bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Charter 77 in '85
Authors: VVK
Published: October 2007

In a review of its work, Charter 77 answers criticism and modifies its role: it wishes to stand for man's humanism, and not just for human rights.

Eight years ago, in January 1977, the human rights group known as Charter 77 came into being in Czechoslovakia. The group marked the anniversary by announcing the usual annual rotation of its three spokesmen: Dr Václav Benda, Jiří Ruml and Jana Šternová ceded their positions to Jiří Dienstbier, Eva Kanturkova, and Petruška Šustrová. Both the outgoing and the new spokesmen signed a document reflecting on the eight years of Charter 77.

We regard this document as an important insight into the activities of human rights groups in all the European Communist countries (with the possible exception of Poland where those activities have much wider scope), and into the activities of people in an almost totally censored society.
The Popieluszko Murder Trial
Authors: Pszenicki Chris
Published: October 2007

Who was Father Popieluszko before he was murdered, and what does the trial tell us about Poland today?
Fear of Media Scrutiny
Authors: Reid Mike
Published: October 2007

Jaime Ayala, 22-year-old correspondent of the opposition paper La Republica, was last seen entering the Marine barracks in Huanta, Ayacucho, on 1 August 1984. He is assumed to have been killed by the marines because he knew something about the killing of six people from a nearby evangelical church.
A Silenced Voice
Authors: Uys Stanley
Published: October 2007

According to President Botha, the closure of the Rand Daily Mail indicates that ‘a new spirit of national unity is gradually taking control of our country’. But its editor put it differently: ‘A vigorous voice of dissent has been stilled’.
Namibia
Authors: Herbstein Denis
Published: October 2007

If you think censorship is tough in the Republic, take a look at the manipulation of information in its colony.
The Intimidators
Authors: Paton Alan
Published: October 2007

An extract from his unpublished autobiography by the author of Cry, The Beloved Country
The Writer and his Integrity
Authors: Wästberg Per
Published: October 2007

‘I have noticed in all continents an increasing pressure towards that frightened and brutal conformity which is simply barbarity in a new guise’
‘We Need not Bring you to Court’
Authors: Guma Alex La
Published: October 2007

An extract from In the Fog of the Season's End by the well-known South African writer who recently died in Cuba
Mothers in the Plaza
Authors: Traba Marta
Published: October 2007

An extract from Mothers and Shadows, in which the Argentinian novelist recreates one of the demonstrations of the ‘mothers of the Plaza de Mayo’ — the mothers of the disappeared
The Maiden and the Beast
Authors: Zinik Zinovy
Published: October 2007

Short story by a Russian writer now living in London
Videos, pirates and the underground
Authors: Rydström Björn
Published: October 2007

How videos are used to evade the state monopoly in Communist Europe, the Soviet Union and Chile; and why in Holland half the video trade is illegal
Two stories
Authors: Rathenow Lutz
Published: October 2007

In spite of arrest, banning and searches, Lutz Rathenow declines to emigrate from East Germany, believing he can exert a greater influence where he is
Offering a variety of views
Authors: Hejdánek Ladislav
Published: October 2007

Every Monday evening in Prague an unemployable academic — Dr Hejdánek — teaches students who have been denied entry to the University. Here he describes his seminars
Underground River
Authors: Konwicki Tadeusz
Published: October 2007

A chapter from Underground River, Underground Birds, a novel printed unofficially in Warsaw
Trial of the Generals
Authors: Pittman Patricia
Published: October 2007

Pablo's testimony: ‘The night they came to get me, Claudia said something I will never forget — that each 31 December I should drink a toast to her and everyone, because she was already dead…’ Claudia is still ‘disappeared’, and the military and the police claim she was never detained.
Diary of a Hungerstriker
Authors: Tudoran Dorin
Published: October 2007

The Rumanian authorities did their worst to deter the writer from emigrating, but he defied them all
Pogrom of Historians
Authors: Prečan Vilém
Published: October 2007

‘Party supervision of scholarship, which the Communist Party will never give up, will be applied by laying down the areas and orientation of research … ‘
A Day with La Prensa
Authors: Caistor Nick
Published: October 2007

The daily routine on the anti-Sandinista newspaper which, like the government it criticises, selects news for its propaganda value
Theatre and Folklore Seen as a Threat
Authors: Al-Hakawati
Published: October 2007

Interview with a theatre group which is resisting harassment from the authorities
A Chronicle of Repression
Authors: Krassó György
Published: October 2007

In 1985 the Hungarian authorities were unusually tolerant of the opposition. But this year violence has returned.
My Self-Defence
Authors: Wenli Xu
Published: October 2007

Smuggled out of jail — the memoirs of one of China's most active dissidents
Why there is more free speech in Belgrade than in Zagreb
Authors: Ĉavoški Kosta
Published: October 2007

The scope for freedom of expression varies according to the character of the regional oligarchies, who are relatively independent within the federal structure
Good times will return
Authors: Bielecki Czeslaw
Published: October 2007

Throughout his time in prison, Bielecki kept up a touching correspondence with his sons. Below are excerpts from some of these letters, dating from a period between July 1983 and March this year.
Portrait of the artist as a mature man
Authors: Nowakowski Marek
Published: October 2007

