told Vlaskamp that a room had been booked in his name in the same hotel. Wang had also received an anonymous threat in Chinese: “‘One tip-off from me and the police will come and arrest you and your journalist friend.”
This was the moment Vlaskamp thought it was about time to inform her superiors at the paper – but not before she made herself a pot of jasmine tea. After having worked in China as a correspondent between 2001 and 2019, she knew the intimidation tactics of the Chinese state very well. She just never expected to be confronted with them after her return to the Netherlands.
Vlaskamp told the story in a long-form article in de Volkskrant in early April.
In it she revealed that the hotel reservation was just the first step in a campaign of intimidation targeted at both her and Wang.
Vlaskamp says as part of the campaign that she had received an anonymous warning that her name would be linked with bomb threats. A day later, she saw on the news that the residence of Dutch prime-minister Mark Rutte had been cordoned off and police, fire brigades and the bomb disposal unit were on the scene. Her heart “skipped a beat” when she heard that the threat was a car with a foreign number plate parked in the street where the Chinese embassy is located, just 200 meters away from the PM’s residence. That’s when she knew that the messages were part of a serious threat against her.
What is unclear is who is sending these intimidating messages. Putting pieces of the puzzle together, there is no doubt that they were acting on behalf of the Chinese state. In her article, Vlaskamp writes about researchers and scientists who have been warning for some time that China has been working on a network of influencing, subversion and intimidation abroad, while digital traces lead Dutch police investigators to IP-addresses in China and Hong Kong. But the Chinese state couldn’t be caught red-handed.
Vlaskamp is one of the first journalists to be subject to an intimidation campaign by China outside Chinese borders. In the summer 2023 issue of Index on Censorship magazine, we wrote about the case of Australian journalist Vicky Xiuzhong Xu. She and her family were harassed after contributing to a 2020 report on human rights violations in Xinjiang.
The frightening events Vlaskamp experienced illustrate perfectly just how far China is willing to go to protect its interests and silence dissidents and journalists.
But would it be wise to publish? No one could predict what effect a publication would have, and whether it would bring more risks for Vlaskamp. Both her and Wang had been threatened anonymously and told to stop their interviews and not to re-publish previous articles about Wang. They both refused to comply.
Eventually, the decision to publish was made but only after six months of soul-searching and journalistic research.
The paper explained at the time: “We only wanted to publish this story if our reporter was fully behind it. Which she is. As she writes herself, the journalistic duty to reveal wrongs takes precedence here. Besides, it is by no means certain that the intimidations would stop if she would not write about this. If her assailants believe that these intimidating practices are effective, only more of the same would be in store for her later on. And not just for Marije Vlaskamp. We are worried about a chilling effect: if de Volkskrant allows itself to be muzzled by persons claiming to act on behalf of a foreign power, this essentially affects all journalists who write critically about autocratic regimes.”
In a strongly-worded comment piece two days after the publication, de Volkskrant put the intimidation campaign against Vlaskamp and dissident Wang in a broader perspective. Not just the perspective of press freedom, which was clearly in jeopardy here, but also that of autocrats like China’s Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin, who increase pressure on those who refuse to surrender to the autocrat’s personal version of reality. Within their own borders, their methods are harsh, and abroad they resort to increasingly shameless psychological warfare, the paper wrote.
Thomas Bruning, secretary general of the Dutch Association of Journalists, said that the events underscore the importance of not underestimating the use of spyware and other forms of digital surveillance. He said: “Vlaskamp’s case makes clear that journalists who critically follow regimes like China’s are vulnerable and deserve protection. More generally, journalists should be aware that digital intimidation and threats are an issue against they will have to arm themselves pro-actively.”
A search in the archives of de Volkskrant shows that the piece of early April is the last one Vlaskamp wrote about China. The paper has had a new China correspondent since 2019 but Vlaskamp had continued to write pieces for which her extensive knowledge of the country gave her analysis extra depth. Since April, she has written about Pakistan, India, Japan, North and South Korea, but not about China.
It begs the question of whether this is to protect her. Both Vlaskamp and de Volkskrant have refused to say.
[Both Vlaskamp and de Volkskrant were contacted to contribute to this story but would not comment further.]
Last week’s mutiny by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the mercenary Wagner Group, provided a challenge to established western media outlets, such was the speed of the advance by the man known as Putin’s chef towards Moscow and the lack of verifiable information coming out of Russia. The subsequent accommodation between Prigozhin and Putin, apparently brokered by the Belarus leader Alyaksandr Lukashenska, has left even the most seasoned neo-Kremlinologists scratching their heads.
Step forward the Russian dissidents and independent news services. Index has been privileged to work with the opposition to Putin since long before the war in Ukraine and it was good to see them coming into their own last week. Here are some of our recommendations for those who want to stay abreast of the fast-moving and often baffling developments in Russia. Kevin Rothrock (@KevinRothrock), the managing editor of the English-language version of the independent online site Meduza, kept his Twitter feed consistently updated during the coup-that-never-was. Where others were breathless and over-excited, Rothrock was calm and measured. His colleague Lilya Yapparova (@lilia_yapparova) provided detailed analysis on the future of Prigozhin from sources inside the Russian military and the Wagner Group itself. Yapparova’s far-reaching investigation looks into what Wagner forces might contribute to Belarusian military capacity and the organisation’s operations in Africa and Syria. She also looks into Wagner’s finances in Russia, its continued recruitment for the war in Ukraine and internet trolling operations. Yapporova quotes the work of Dossier Center, a media outlet connected to the British-based Putin opponent Mikhail Khodorkovsksy, which tracks criminals associated with the Russian president. Khodorkovsky himself was active on his Telegram channel throughout the mutiny and accessible to non-Russian speakers through the messaging app’s translate function. Controversially he urged Russians to support Prigozhin's coup. His view was that anything would be better than Putin. The Russian billionaire later concluded that the outcome of Prigozhin’s operation was not important. “The very fact that this happened is a powerful blow to Putin after which he will be perceived differently by millions.”
Doxa, the publication founded by students opposed by Putin and now outlawed by the regime, continues to do a good job of aggregating news from reliable sources. This week it included a report from The Bell, founded by Russian financial journalist Elizaveta Osetinskaya, suggesting that Prigozhin’s troll factory companies have been paralysed following raids after the uprising and were looking for a new owner. Osetinskaya, a former editor of Russian Forbes magazine, was declared a foreign agent after condemning the invasion of Ukraine.
In a new development this week, Novaya Gazeta, the independent Russian news outlet whose editor Dmitry Muratov won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021, was put on the Kremlin’s list of “undesirable” organisations. This makes it a crime for the publication, now based in Latvia, to operate in Russia. It is also now illegal for Russians to engage with the publication or share its content online.
OVD-Info, the human rights project which won the 2022 Index on Censorship campaigning award, decided not to provide a running commentary of events and stuck to its mission of reporting on arrests of regime opponents. In his weekly newsletter Dan Storyev, English editor of OVD-Info, wrote: “Russia has had a busy few days as I am sure we all know. This newsletter is not for military analysis so I won’t cover Prigozhin’s manoeuvres here — but it’s important to remember, that in the end, it is going to be ordinary Russians, Russian civil society who would bear the brunt of any violence that a coup, or a paranoid preventive crackdown could unleash.”
If there is one thing that unites all the outlets mentioned here (beyond their undoubted courage), it is the care they take in the sourcing of all information they publish. In the post-truth world of Putin’s Russia, facts are precious commodities.