‘Perhaps he was a slave. A prisoner hounded by vigilant watchmen. He saw himself as a failure, capable of performing only on a very limited scale. All his proud freedom was but a pathetic sham. A mere whimper, a bark. Nothing more. The doubt went through him like poison.’
Miguel Littín
Authors: Márquez Gabriel García
Published: October 2007

‘No,’ she said, ‘I don't know who you are.’ ‘Do you really not know me?’ I burst out laughing. ‘I'm your son, Miguel.’
Corporal Martínez
Authors: Argueta Manlio
Published: October 2007

From a new novel Cuzcatlán, where the southern ocean roars by a Salvadoran writer
Ten years of Charter 77
Authors: Ruml Jiří
Published: October 2007

'Tens of thousands of people are prevented from working in their particular fields only because their opinions differ from the official line.' So spoke the first document of Charter 77 issued on 1 January 1977. Here Jiří Ruml, who still lives in Czechoslovakia, gives a short history of this 'informal community of people' of which he is a member.
Hope for dissenters?
Authors: Laird Sally
Published: October 2007

1986 saw a string of spectacular releases: Andrei Sakharov, Anatoly Shcharansky, Yury Orlov, Irina Ratushinskaya. Is Gorbachev simply more eager and skilled in the time-honoured practice of using dissenters for bargaining and propaganda purposes? Or has there been a real shift in policy that spells hope for dissenters in the future? Paradoxically, the answer to both questions may be 'yes'.
For the rule of law
Authors: Bećković Matija
Published: October 2007

Eighteen Yugoslav intellectuals issue a public appeal: 'The time has come to consider not only individual cases of the violation of freedom of expression, but also the more general circumstances and conditions which are conducive to these violations. At the risk of oversimplification they can be attributed to the absence of the authentic rule of law ...'
BBC: Bias or incompetence?
Authors: Conservative Central Office
Published: October 2007

The full text of the document which accuses BBC coverage of the US strike against Libya of being 'riddled with inaccuracy, innuendo and imbalance'.
The BBC response
Authors: BBC TV editors
Published: October 2007

'We believe that a proper detailed analysis of the bulletins confirms the BBC's continuing commitment to impartial journalism.'
Death of a village
Authors: Montejo Victor
Published: October 2007

‘Señores, we are now going to demonstrate to you that we do not fear the guerrillas. Open your eyes wide, all of you, so you can see how we deal with the enemies of our government’.
First Lady
Authors: Monterroso Augusto
Published: October 2007

Short story by a 65-year-old writer whose name appears on a ‘death-list’.
Interights
Authors: Hulton Susan
Published: October 2007

How an international law centre in London helps lawyers in other countries who take up human rights cases by providing practical assistance
Zaire under Mobutu
Authors: Posner Michael
Published: October 2007

Testimony of Michael H Posner, of the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, to the Sub committee on African Affairs, House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Washington, on 10 March 1987
Limiting the vision
Authors: Varadarajan Geethe
Published: October 2007

Western journalists reporting the Third World should beware of making assumptions
Spycatcher: Pride and petulance
Authors: Neuborne Burt
Published: October 2007

‘What's needed isn't so much a written constitution as Law Lords who understand Britain's free speech heritage and who are prepared to function as something more than cheerleaders for the government when asked to defend it’. An American view of the Law Lords’ decision
Notes from the scaffold: South African censorship then and now
Authors: Hope Christopher
Published: October 2007

‘It is as if I am watching a noose tightening around a condemned man's neck and the victim surprises all observers by continuing to talk quite lucidly for several moments longer than anyone would have thought possible.’
Scoundrel days at the Grove Press
Authors: Rosset Barney
Published: October 2007

Publisher Barney Rosset talks about his battles with US censorship in an interview with Marie-Christine Aquarone
A prize for our team
Authors: Brodsky Joseph
Published: October 2007

‘It's easier for people to talk about politics or ethics rather than literature, and by making that preference, or being forced into it by their education and temperament, they deceive and rob themselves incredibly.’

The winner of the 1987 Nobel Prize for Literature talks to Sally Laird about the effect of poetry, the other members of the team, and ‘this whole business’.
Life after utopia: new poets in Moscow
Authors: Epshtein Mikhail
Published: October 2007

A young Moscow critic talks to Sally Laird about the work and the ideas of several young Russian poets, and why some of them remain completely unpublished
Nobel Prize Speech
Authors: Brodsky Joseph
Published: October 2007

‘Regardless of whose image we are created in, we already number five billion, and there is no other future for a human being save that outlined by art. Otherwise, what lies ahead is the past — the political one, first of all, with all its mass police entertainments.’
Room Five
Authors: Selic Momcilo
Published: October 2007

A short story
Recovering the power of words
Authors: Caistor Nick
Published: October 2007

As Argentina's writers return from exile, what do they see as the main difficulties confronting them?
Haiti: The message on the wall
Authors: Butcher Pablo
Published: October 2007

Arrival in Port-au-Prince, itself always an assault on the senses, was a heady experience during the euphoria after Duvalier's peremptory exit on 7 February 1986. Wall paintings celebrated the forced departure of Baby Doc and his family.
Stories and totalitarianism
Authors: Havel Václav
Published: October 2007

The destruction of the story means the destruction of a basic instrument of human knowledge and self-knowledge
Cry Freemandela and don't be such a bloody fool
Authors: Uys Pieter-Dirk
Published: October 2007

‘I use banned material. But let them come! Let them find it first! It's disguised in the froth of Spitting Image-type humour. It's an important style to use in this country. One can't tell the truth as truth. One has to tell it as a Disneyland horror story. Then one can get through to an audience.’ Pieter Dirk Uys is interviewed by Patricia Morris
What the papers don't say
Authors: Collinge Jo-Anne , Mabuza Herbert , Moss Glenn , Niddrie David
Published: October 2007

A survey of the restrictions on the South African press and some suggestions for the future
The human rights movement and perestroika
Authors: Lubarsky Cronid
Published: October 2007

Aside from de-Stalinisation, there's another essential process which hasn't even begun: de-Andropovisation, or getting rid of the current version of Stalinism — which says that if you don't respect the authorities, you've got only yourself to blame.

The following speech, slightly edited here, was made at a conference in Denmark in March (see introduction). In a few places, for the sake of clarity, the translation has been made from the longer, written text of the speech rather than from the recorded version. The explanations in square brackets were added by the translator, Sally Laird.
The censoring reflex
Authors: Demszky Gábor
Published: October 2007

In Eastern Europe the shadow of suspicion invariably falls on the printed word. Censorship has become routine, a Pavlovian reflex. Typically, it operates even without orders from above. In this reflex the will of the state lives on; indeed, routinised censorship continues to function even without that centrally-guided will. This story is about the Budapest incarnation of the film-comedy gendarme, Luis de Funes, and this routinised reflex.
Aliran
Authors: Muzaffar Chandra
Published: October 2007

Aliran Monthly has been trying for four years to obtain a licence to publish in the national language — Bahasa Malaysia. In the end it applied to the High Court and won the case; but the government has appealed.
The Filipino intelligentsia
Authors: José F. Sionil
Published: October 2007

The ‘peoples revolution’ has only opened the way back to influence for the old oligarchy which Marcos had tried to co-opt or destroy. The real problems remain untouched — the absence of land reform, and dependence on the USA
Ki No Tsurayuki
Authors: Onetti Juan Carlos
Published: October 2007

A short story by one of Uruguay's outstanding writers
China Spring
Authors: Crothall Geoffrey
Published: October 2007

The aims of the Democracy Movement are promoted by China Spring, a magazine started by Chinese students in the USA which also circulates among students in China
Weeding out the ‘Gang of Four’
Authors: Schoenhals Michael
Published: October 2007

The arrest of the ‘Gang of Four’ in 1976 was followed by a ban on books ‘peddling the black wares’ of the fallen gang. Books which called Deng Xiaoping the ‘arch unrepentant biggest capitalist roader within the Party’ were recalled for changes. And books previously banned were put back on public sale, thereby generating queues of buyers outside the bookshops
The khaki coat: A short story from Vietnam
Authors: Tien Nhat , Phong Xuan
Published: October 2007

Nhat Tien, now in his early fifties and one of the best-known Vietnamese writers, lived in South Vietnam until a few years after the Communist take-over in 1975. He has published 16 books (14 novels and two collections of short stories) and received the Vietnamese National Literary Award in 1961 for his novel Them Hoang (‘The abandoned veranda’) in 1961. He was vice-president of the Vietnamese PEN club, director of the Huyen Tran Publishing Co, and editor of the weekly Thieu Nhi

In the late 1970s he left Vietnam as a ‘boat person’ and he is now living in the United States. The following short story is reprinted from the collection Tieng Ken (‘ Sound of a clarinet’), published in 1983 by Van Hoc, San Diego, California.
Uruguay 1968–88
Authors: Valdes Ana
Published: October 2007

In 1968 she was a student and a political activist; in 1972 she was arrested, tortured and held for four years; then began the years of exile. And now? Ana Valdes is interviewed by Nick Caistor
Declaration of innocence and ill-treatment
Authors: Lung Teo Soh
Published: October 2007

Nine former detainees protest against their detention by the Singapore government in a statement which instantly precipitated the re-arrest of all except one (who was abroad)
‘So, Tang Fong Har, at last you are here’
Authors: Har Tang Fong
Published: October 2007

A first-hand account of arrest, interrogation, mistreatment and detention by one of the 22 people held last year for ‘communist conspiracy to overthrow the Singapore government’. In April this year the author, a lawyer aged 32, joined with eight others in a declaration of innocence. AH were at once re-. arrested, except for Tang Fong Har, who was Out of the country
Censorship by the Reagan Administration
Authors: Bennett James R.
Published: October 2007

How federal government officials prohibit or curtail ideas or actions considered harmful to themselves, the government, or the people
How long must you keep a ‘secret’?
Authors: Sutton Jonathan
Published: October 2007

Scientists who wish to emigrate from the Soviet Union are frequently denied exit visas on the grounds that they have had access to ‘state secrets’. But these grounds for ‘refusal’ have in many cases been shown to be spurious. What refusenik scientists want is a just and consistent ruling on the security issue.
How free is our press?
Authors: Obadina Tunde
Published: October 2007

Nigeria's press is one of the liveliest in Africa and allows scope for a variety of views. But the lack of ground rules in State-press relations leaves journalists and editors extremely vulnerable. Here a Lagos-based journalist looks at the position of the press over the last decade and discusses ways to safeguard its future.
Mino Carta: sceptical crusader
Authors: Rocha Jan
Published: October 2007

One of Brazil's leading publishers and editors talks to a São Paulo-based journalist about his struggles to keep a critical press alive — and about the magazine that he is currently launching. His project, he says, is democracy. His main problem: the ‘primitivism’ of the country's élite
Reporting the Sudan
Authors: Nduru Moyiga
Published: October 2007

Accused of 'exaggerating' religious conflict in war-torn Sudan, foreign journalists are frequently barred from entering the country at all. A Khartoum journalist traces current visa restrictions to the debate over shari'a law and Islamisation
Algeria's perestroika —without glasnost
Authors: Ramadane Saeed
Published: October 2007

Algeria's failure to allow free expression of views or to undertake long-overdue political reforms, especially following the radical economic reforms of the last few years, was the main cause behind the popular uprising in October 1988
Winning freedom
Authors: Marzouki Moncef
Published: October 2007

A leading Tunisian author describes the role played by writers and journalists in putting democracy and human rights on the government's agenda.
Broadcasting and terrorism
Authors: Bonham Carter Mark
Published: October 2007

The Home Secretary's ban on broadcasting by representatives of Northern Ireland's extremist parties provides numerous examples of 'the universal rule that censorship always makes asses of the censors'. An ex-Vice Chairman of the BBC argues the case for judicial review
The trouble with Babangida
Authors: Iyayi Festus
Published: October 2007

Last year's winner of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize talks to Index about his government's poor record on human rights and the background to his own detention.
Secret histories
Authors: Omotoso Kole
Published: October 2007

How should African novelists deal with African history? A Nigerian writer describes how his recent historical novel was cut because it was too politically explosive.
Censors are bad for business
Authors: Schoenhals Michael
Published: October 2007

For 40 years, China's censors have guided the people on everything from the print size in newspapers to the portraits hung in private homes. But in the age of 'commodity socialism' they look increasingly like political dinosaurs.
Flight from non-existence
Authors: White Edgar
Published: October 2007

The Montserrat-born author talks to John Kraniauskas about the culture of the Caribbean — where novels are a luxury and images of America dominate TV — and reflects on his experience as a writer of the diaspora.
Eyes
Authors: el Saadawi Nawal
Published: October 2007

Based on the real case history of a young woman seeking psychiatric help, this story was banned by the censors.
Intellectuals and power
Authors: Rupnik Jacques
Published: October 2007

In this contribution to the 'Czechoslovakia 88' symposium, banned in Prague last year, a Paris-based specialist reconsiders the political role of the intelligentsia since the war — focusing especially on the part played by the Communist 'class of '48'
Women writers in Russia
Authors: Vorontsova Yelena
Published: October 2007

Why have so few women writers achieved prominence in Russian prose? Why are there virtually no women in the literary bureaucracy? A Moscow author describes the obstacles faced by the 'trusty cart horses' of Soviet literature — and the reasons why women writers have often been more 'honest' than men
First person
Authors: Eloy Martínez Tomás
Published: October 2007

In his latest novel, Martinez, who was exiled from Argentina in the early '70s, re-examines the phenomenon of Peronism.
Poems
Authors: Arce Manuel José
Published: October 2007

Posthumous publication of the exiled poet's work led to the closure of a literary supplement
Pandora's box forced open
Authors: Taheri Amir
Published: October 2007

'What Rushdie has done, as far as Muslim intellectuals are concerned, is to put their backs to the wall and force them to make the choice they have tried to avoid for so long'
Oles Shevchenko et al in the Botanical Gardens
Authors: Maryniak Irena
Published: October 2007

In March this year, Index's specialist on the USSR went to Kiev to do research for our forthcoming issue on press freedom and the environment. There, under the supervision of a squirrel and several 'passers-by', she talked to ex-prisoner Oles Shevchenko, Ukrainian activist Viktor Margitich, and 'the Voice of the Peopte'about Chernobyl, Ukraine, perestroika and the KGB.
Flowers from sorrows
Authors: Serrano Bruno , Kraniauskas John
Published: October 2007

The story of a poetry workshop with political prisoners in Chile is told by the writer who suggested the idea, carried it out, and published Poesia prisionera
No great change in human rights
Authors: Hyman Anthony
Published: October 2007

Persecution of the Ahmadi community has increased during Bhutto's government
The voice of modern hate
Authors: Fraser Nicholas
Published: October 2007

The best argument in favour of the tolerance of hatred is that it allows us to see the outline of what threatens us and inoculates us against believing in the fiction of an atrocity-free world
Inside story
Authors: Rohrer Anneliese
Published: October 2007

International and domestic perceptions of Jörg Haider and his Freedom Party differ sharply. A leading Austrian journalist urges a closer look at the record of previous governments
Problems of integration
Authors: Thierse Wolfgang
Published: October 2007

The speaker of the German federal parliament, interviewed by Toralf Staud, reveals his anxieties about the growth of neofascist youth culture in the eastern Länder since reunification
Cost of conforming
Authors: Adebayo Diran
Published: October 2007

'Britishness' is now officially anti-racist, but the price exacted for membership in the club is the denial of difference
Inside the gulag
Authors: Shelden Randall G
Published: October 2007

There are now about 1.5 million people in US prisons, with an imprisonment rate exceeding all other industrialised societies. Add another 600,000 in local jails and there are more than 2 million locked up on any given day. The largest jump in the US prison population began in the mid-1970s, just as the 'war on drugs' was beginning
Volunteers for death
Authors: Dow David R
Published: October 2007

The conflicting purposes of religious counsellors and legal representatives can lead a prisoner on death row to forfeit his rights
Juvenile injustice
Authors: Harper Stephen K
Published: October 2007

In the last decade, the US has executed more juvenile offenders than all the nations of the world combined. The only other countries that still execute offenders under 18 are Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Saudi Arabia and Iran
An ignoble history
Authors: Smith Sarah A
Published: October 2007

Theatre censorship is almost as old as the dramas it prohibits. Even today, particularly in the UK, archaic attitudes continue to influence what we may and may not see on the stage
No singing, no laughing, no sound
Authors: Berenson Lori
Published: October 2007

In 1995, Lori Berenson, a US citizen, was arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment by a 'hooded' court for allegedly conspiring with the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement to take over the Peruvian Congress. In May this year, US pressure resulted in a retrial on the lesser charge of 'terrorist collaboration'. Here, for the first time since her imprisonment, and through the voices of women who shared it with her, she writes of the conditions in which thousands of detainees convicted under Peru's anti-terrorist laws continue to be held
The US: secrets, lies and legislation
Authors: Levinson Nan
Published: October 2007

If the way to promote freedom of speech is to speak out whenever it is threatened, then it is particularly ironic that North Americans citing instances of censorship in their country are greeted with scepticism and impatience
Censored in the USA
Authors: Jensen Carl
Published: October 2007

Undercovered stories and straight censorship crack the myth of a censorship-free society
All the President's secrets
Authors: Pell Eve
Published: October 2007

A catalog of secret security directives has long denied information to US citizens and even to congressional committees. President Bush has continued the practice
The only locksmith in town
Authors: Rotenberg Marc
Published: October 2007

The NSA's efforts to control the dissemination of cryptography
'We don't say a lot of what we think'
Authors: Paley Grace
Published: October 2007

Nan Levinson interviews the writer who feels there is a pox on political writing in the United States
To be a journalist in China
Authors: Binyan Liu
Published: October 2007

Most people in China learn of events in their own country through foreign media. So what does a Chinese journalist do?
Writers and seers: Vladinur Lakshin, Igor Vinogradov and Vladimir Makanin
Authors: Maryniak Irena
Published: October 2007

Among Soviet visitors to the New Beginnings Critics' Forum, euphoria at the stream of air glasnost. had blown in was matched with gloom at what it had uncovered
The killing of Paolo Iashvili
Authors: Rayfield Donald
Published: October 2007

The most devastating event in Georgia's cultural history was the purge of about one third of its writers, artists and intellectuals in 1924, 1931 and 1937
My times with some real old pros
Authors: Qadry Hussein
Published: October 2007

Hussein Qadry is an Egyptian writer. He had six books in print when he went to the censorship office in Cairo for permission to publish his seventh, and ran into trouble. He wrote this article for Index after reading Marilyn Booth's interview with Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz (Index 2/ 90 p22).
Censorship in the Arab press
Authors: Karime Ahmed
Published: October 2007

Censorship in Egypt is a complex issue with most of the Arab states having a say in what they would like to see banned
With racism on the rise, do US campuses need to limit speech?
Authors: LaMarche Gara
Published: October 2007

The United States is one of very few countries in the world with no laws penalising the expression of racist sentiments.
The blowing of the April wind: Writers and democracy in Nepal
Authors: Hutt Michael
Published: October 2007

Will the political changes lead to freedom for Nepal's writers?
TV owners, videos and the military
Authors: Blixen Samuel
Published: October 2007

Although the army handed over to a constitutional government in 1985, the generals are still not prepared to part with control of communications in Uruguay
Television in Africa: Pressures and priorities
Authors: McFarlane Janice
Published: October 2007

Governments fear loss of media control as western influence grows
Press cancer; not council
Authors: Ezeh Peter
Published: October 2007

A new decree seeks to muzzle the media. Journalists will now need formal qualifications or five years' experience to practise
Côte D'Ivoire — An old man's party is nearly over
Authors: Blay-Amihere Kabral
Published: October 2007

In a continent known for its political turbulence the West African state of Côte D'Ivoire has always prided itself as an exception — an island of peace and stability. Now it is merely a stagnant pond
Censorship by the mob
Authors: Ben Efrat Roni
Published: October 2007

It is common knowledge that official, military censorship exists in Israel. But what happens when one sector of society exerts violent 'censorship' against another part of that society in order to intimidate it and prevent it from expressing its opinion?
Learning to take women seriously
Authors: Kishwar Madhu
Published: October 2007

Two years ago, Madhu Kishwar was invited to read a paper on the theme of 'The Subjectivity of the Researcher versus the Subjectivity of the Researched' organised by the Department of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics. She was asked to describe and discuss her experience as an activist doing investigative work for the magazine Manushi. These are extracts.
The gift of compassion
Authors: Bek Tatyana
Published: October 2007

Any woman who writes serious poetry dislikes discrimination between 'men's' writing and 'women's'. Anna Akhmatova was angry when she was called a poetess. She wanted to be, unconditionally, a poet
Mileva Einstein-Marić: The woman who did Einstein's mathematics
Authors: Troemel-Ploetz Senta
Published: October 2007

At the ETH in Zürich. the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, it is common knowledge that Einstein said about the mathematical side of his work: 'My wife solves all my mathematical problems.' The man becamefamous and is numbered among the great - -the woman became invisible, sheis unknown and unheard of. The man achieved - the woman worked to support herself and their children. We see in the two life stories the familiar patterns that lead to the construction of success for men and the deconstruction of success for women. (These are edited extracts from an article to be published in Women's Studies International Forum Vol 13 No 5.)
A bleak outlook for journalism
Authors: Fuentes Arroyo Euclides
Published: October 2007

Substitution of creole military rule by US neo-colonialist dominance spells hard times for the media
Television today — bridging the gap
Authors: Maryniak Irena
Published: October 2007

In the run-up to the presidential elections on 25 November, the Polish media were set to play a critical part in affecting the outcome. This article outlines the debate over television in Poland, drawing on interviews taken in early September with the Chairman of the Radio and Television Committee, Andrzej Drawicz, and with representatives of the new opposition grouping Centre Alliance.
Tactical mistakes and scientific triumph in Deng's China
Authors: Lizhi Fang
Published: October 2007

The importance of remembering the past is a thread which is crucial to the Chinese scientist's life. Jasper Becker interviewed him in Cambridge
Count-down to the clamp-down
Authors: Cheung C.L.
Published: October 2007

The Chinese government's crackdown on the pro-democracy movement in 1989 cast a long shadow over the news media in Hong Kong, which will be handed over to Chinese rule in 1997
The press in the Caribbean
Authors: Williams Joan
Published: October 2007

Freedom of speech is guaranteed in all the islands, and press freedom is in good shape in most
Letters
Authors: Hayward Mary , Carol A.
Published: October 2007

The Women and Censorship issue of Index (9/1990) prompted a wide and varied response, and the topic of pornography and censorship attracted the biggest proportion of readers' comments. We print two opinions below.
Damming the tide of glasnost
Authors: Tsymbal Evgenii
Published: October 2007

The Soviet Union's documentary film tradition survived the rigours of the past, only to find itself a victim once more — this time of glasnost
Carrying the weight
Authors: Henderson Caspar
Published: October 2007

A 15-year ban on a documentary raises questions of just how far British film makers should go in exploring unpleasant social issues
China: the Party has its way with history
Authors: Barmé Geremie
Published: October 2007

The past is up for grabs and dissident historians prove as threatening as political activists or pamphleteers
Japan: keeping in with the club
Authors: Hadfield Peter
Published: October 2007

The world's biggest advertising agency controls the news — as well as the commercial breaks
Nepal: the pale dawn of democracy
Authors: Hutt Michael
Published: October 2007

Long caught in the crossfire between the government and its readers, the press in Kathmandu is attempting to adjust to new freedoms. But it is too early to seek change out of the 12 May elections
Fear and loathing in San Francisco
Authors: Barlow John Perry
Published: October 2007

The law of the gun rules in Cyberspace as it did in the days of America's 'Wild West'
Formatting freedom in the computer age
Authors: Hammitt Harry
Published: October 2007

The US Freedom of Information Act is failing to keep pace with the demands of new technology
The case against Mandelstam, poet
Authors: Shentalinsky Vitaly
Published: October 2007

In May 1938, Osip Mandelstam was sentenced to five years' exile in a labour camp for counter-revolutionary activity. He never returned; even the time and the place of his death were hidden from friends and family; his poetry was suppressed. To no avail, as centenary publications demonstrate
The case of Nikolai Kluyev, prophet
Authors: Shentalinsky Vitaly
Published: October 2007

From the Lubianka a long-lost voice of prophecy emerges to appeal for the rebirth of the Russian soul
Babel: lies, confessions and denials
Authors: Shentalinsky Vitaly
Published: October 2007

The case against Babel was a fabrication from start to finish. It relied on anonymous 'sources' and shady 'informers', but it took 15 years to unmask the fraud and rehabilitate the writer
The road to dependence is paved with good intentions
Authors: Maja-Pearce Adewale
Published: October 2007

The road to dependence is paved with good intentions Adewale Maja-Pearce
Blueprint for freedom
Authors: Ansah Paul A V
Published: October 2007

'In trying to reduce or eliminate the monopoly of African governments, care should be taken not to go to the other extreme of believing that only an exclusively privately-owned system can fulfil the democratic aspirations of the people.
Ivory towers under siege
Authors: Omaar Rakiya
Published: October 2007

Africa's universities have become the target of government repression
Passing the buck
Authors: Kaldor Mary
Published: October 2007

What the arms trade needs is regulation not registration
Mordechai Vanunu: in the lion's den
Authors: Vanunu Meir
Published: October 2007

Meir Vanunu, himself a wanted man, tells of his brother's courage in breaking the silence on Israel's nuclear arsenal — and the price he still pays
Guns before bread
Authors: Morgan Oliver
Published: October 2007

There is no shortage of weapons to feed the civil war and famine that rage in Africa's biggest country, and the pariah regimes that supply the military government are assured of secrecy at any price
Keeping a grip on the gun
Authors: Segal Gerald
Published: October 2007

Beijing shows litle sign of cutting its arms exports — unless the USA turns the screws
Confronting fear with laughter
Authors: Smith Martin
Published: October 2007

Burma's army terror has turned the country into a 'mountain of bones and a sea of blood'
Born in the East
Authors: Graves Peter
Published: October 2007

The younger generation of poets and novelists in the GDR either voted with their feet or just turned their backs
Cameroon: tightening the stranglehold
Authors: Fopoussi Dominik , N'Diaya Ben
Published: October 2007

The government steps up its efforts to choke the media, and with seven independent paper banned, the call for a general press boycott has gone out
Short shrift for the stringers
Authors: Tien Davrell
Published: October 2007

Moscow no longer jams the airwaves, but radio journalists are given a hard time
Owners and censors
Authors: Mbachu Dulue
Published: October 2007

Proprietors keep a sharp watch on their publications. In their eyes, the only news is good news
Elements of the new Africa
Authors: Mazrui Ali A
Published: October 2007

The continent has much in its indigenous past to form the foundation of its democratic future
Give us back our own democracy
Authors: His Majesty King Moshoeshoe II of Lesotho
Published: October 2007

The democratic process is no stranger to traditional African society. The continent's leaders and people must rediscover and reinstate their own, forgotten practices
In search of citizenship
Authors: Ogundipe-Leslie Molara
Published: October 2007

Much nonsense is talked about 'traditional' democracies, which frequently excluded women
Taking bets on Benin
Authors: Laloupo Francis
Published: October 2007

They say the victory is irreversible, but caught between expectations within the country and its debt to the outside world, nobody is predicting an easy ride for the first new democracy
Equatorial Guinea: the tide begins to turn
Authors: Mbomio Joacquim
Published: October 2007

Democratic stirrings could mean the emergence of a freer press
House-cleaning Lebanese style
Authors: Yassine Selim
Published: October 2007

After 15 years of wartime chaos, the government plans to regain control of radio and television ... but there have been setbacks
The Press in Central and Southern Africa
Authors: Maja-Pearce Adewale
Published: October 2007

The last five years have seen very rapid change in [the political] landscape. Everywhere in Africa young men and women are speaking out in defence of democracy and human rights. Their voices can no longer be submerged by the subterfuge of official rhetoric. Their voices and anger are finding expression in independent newspapers and magazines struggling against great odds and at great risk to their editors and publishers.
A close run thing
Authors: Girven Tim
Published: October 2007

The government of Carlos Andres Perez narrowly escaped a coup attempt largely thanks to media support. Now it has turned against its ally
On the offensive
Authors:   Human Rights Watch
Published: October 2007

Few human rights issues provoke stronger debate than the question of whether, and to what extent, freedom of expression principles protect so-called 'hate speech'

Human Rights Watch was prompted to initiate a study of 'hate speech' and freedom i of expression by a number of events, including a resurgence of nationalist and anti-Semitic incidents in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, and by an intense i debate in the USA over whether 'hate i speech' provisions in disciplinary codes adopted by a number of colleges and, universities violate constitutional safeguards of free speech. The term 'hate speech' used in its policy paper, excerpted here, encompasses not just oral remarks, but any form of expression regarded as offensive to racial, ethnic and religious groups and other discrete minorities, and to women.

The Human Rights Watch policy statement on protection of 'hate speech' that emerged from its study is based on four key principles:

A distinction between advocacy and action.

Expression should never be punished for its subject matter alone.

To punish speech, there must be a direct and immediate connection to illegal action. Article 20 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights bars incitement to 'discrimination, hostility or violence'. Human Rights Watch defines those terms as unlawful conduct.

Any limitations on expression should be the least restrictive available.
The long shadow of Papa Doc
Authors: Brice Kim
Published: October 2007

The media have been silenced and journalists killed. But the opposition to the government which threw out Father Aristide is growing. A CPJ mission reports
Saudi Arabia: toeing the line
Authors: Vidal-Hall Judith
Published: October 2007

The Saudi press is under close surveillance to ensure that it not only observes the letter of Q'ranic law but also that of the authorities — and that means the royal family
Lies, lies and damned journalists
Authors: Becker Jasper
Published: October 2007

The media have gone along with politicians and diplomats in conveying a 'weird and wonderful' image of China that is totally at odds with the reality
Amicable divorce
Authors: Liu Jernow Allison
Published: October 2007

Legislating for a free press which would enable the news media to expand the limited independence they had gained in the 1980s was halted after the 1989 crackdown
Favourite sons
Authors: Shakespear Vivienne
Published: October 2007

Romania's hierarchy of dissent parallels the rise and rise of Communist heroes
Rădulescu be prepared
Authors: Bican Florin
Published: October 2007

Banu Rădulescu saw the inside of many Romanian jails as a political prisoner in the 1950s. As editor of Memoria, a journal documenting 'thought under arrest', he has come under renewed attack
Elegies for a sad land
Authors: Marin Mariana , Doinas Stefan Augustin , Iaru Florin , Dinescu Mircea
Published: October 2007

Nearly three years after the fall of the Ceausescu regime, Romanian writers enjoy greater creative freedom than before. But a combination of economic hardship and the legacy of a politically oppressive system has seriously affected the publication ofnew literature. The reduction of state subsidies for the Romanian Writers Union, now headed by controversial former dissident poetMircea Dinescu, has led to virtual bankruptcy for all of the Union's publications, many of which, like the weekly Romania Literara, had emerged with secure credentials as publishers of contemporary literature. New independent literary publications have routinely encountered problems with paper supplies, printing costs and distribution — difficulties which have led many to fold during the last 12 months. The country's publishing houses also face difficulties associated with the economic and political changes. Humanitas, a private publisher formed out of the state literary publishing house soon after December 1989, and the main rival to the monopolistic state publishing system, treads a precarious path. One of its senior literary editors admitted in November 1991 that it was impossible to predict the popularity of literary works in the absence of private bookshops and a workable national distribution system. This makes the publication of new or lesser-known authors less likely than ever.

The poets published here are all connected with the Romanian Writers Union. Stefan Augustin Doinas is a former dissident writer who was unable, for political reasons, to publish for much of his creative life. Both he andAna Blandiana (see back cover) are founder members of Memoria magazine whose editor, Banu Rădulescu, is profiled on page 35). Memoria has undertaken the delicate task of rediscovering lost or censored writers and documenting the prison experiences of dissidents from Romania's recent past, a difficult task owing to officialsecrecy and mistrust, and one made doubly so by the unofficial threats and physical violence Rădulescu has encountered. The continuing political tensions have influenced writers already marked by a 'culture of censorship', and the poems we publish here reflect the poets' concern with the problematic nature of words in a climate of suspicion and betrayal (compounded, since 1989, by profound uncertainty).Florin Iaru's guide to (former) Eastern European leaders — a pastiche of the folk-tale setting of 'social realism' formerly encouraged in Romanian literature—andMircea Dinescu's oblique poem both point up the absurdity of a situation where what is of real importance is not, nor cannot be, named, and Mariana Marin's Elegy, from an earlier collection, draws on the ambiguous power of language, here used to separate rather than unite the lovers. Stefan Agopian ( see page 40) represents a younger generation of writers exploring new territory in fiction.
Full Moon
Authors: Blandiana Ana
Published: October 2007

Ana Blandiana's career as a poet began with the publication of First Person Plural in 1964. Since then, she has published 11 volumes of poetry, as well as prose, fiction, translations and children's fiction. Over the years, she has become equally celebrated for her writing and for her criticism of the Ceausescu regime, the latter resulting in a ban in 1988 on the publication of her work, and her virtual house arrest. Her importance in the Romanian literary scene is expressed by the editors of her first collection published in English (The Hour of Sand, Anvil Press 1990): 'Literature is a collective refuge, a way of survival. In the strategies of this survival, Blandiana has been a model of unswerving consciousness.'

Since the fall of Ceausescu in December 1989, she has published little new work, but has devoted herself to politics, being a founder member of the umbrella democracy movement, the Civic Alliance, which is allied to the political party of the same name (the main rival to the ruling National Salvation Front). 'The open window' is her first new story to be published since December 1989. It first appeared in Romania Literara (Bucharest).
By order of the President: get Placido Mico
Authors: Mbomio Joaquin
Published: October 2007

There are still places in Africa, like Equatorial Guinea, which have not yet felt the democratic wind of change
Out of sight and out of harm's way
Authors: Pally Marcia
Published: October 2007

The new iconoclasts aim to cure society of its ills by banning all sexually explicit images
Binding the mind that serves
Authors: Maryniak Irena
Published: October 2007

Ten years ago, Vladimir Felzmann severed a long-standing link with Opus Dei, the controversial Roman Catholic society which made front-page news when its founder, Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer, was beatified in May 1992. Papal honours seldom hit the headlines, but Escriva's association with General Franco and the uncharacteristic speed with which the Vatican handled his case, provoked dissension worldwide. Irena Maryniak talks with Father Vladimir, and with Opus Dei's Information Officer in London, Ives Mascarenhas
Soapbox among the soaps
Authors: Blau Andrew
Published: October 2007

Giving the public access to cable television has enabled many voices silenced by the commercial media to be heard. But the latest developments threaten that right
The bang and the volcano
Authors: Habiby Emile
Published: October 2007

A leading Arab-Israeli writer reflects on the position of the press of a minority community inside an oppressive society, and highlights the limits to liberty and the pressures under which literature and the media must find their way
A matter of duty
Authors: Bartosyk Halina
Published: October 2007

Irena Maryniak meets the deputy chief of the Inspectorate for the Protection of State Secrets in the Belarusan Mass Media
The buds of May
Authors: McCargo Duncan
Published: October 2007

For all their claims that they have the freest press in Asia, Thailand's journalists became the whipping boys for a government under pressure
War by other means
Authors: Elam Peter
Published: October 2007

Even in Hungary, a model of democratic order in an unruly part of the world, the government is not finding it easy to relinquish control of the instruments of power
Birth of a free press
Authors: Hiro Dilip
Published: October 2007

A trade-off between former members of the old régime who fear exposure and editors who know the score, leaves the press in Alma Ata more or less free to follow the news.
Getting the picture in focus
Authors: Steele Jonathan
Published: October 2007

Goodbye to glasnost, welcome back propaganda. Uncertain of the outcome of the December elections, the President reverts to the old ways
Booker comes to Russia
Authors: Hosking Geoffrey
Published: October 2007

The merchants of gloom are confounded as one of the judges in this year's Russian Booker Prize declares any obituary on the Russian novel premature